"Oversight of the Architect of the Capitol: A Review of the Thirteenth Architect's First Year"
Committee on House Administration
2025-06-25
Loading video...
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
No summary available.
Participants
Transcript
The Committee on House Administration will come to order. The title of today's hearing is Oversight of the Architect of the Capitol Review of the 13th Architect's First Year. I note a quorum is present. Without objection, the chair may declare recess at any time. Also without objection, the hearing record will remain open for five legislative days, so members may submit any material they wish to be included therein. Thank you, Representative Torres, as well as ranking member Morelli, who will be joining us in a little bit, and members of the committee for joining us here today. Today, the Committee on House Administrations continuing our oversight of the architect of the Capitol. I want to welcome you, Mr. Architect, to the hearing today for your first appearance before the committee. on House administration. I'd like to also congratulate you on completing your first year as Architect of the Capitol. As we both know, the Architect of the Capitol oversees facilities, maintenance, and operations of the historic U.S. Capitol and over 18 million square feet of buildings. That's in addition to the care and improvement of more than 570 acres of ground. The architect is responsible for the care of all works of art in the US Capitol, as well as maintenance and restoration of murals, outdoor sculptures, and other architectural elements throughout the Capitol campus. In total, the architect manages a workforce of approximately 2,500 employees. You also serve on a variety of boards and commissions, including, importantly, the Capitol Police Board. Throughout this past year, the AOC has been addressing staffing shortfalls and reducing vacancies from 11 percent to just over 6 percent. At this time last year, over one-third of the executive-level positions were acting or interim staff. Today, nearly all executive-level positions have been permanently filled. Over the past year, the AOC completed organizational restructuring to clarify the responsibilities of each office and avoid unnecessary redundancies. Additionally, the CVC welcomed its 30 millionth visitor since opening in 2008, an impressive number, keeping the Capitol campus both completely open to the public
and safe at all times is no easy task. The U.S. House is actually one of the few legislative bodies in the world that is fully open and accessible to the public. And I greatly appreciate the work that you and, in particular, I know a lot of the members of your team, the work that they do every day to make this a reality for the American people. Under your leadership, the AOC has launched a substantial update to the Capital Complex Master Plan, or CCMP. The CCMP is a document intended to be completed every 10 years as a tenure look ahead for physical campus and project development. The AOC, though, had not updated the CCMP in over 20 years. The previous architect failed to deliver a substantive update on the CCMP in his three years, and I hope to discuss the details of your update today. An ongoing project that impacts almost everyone on the campus, in particular on the House side of the campus, is the Cannon House Office Building Renewal Project. The renewal project has been ongoing since 2015, and it's included extensive renovation of the interior of each wing. And a partial facelift of the building's historic exterior once renewals completed later this year late 2025 the cannon building courtyard will become usable green space For the first time since the garage was built below it in the 1950s I'd like to note that the initial cost estimate for this project was 752 million and the total estimated cost today is 971 million being over 200 million over budget or 29% of over the initial cost estimate, so we can have a bit of a conversation on that as well. Initially, the project was scheduled to be completed at the end of 2024. It's now scheduled to be completed at the end of 2025. Large projects like this, I think, require oversight not only from the AOC, AOC Inspector General, but also from Congress and us on this committee.
The committee was excited to see the selection of a new AOC Inspector General announced last week, Mr. Luis Santos. Today the AOC has 37 open recommendations from the Inspector General's office. Six months ago, I'll note, there were 89 open recommendations, so significant improvement in that regard. I look forward to your testimony on the status of the open recommendations. on your plans to proactively work alongside the Inspector General to continue the AOC's improvement and growth when he starts next month. In a hearing last month, the Committee discussed the Library of Congress Visitor Experience Master Plan, or VEM. The project is the last restoration is a vast renovation of public space in the library's Jefferson Building. And while the project is managed by the library, the implementation of construction is handled by you, the architect of the Capitol. The vamp has experienced serious setbacks, internal and external, causing severe cutbacks to the project, in large increases in its costs.
Sign up for free to see the full transcript
Accounts help us prevent bots from abusing our site. Accounts are free and will allow you to access the full transcript.