Proposed funding cuts will jeopardize DHS headquarters plans

The planned relocation of Homeland Security Department headquarters to St. Elizabeths hospital will fall off-schedule and could rack up more costs under the reduced funding levels that Congress wants, Obama administration officials said Friday.

Lawmakers denied spending requests for the move amid concerns about the general economic environment as well as the plan's timeline. For example, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is unhappy that an off-ramp necessary to access the site is not scheduled to be built until several years after the first DHS agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, transfers there in 2013.

The annual cost of operating the new Coast Guard facility is uncertain, but Vice Adm. John P. Currier, deputy commandant for mission support, said the benefits of planned enhancements at the new headquarters, including a larger child care facility, better information technology and a more secure campus, will outweigh any additional expense.

The purpose of the overall project is to centralize headquarters operations now scattered among more than 50 locations since the government cobbled together 22 agencies to establish the department after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House voted to defund the consolidation effort when it approved a 2012 spending bill for Homeland Security in June. The president's budget had requested $159 million, along with $218 million for General Services Administration construction work on the project, according to department officials. Senate appropriators have proposed $56 million for the DHS account and $65 million for all GSA construction work -- $11 million less than the $132 million Homeland Security officials said they need to open the Coast Guard facility.

"Right now, those marks don't rise to the numbers that we had planned for," DHS Chief Administrative Officer Donald G. Bathurst said at a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing Friday. "We will find a way to keep this project moving forward, however, we will not be able to keep to the schedule and some impacts on transportation can be expected."

A GSA official, later, slightly backtracked from that statement, saying his agency is agile enough to finish the Coast Guard section of the campus by the scheduled completion date. "We are confident that we could do what we need to do within that mark to get the building open on time in 2013," said Robert A. Peck, GSA commissioner for public buildings service.

Peck noted that a current lack of funding for the project has increased costs in some instances. "The fact that we got no funding in fiscal 2011 for this project has already caused us to take $30 million that we would have spent on other projects to redesign and reposition utilities for the campus so that when the Coast Guard building is opened and its operations center opens, we can actually have a functioning building," he said.

Initially, the government had intended for utility tunnels and conduits to be located in other places that would have been cost-efficient had the project been allowed to continue uninterrupted, Peck explained.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has said that if she is dealt zero funding for the project, the department will not slash Coast Guard missions to fund the move, Bathurst said.

Currier stressed, "Whatever costs are incurred here will not affect Coast Guard front-line operations."