Why are government buildings, besides the newly reopened Albemarle Building, awful?
One reason is that repairs and renovations do not happen as often as in the private sector. The House budget proposal’s transfer of $365 million to the Repairs and Renovations Reserve is three times what the Senate or Governor Cooper proposed. It could be the first step to addressing renovations to meet health and safety concerns in addition to ignored repairs.
Despite legal requirements, there has rarely been enough money to cover costs of existing facilities, even as state government added new construction for agencies and universities. The Facility Condition Assessment Program estimates the two-year need for facilities is $1.5 billion and the total six-year need is $2.6 billion.
Until 2007, state law mandated “three percent of the replacement value for all State buildings supported from the General Fund” go to the Repairs and Renovations Reserve. Lawmakers began to ignore the law in 1999 until they dispensed with the fiction in 2006 when, as part of a rewrite of the entire State Budget Act, they changed the requirement to “one-fourth of any unreserved fund balance…at the end of each fiscal year.” Recession left no money at year-end until 2011, and legislators missed the one-fourth requirement even as they were building the government’s rainy day fund, the Savings Reserve Account.
In addition to making needed repairs and renovations to facilities, policymakers should continue to seek ways to sell properties and buildings, reduce the amount of office space state government occupies, and capture the true cost of space for state agencies.
See the history and comparisons: R_R Reserve
