On Tuesday, federal workers were alarmed when their office buildings were on a target list for “disposal.” By Wednesday, the list was gone, but the staffers who work in those buildings haven’t gotten clarity.
They’re still worried.
The office building mystery began earlier this week when the Trump administration released a lengthy list of federal buildings designated for “disposal” by the federal government, including the Energy Department’s Washington headquarters and buildings that house EPA regional offices.
The list was trimmed later that day and scrubbed altogether from the General Services Administration’s website by the next morning with an announcement that the agency planned to republish its list “in the near future.”
The announcement of the list of buildings potentially up for sale or facing closures — followed by its swift disappearance — has worried employees who work in those buildings who are already uncertain about the fate of their jobs as the Trump administration moves to make sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.
The broader push to ditch federal properties and cancel existing leases comes as the Trump administration is also pushing federal workers back into the office, raising questions about where those staff will work or whether it’s an indication that their jobs are slated for cuts.
Here’s a copy of the GSA’s initial list of buildings slated for disposal, dated March 4 and downloaded from the Internet Archive:
Staffers at the Energy Department noticed their headquarters on the GSA list published earlier this week, said one DOE employee. “There has been no discussion with staff about it,” said that person, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about internal communications. “This is going to make the return to office a little more challenging, I’d say.”
DOE did not respond to requests for comment about the inclusion of its Forrestal headquarters in downtown Washington or its facilities in Germantown, Maryland, on the GSA’s initial list.
EPA regional offices made the list
Another building on that list that’s now been scrapped is the Metcalfe Federal Building in Chicago, home to EPA’s Region 5 office that serves Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin and 37 tribes.
Nicole Cantello, the president of a union local that represents EPA Region 5 workers, saw the building’s inclusion as a signal that the Trump administration is planning to shutter the office entirely.
The administration gave agencies a March 13 deadline to submit “Phase 1” plans for initial agency cuts and “reductions in force,” or RIFs.
“If you’re closing a geographic location, you can just RIF everybody, and then you can just say, ‘Well, we’re closing that location,’” Cantello said Wednesday. She said EPA management hadn’t offered guidance to employees about the building’s inclusion on that initial list.
Other buildings that house EPA regional offices were also on the GSA list published Tuesday, including the Ted Weiss Federal Building, where EPA’s New York-based Region 2 office is located, and the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center building that’s home to EPA’s Region 4 office that covers the Southeast.
Current and former EPA employees say they’re concerned about a possible Trump administration plan to eliminate some of EPA’s 10 regional offices.
Such a restructuring could mirror a recent announcement by the Social Security Administration, which said it would close six of its 10 regional offices and reduce its workforce by more than 12 percent, The New York Times reported. The Social Security Administration said it plans to retain four regional offices in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest/West Region and Southwest, The Times reported.
EPA declined to offer details about the inclusion of its offices on the list of buildings slated for disposal. The agency “does not have further information to provide as we are still awaiting guidance from GSA,” EPA’s press office said in an email.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about why the list was taken down quickly after its publication.
A GSA spokesperson said in an email that the agency is “exploring innovative approaches” to “optimize our real property portfolio” and that “just because an asset is on the list doesn’t mean it’s immediately for sale.”
GSA plans to “consider compelling offers (in accordance with applicable laws and regulations) and do what’s best for the needs of the federal government and taxpayer.”
The EPA regional offices “go all the way back to the founding of EPA, and they were set up in what were then the 10 standard federal regions,” said Stan Meiburg, who served as EPA’s acting deputy administrator during the Obama administration and prior to that as deputy administrator in EPA’s Region 4 office.
“Regional offices are the intersection between national consistency and local flexibility,” said Meiburg, who’s now executive director of the Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University.
A possible Trump administration move to consolidate EPA regional offices would be “very disruptive,” Meiburg said, because it would involve uprooting people’s lives as they make choices about whether to move long distances or uproot kids in schools.
“My concern,” Meiburg said, is that “one way to make EPA less effective is to induce that level of disruption into the operations of the agency.”
Reporter Hannah Northey contributed.
Contact Robin Bravender on Signal at r_bravender.93.
