U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

23–405 PDF 2017

OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL VEHICLES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC ASSETS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FEBRUARY 26, 2016 

Serial No. 114–106 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MICK, MULVANEY, South Carolina 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

MARK WALKER, North Carolina 

ROD BLUM, Massachusetts 

JODY B. HICE, Georgia 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

EARL L. ‘‘BUDDY’’ CARTER, Georgia 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin 

WILL HURD, Texas 

GARY J. PALMER, Alabama 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

TED LIEU, California 

BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey 

STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands 

MARK DeSAULNIER, California 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico 

JENNIFER HEMINGWAY, Staff Director 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

MICHAEL KIKO, Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets Staff Director 

BETTY WARD ZUKERMAN, Counsel 

WILLIE MARX, Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC ASSETS

JOHN L. MICA Florida, Chairman 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR. Tennessee 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin, Vice Chair 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois, Ranking 

Member 

BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey 

MARK DESAULNIER, California 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on February 26, 2016 ....................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Ms. Lori Rectanus, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, Government Accountability Office 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 6 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 9 

Mr. Bill Toth, Director, Office of Fleet Management, General Services Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 19 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 21 

Mr. Tom Howard, Inspector General, Amtrak 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 25 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 27 

Mr. Joseph H. Boardman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Amtrak 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 39 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 41 

APPENDIX 

Amtrak’s Answers to the Committee’s Questions for the Record, Entered 

by Chairman Mica ................................................................................................ 62 

General Services Administration’s Answers to the Committee’s Questions for 

the Record ............................................................................................................. 67 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER

KING-6430 with DISTILLER
(1) 

OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL VEHICLES 

Friday, February 26, 2016 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC

ASSETS, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:07 a.m., in Room 

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Mica, Duncan, Amash, Massie, 

Grothman, Duckworth, DeSaulnier, and Cummings. 

Mr. MICA. Good morning. I’d like to welcome everyone to the 

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and our Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets hearing this morning. 

First, let me say that we will have our ranking member join us 

in just a few minutes here. This is a get-away day, and everybody 

is consumed on the floor or in a series of hearings this morning. 

But we do have a member to proceed, and Ms. Duckworth will be 

joining us shortly. 

The topic of today’s oversight hearing deals with oversight of our 

Federal vehicles, of our own fleet and also leased fleet. 

And the order of business is going to be as follows: I’ll start with 

my opening it statement. I’ll yield to others members for opening 

statements. Then we’ll turn to our witnesses. We have four witnesses this morning, and we’ll introduce them, get them sworn in 

and proceed, and then we’ll go to questions. So that will be our 

order of business. 

And, with that being said, without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. And I’ll start with my opening 

statement this morning. 

One of the great things about our committee is that we look at 

waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government, and we have 

an opportunity to save the taxpayer money to make programs more 

efficient, to look at where we can do a better job with public assets, 

and we focus on a whole host of areas. And just a few of those 

areas that we’ve looked at in the past: public assets, such as vacant 

or empty buildings. We are on the verge of saving hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. Conferences that were abusively expensive, 

spending funds that were unnecessary, I know we’ve saved over $1 

billion just in that area. Our committee has looked at duplications 

in IT equipment, data, et cetera, consolidation. We spend 50, 60 billion dollars there and found half of that money wasted. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
2 

So, today, we’re focusing on another area, these are some, you 

might term them, meat-and-potato hearings, but I think it’s one of 

the most important responsibilities at Congress: look at what we’re 

doing and how we can save money or do it better for the taxpayers. 

Kind of interesting getting into Federal vehicle fleet and how it’s 

managed and operated. It sounds look a small operation, but, in 

fact, the Federal Government’s spent over $4.4 billion a year, and 

that is probably the biggest vehicle fleet in the world of 650,000 vehicles. Some of those are our own; some of those are leased. The 

Federal Government’s fleet mileage exceeds 5 billion miles per 

year, and we consume and spend $400 million just on fuel in that 

fleet. So it’s a pretty sizable operation, and almost every agency 

has either owned by the government or leased their vehicles. 

Roughly a third of the Federal fleet is leased, while the remainder 

is owned. 

You’ve seen some reports that indicate that between 2010 and 

2014, more than 2.5 million, 2.4 to 2.5 million, in fraud recoveries 

occurred from Federal credit, fuel credit card abuse. I have a picture of this Federal fuel credit card. I think that’s being changed 

out as we meet today, but we issue those cards, and in that short 

period of time, we’ve detected about $2.5 million in fraud and recovered some of that. 

Fuel card waste and vehicle underutilization are part of the problem we’ve seen with the fleet, and we’ve got to pay attention to, 

again, all losses that the Federal Government occurs with this 

fleet. 

GAO recently found that two-thirds of the agency’s leased vehicles did not meet annual mileage criteria. That means they weren’t 

traveling or being used to a satisfactory level that is established by 

the government and under Federal property regulations that we set 

for like the minimum utilization that would justify leasing. In fact, 

we found—and we didn’t conduct all the reports, but we have two 

reports we’ll focus on today. First, we’ve got a GAO report, which 

is issued in January of this year, federally leased vehicles, agencies 

should strengthen assessment processes to reduce underutilized vehicles. So this is some of the investigation that was done by GAO. 

And then we have a document prepared by the inspector general 

of Amtrak, and this is titled ‘‘Asset Management and Its Observations on Vehicle Fleet Management.’’ And I’ll quote from both of 

those. This is, again, their findings and part of what we’re going 

to look at in this hearing. 

The GAO found that half the Federal vehicles that they examined in May of 2015 travelled less than 600 miles that month. 

While the management of Federal vehicles is highly decentralized 

across the individual agency, the fleets that GAO looked at and 

several inspector generals have identified, they all found problems 

with agency’s performance of the management responsibility for 

these fleets. 

Agencies that GAO most recently reviewed have not—and we’ve 

looked at those—those agencies have not consistently followed best 

practices such as one of the most important things is conducting 

a cost-benefit analysis for the basis of determining whether to buy 

or whether to lease. I think we have a slide showing leased vehicles. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
3 

In a sampling of just a handful of these agencies—again, I refer 

to the report; they looked at four agencies—GAO found that one in 

10, or 1,500, of the leased vehicles really weren’t justified in having 

any inventory, but the agency paid $5 million for these vehicles in 

a single year. 

Now, this is just a sampling of four agencies, and you see them 

up there: National Park Service, Veterans Health, Air Force, Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Now, in the sampling they took, if you apply that to the entire 

number of federally leased vehicles across the government, we have 

wasted in the neighborhood of $80 million annually through bad 

leased fleet management. So we’ve leased vehicles that we don’t 

need. When we lease them, we don’t drive them or utilize them to 

their maximum. So there’s a lot of money being wasted, and GAO 

found that in their report. 

The owned fleet is another story, and the Government Accountability Office is currently conducting an audit for the committee on 

this topic. I’m sure we’ll be following up on that with another hearing or at least an inquiry. 

Today, I’m pleased to announce that GSA will have a new management agreement with Amtrak to save taxpayer dollars on many 

of Amtrak’s leased vehicles. This is significant news, because, unfortunately—and, again, this is not just something I’m saying, but 

if you look at the report that we have from Amtrak conducted by 

their inspector general, and we’ll have him here to talk about it— 

but this report details some troubling history of Amtrak’s management in leasing and operations of its fleet. In some instances, Amtrak was spending nearly $4,500 more than what it could have 

been paying through GSA when they leased vehicles. We found, 

again, that Amtrak’s—well, not we, but the inspector general found 

that Amtrak’s fleet is also subject to severe underutilization and 

weak fuel card oversight. We have some pictures—also some slides 

that we can show. Many vehicles just sat idle not only for months 

but sometimes not driven for a year. In May of last year, there 

were 153 Amtrak vehicles that consumed less than 15 gallons of 

fuel for the month that was examined, 26 of which were Amtrak 

police vehicles; two were SWAT vans. I think one of the SWAT 

vans—if you look at it up there—it doesn’t appear moved or was 

driven for a year. We know some of these assets are infrequently 

needed to deploy, but, again, we have a significant fleet. We have 

significant expenditures and losses. 

It appears that Amtrak has also—and this is from the automotive fleet report, from their engineering department, February 2, 

2016, in that month, it showed vehicles showing no fuel purchase 

for the month, 138 vehicles. There’s no fuel at all purchased for 

them, which means a lot of those vehicles were underutilized. 

It remains clear that proper fleet management practices at all 

agencies, big and small, can save significant amounts of money. 

Today, we’ll hear both from GAO, and we’ll also hear from the 

inspector and from Amtrak representatives and others on how improvements in Federal management of vehicles can move forward. 

Amtrak has taken some steps to correct some of their deficits that 

have been uncovered, and we’ll hear about that too. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
4 

We’ll also hear how GSA and Amtrak have executed their management responsibilities and what they have done or will do to address some of the problems that have been uncovered by both GAO 

and the inspector general. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from all of our witnesses. 

I’m pleased to now yield to the ranking member, Ms. Duckworth. 

Welcome. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being here. 

Mr. Chairman, I must apologize for my late arrival. I have simultaneous hearings this morning. The other one is on the Army’s 

2017 budget proposal. So, having just concluded that, I’m glad I 

made it here in time for the start of this and to hear the chairman’s excellent opening remarks. 

Today’s hearing is a chance to continue our subcommittee’s oversight of Federal fleet management to ensure that taxpayer dollars 

are being used properly and efficiently. This is significant—in fiscal 

year 2014, the Federal fleet totaled just over 633,000 vehicles, 

nearly one-third of which were used by the United States Postal 

Service. Agencies spent more than $4 billion to buy and operate 

these vehicles, including more than $1 billion used to lease more 

than 186,000 vehicles from the GSA. This is a significant expenditure that is vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. While the vast 

majority of civil servants serve our country honorably and are always mindful of the need to use taxpayer dollars responsibly, the 

unfortunate reality is that with more than half a million vehicles 

being used across the Federal Government, it is almost certain that 

bad apples would seek to take advantage of the system. The size 

of the Federal fleet has declined in recent years, and the administration has taken important steps to improve fleet management. 

In 2015, the President issued an executive order that set aggressive goals for reducing the Federal fleet emissions over the next 

decade and required each agency with more than 20 vehicles to 

focus on eliminating unnecessary or nonessential vehicles from the 

agency’s fleet inventory. However, much work remains to be done 

according to the GAO. Current fleet management policies may fragment responsibility and, in the process, weaken accountability and 

oversight. 

For example, although GSAsupplies agencies with a vast majority of leased vehicles and maintains the database that houses 

leased fleet information, GSA is not responsible for monitoring 

agencies’ vehicle-use policies. GSA has developed and issued standards for optimizing fleet utilization, but agencies do not have to follow these recommendations or comply with their own internal 

guidelines. As GAO noted in its most recent review of five large 

agency fleets when justifying adding a vehicle to the agency’s fleet, 

agencies appeared to be either disregarding GSA’s recommended 

standards or not following their own. Specifically, GAO found four 

of the five agencies in our review could not readily provide justifications for vehicles that had not met utilization criteria defined 

in agency policy. This finding appears to be at odds with the administration’s efforts to get agencies to regularly review the sizes 

of their fleets and eliminate any vehicle that is not meeting an essential agency need. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
5 

I look forward to examining today what specific steps we can 

take to enhance the President’s efforts to ensure the Federal fleet 

is as cost-effective and fuel-efficient as possible. In particular, since 

GSA has gone to the trouble of developing best practices standards 

for assessing fleet-use needs, one wonders whether Congress should 

mandate the adoption of a single, uniform standard at least as a 

default option. 

Before closing, I also want to note that today’s hearing is an excellent opportunity to address fleet management problems within 

Amtrak highlighted by Amtrak’s IG. According to the IG, deficiencies in cost-control systems and ineffective oversight has allowed waste, fraud, and abuse to infect Amtrak’s fleet program. 

One of the most alarming incidents of fuel card fraud identified by 

the IG was when an individual, who was not an employee of Amtrak, obtained an Amtrak fuel card and proceeded to spend more 

than $57,000 on it. Every dollar Amtrak wastes through poor management of its vehicle fleet is a dollar that cannot go to meet urgent maintenance needs of the system or to support long overdue 

infrastructure improvements. 

Moving forward, I am pleased that Amtrak has announced an aggressive effort to review its vehicle management practices and the 

size and composition of its fleet. I urge Amtrak to complete these 

reviews quickly and, more importantly, take decisive steps to ensure that employees understand fraud will not be tolerated. 

I thank the chairman, and I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady. 

Other members? 

Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, just very briefly. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this hearing, 

the abuse of these vehicles and these fuel cards, this is something 

that could be very easily abused, and I think we would see much 

more abuse if it were not for you calling a hearing such as this. 

And it has been something that I’m interested in, because I remember, several years ago, I had a constituent in Tennessee who complained to me because the Forest Service was being very excessive 

in the number of vehicles that they had, and then this constituent 

told me that they were selling off these vehicles when they weren’t 

very old at all and didn’t have many miles on them at all. 

I can tell you, I generally have two cars. One of my cars right 

now has 149,000 miles on it; it is still doing just great. And I had 

two other vehicles before I bought a used car last year: one that 

had 194,000 miles on it and another one that had about 200,000 

miles. So we can get much more use out of these vehicles, and I 

think that we need to ask how many miles these cars are being 

used or driven before they are sold off. 

And, also, I’ve heard that they have been selling to people who 

are connected to Federal employees, and they learn about these 

auctions when nobody else does. And so I think it would be interesting to see, what is the average number of miles driven before 

these cars are sold, and what steps are being taken, if any, to prevent these cars from just going to insiders, so to speak? 

So thank you very much for calling this hearing. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Duncan. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
6 

Any other members? 

If not, we will leave the record open, with agreement from the 

ranking member, for a period of 10 days. Without objection, so ordered. 

We’ll now turn to our witnesses and welcome them this morning. 

We have four witnesses, and let me introduce them. 

And what we’ll do is we’ll introduce you. We’ll have you sworn 

in. We swear in all of our witnesses, because we’re an investigative 

and oversight committee, and let you go through your statements. 

Several of you have been here before. We try to have you limit 

your statements to 5 minutes, summarize, and then you can ask 

through the chair or a member to include additional material with 

your testimony or for the record. 

So we’ll go through all of the witness testimony, and then we’ll 

go through questions. So that’s going to be the order. 

So we have with us today: Ms. Lori Rectanus, and she is the director of physical infrastructure issues with GAO, Government Accountability Office, and I referred to their report. Mr. Bill Toth, he 

is the director of Fleet Management with the General Services Administration. Welcome. We have Mr. Tom Howard, inspector general—I referred to his report—of Amtrak. And then we have the 

chief executive officer and president, Joe Boardman, from Amtrak 

back with us. 

So welcome to all of you. If you will stand, please, and we’ll 

swear you in. 

Raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are 

about to give before this subcommittee of Congress is the whole 

truth and nothing but the truth? 

Let the record reflect that all of the witnesses answered in the 

affirmative, and we’ll start right out. 

Welcome, again, the director of physical infrastructure issues at 

GAO, Ms. Lori Rectanus. 

Welcome, and you are recognized. 

WITNESS STATEMENTS 

STATEMENT OF LORI RECTANUS 

Ms. RECTANUS. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Good morning. Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Duckworth, 

and members of the subcommittee, I’m pleased to be here today to 

discuss the Federal fleet, a $4.4 billion activity that covers over 

630,000 nontactical vehicles. My statement today highlights key 

fleet characteristics and provides information on how selected agencies are carrying out their fleet responsibilities. 

As a bit of context, the idea that there’s a single Federal fleet is 

misleading. In reality, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of fleets 

that range in size from just a few vehicles to more than 200,000. 

Almost 80 percent of those vehicles are managed by seven agencies, 

but just about every agency has some vehicle, and about 70 percent 

of all Federal vehicles are owned, while about 30 percent are 

leased. 

Agencies have sole responsibility for managing their fleets. This 

means that they determine the number and types of vehicles they 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
7 

need, whether they want to lease or purchase those vehicles, 

whether a vehicle is sufficiently utilized, and whether a vehicle 

should be removed from the fleet. This decentralized approach 

gives agencies the flexibility to structure their fleets to reflect their 

diverse missions. However, the financial well-being of this approach depends on agencies managing their fleets in the most costeffective manner possible. 

While GSA provides advice and guidance to agencies, it does not 

have formal oversight responsibility over agency actions. Each 

agency is responsible for collecting and reporting data on its vehicle 

fleet. Those agencies that lease vehicles from GSA can utilize the 

services provided by GSA for this, and we recently found those data 

were generally reliable. However, information on owned vehicles is 

less available, and its reliability is less clear. This is because each 

agency collects and maintains its own data and reports limited information. We have also found that agencies’ fleet management information systems did not always have the elements recommended 

by GSA. Most often missing were direct and indirect costs, which 

are essential for conducting life-cycle analysis, which is needed to 

determine true vehicle costs and whether to buy, lease, or eliminate vehicles. 

Agencies should also identify their optimal fleet size and ensure 

that vehicles are fully utilized. In the past, we found selected agencies often lacked supporting documentation to explain how they 

identify their optimal sized targets, or they did not follow GSA’s 

guidance on conducting this analysis. Regarding utilization, agencies are allowed to define their own utilization criteria so they may 

adopt the GSA suggested mileage criteria, or they may use other 

criteria, such as the number of vehicle trips per month. We recently found that 66 percent of the selected leased vehicles from 

five agencies we reviewed did not travel the number of miles recommended by GSA, and 29 percent did not even meet the agencies’ 

own utilization criteria. 

When vehicles do not meet the identified utilization criteria, 

agencies can subsequently justify vehicles using any additional criteria. We found that four of the five selected agencies could not 

readily provide the justifications for about 1,500 leased vehicles 

that did not meet the original criteria. 

Finally, agencies should also eliminate unnecessary vehicles. In 

our recent review, we found that three of the five agencies studied 

retained 500 leased vehicles that did not meet the agencies’ own 

utilization criteria and had no other justification. Altogether, we 

identified almost 2,500 vehicles from our sample of about 16,000 

that either did not meet utilization criteria, did not have documentation, or were retained even when agencies determined that 

they were not justified. These vehicles cost the agencies about $9 

million in fiscal year 2014. It would be an interesting exercise to 

see what this number might be for the 600,000 vehicles currently 

in use. 

In conclusion, while agencies need the appropriate number and 

type of vehicles to meet their missions, they also need to be good 

stewards of Federal resources. Agencies must have adequate data 

and appropriate procedures that provide assurance that they are 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
8 

using the provided flexibility to meet their missions in the most 

cost-effective way possible. 

Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Duckworth, and members of 

the subcommittee, this concludes my prepared statement. I would 

be pleased to respond to any questions. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Rectanus follows:] 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
9 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 1 here 23405.001
10 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 2 here 23405.002
11 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 3 here 23405.003
12 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 4 here 23405.004
13 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 5 here 23405.005
14 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 6 here 23405.006
15 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 7 here 23405.007
16 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 8 here 23405.008
17 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 9 here 23405.009
18 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 10 here 23405.010
19 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. 

And we’ll hear now from Bill Toth, and he’s the director of the 

Office of Fleet Management of GSA. 

Welcome, and you’re recognized, sir. 

STATEMENT OF BILL TOTH 

Mr. TOTH. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Mica, Ranking 

Member Duckworth, and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today regarding General 

Services Administration’s role in the Federal fleet. My name is Bill 

Toth, and I’m the director of GSA’s Office of Fleet Management. 

I’ve been the director for over 8 years and with GSA for over 25 

years. 

The mission of GSA’s Office of Fleet Management is to deliver 

safe, reliable, and low-cost vehicle solutions that allow Federal 

agencies to effectively and efficiently meet their missions. The Federal fleet can be broken down into three categories of roughly equal 

size. One-third is owned by GSA, and it’s leased to eligible entities. 

A second third is owned and maintained by the U.S. Postal Service. 

And the final third is owned and maintained by non-Postal Service 

Federal agencies. 

GSA’s status as a mandatory source of vehicle purchasing guarantees that all Federal agencies benefit from the government’s buying power inherent in having a single, strategically sourced point 

of purchase. In fact, in fiscal year 2015, GSA negotiated a discount 

on light-duty vehicles that average 19 percent below dealer invoice. 

Given GSA’s FY 2015 procurement of 47,409 vehicles, this discount 

saved the American taxpayer an estimated $306 million. As a full 

service leasing option for Federal agencies, GSA drives down costs 

for Federal customers by providing end-to-end fleet management 

services at an all-inclusive rate. The leasing program has demonstrated savings year after year by leveraging the government’s 

buying power and consolidating redundant fleet management functions duplicated in many different agencies. GSA’s motor vehicle 

program provides customers with a comprehensive fleet solution 

that includes vehicle acquisition, maintenance and accident management of fleet service cars with a dedicated waste, fraud, and 

abuse detection team, and many other solutions, as outlined in my 

written testimony. 

GSA fleet leasing supports over 15,000 unique customers, who 

collectively lease over 205,000 vehicles. To demonstrate our commitment to providing customers with the best possible value, GSA 

decreased its leasing rates for the past 2 fiscal years by 2 and 2.75 

percent, respectively. In addition to the leveraged buying power 

and governmentwide administrative cost savings inherent in a centralized fleet management program, GSA prioritizes helping customers make smart decisions about the composition and size of 

their leased fleet. While GSA is proud of the progress it has helped 

customers make in optimizing their fleet size and composition, Federal agencies themselves are empowered to analyze their mission 

needs and, accordingly, make the final decision about how many 

vehicles they need to successfully fulfill the mission tasked to them 

by Congress. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
20 

Ultimately, authority for vehicle purchasing and operating decisions remain with each Federal agency. GSA partners with its customer agencies to help them stretch limited resources and maximize their mission impact. Each year, GSA replaces eligible vehicles within its leased fleet with new, safe, fuel-efficient vehicles. 

Over the past 6 fiscal years, vehicles added to the fleet had an average of 19 percent higher miles per gallon rating than the corresponding vehicles they replace. In addition, two of GSA’s unique 

solutions available to all Federal customers include the Short Term 

Rental program for vehicle and equipment rentals and the Dispatch Reservation Module, which is an electronic car-sharing program for scheduling vehicles and providing utilization reports. 

As a motor vehicle leasing provider, GSA assumes responsibility 

for providing solutions that save American taxpayer money. Our 

strategy for meeting these goals involve maintaining the vehicles 

in superior condition, thus decreasing the need for costly maintenance and repair and vehicle down time. GSA replaces vehicles on 

a schedule designed to maintain a safe, modern, dependable, and 

fuel-efficient fleet while taking advantage of manufacturer warranties to minimize maintenance costs. Used vehicles are actively remarketed to the general public to ensure the highest possible proceeds are captured upon the sale of each vehicle. 

Through these and the other solutions outlined in my written 

testimony, GSA is able to reduce the need for administrative overhead across the government by centralizing operational and administrative fleet support functions. We also offer the opportunity to 

consolidate agency-owned vehicles and commercially leased vehicle 

requirements into the GSA fleet to reduce governmentwide cost 

and redundancies. I appreciate your support for GSA’s concerted efforts to drive continuous improvements in the Federal fleet and 

your partnership in delivering best value to the American taxpayer. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I look forward to answering your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Toth follows:] 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
21 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 11 here 23405.011
22 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 12 here 23405.012
23 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 13 here 23405.013
24 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 14 here 23405.014
25 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, sir. 

And we’ll now turn to Tom Howard, who is the inspector general 

of Amtrak. 

Welcome, sir, and you’re recognized. 

STATEMENT OF TOM HOWARD 

Mr. HOWARD. Good morning, Chairman Mica, Ranking Member 

Duckworth, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the 

opportunity to discuss our work on Amtrak’s vehicle fleet. 

Within the last year, three of our reports have addressed recurring issues with Amtrak’s management and oversight of its fleet of 

vehicles. The issues include unexplained growth in the size of the 

fleet, potential underutilization of some vehicles, and unnecessarily 

costly leasing practices. We also found that ineffective oversight of 

fuel card use has led to fraud and abuse. The root cause of the specific issues with the fleet are weaknesses in Amtrak’s management 

controls, an issue we have identified as the cause of operational 

and programmatic problems throughout the company. Amtrak 

management has been responsive to our observations and recommendations and is taking or plans corrective action. 

In that regard, we believe that Amtrak has opportunities to improve controls and reduce expenses by enhancing the management 

and oversight of the vehicle fleet. I will briefly summarize some of 

our work on the areas where we think there are opportunities. 

Since 2008, Amtrak’s fleet grew by 28 percent, and it now maintains over 2,500 vehicles. While we are aware that Amtrak has 

added some vehicles in support of discretely funded projects, it is 

unclear why the fleet has grown as much as it has. In addition, the 

number of vehicles that employees can take home when off duty increased by 20 percent over the last 3 years. Those vehicles now account for 23 percent of Amtrak’s fleet. As GAO noted, some Federal 

agencies have reduced the size of their fleets to save money, and 

we believe that this is an opportunity where Amtrak may be able 

to reduce expenses. 

Even as the fleet is expanding, some vehicles appear to be underutilized. As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, in one month last year, 

the company identified 153 vehicles that used less than 15 gallons 

of fuel, an indicator of potential underutilization. Evaluating the 

cause of the low fuel usage and redeploying or disposing of vehicles 

where possible, could reduce the need for additional vehicles and 

help decrease expenses for Amtrak. 

Another opportunity for improvement is reducing Amtrak’s overall leasing costs by taking better advantage of GSA leases. Amtrak 

currently obtains 73 percent of its vehicles from GSA; however, it 

also has some relatively high-cost commercial leased vehicles that 

may be available from GSA at lower cost. For example, on one 

project, we estimate that Amtrak could have saved as much as 

$212,000 a year by obtaining GSA vehicles instead of leasing 26 vehicles from commercial vendors. 

Also, Amtrak doesn’t require a lease purchase comparison before 

obtaining additional vehicles. As a result, it has entered into commercial leases that have cost more money than it would have if 

they had bought the vehicles outright. For example, the company 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
26 

could have saved more than $127,000 by purchasing eight utility 

trucks rather than leasing them from commercial vendors. 

The third area for improvement is fuel card oversight. Our investigations have identified employees who were making fraudulent 

purchases with Amtrak- and GSA-issued fuel cards. In most cases, 

those employees have been prosecuted and convicted of criminal 

charges. We found that the employees were able to use the cards 

for personal expenses because of systemic weaknesses in internal 

controls. For example, supervisors were not tracking who was 

using the cards. They were not monitoring fuel and vehicle usage 

logs, and they were not retrieving cards when employees left the 

company. Our reports have addressed the issues I just summarized, and Amtrak management has included corrective actions in 

its plan for improving the management and oversight of the vehicle 

fleet. We are encouraged by management’s responsiveness to our 

observations and recommendations as well as the development of 

its plan. We note, however, that Amtrak’s work on the plan is in 

the very early stages and that effective implementation will require 

sustained management attention and a long-term commitment to 

changing the status quo. 

This concludes my remarks, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Howard follows:] 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
27 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 15 here 23405.015
28 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 16 here 23405.016
29 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 17 here 23405.017
30 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 18 here 23405.018
31 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 19 here 23405.019
32 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 20 here 23405.020
33 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 21 here 23405.021
34 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 22 here 23405.022
35 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 23 here 23405.023
36 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 24 here 23405.024
37 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 25 here 23405.025
38 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 26 here 23405.026
39 

Mr. MICA. Well, thank you. 

And we’ll hear from everyone after we’ve heard from Mr. 

Boardman. 

Welcome, president, CEO of Amtrak, Mr. Boardman. Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH H. BOARDMAN 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking 

Member, and the rest of the committee. At any given moment, an 

Amtrak train is on the move somewhere in the United States. Lots 

of things can happen, and we maintain a vehicle fleet for our transportation organization so that our managers can respond quickly to 

incidents out on the road. We also run a police department of more 

than 400 people with national responsibilities, and our engineering 

department that undertakes construction and maintenance work 

not only on 400 miles of the Northeast Corridor but on more than 

200 miles of railroad in Michigan. Our footprint can be quite substantial. For example, in northern Florida, we have several station 

facilities and the Auto Train facility in Sanford where we do maintenance work on contract for SunRail. 

Amtrak does have 2,568 vehicles: 1,800 of them come from GSA; 

Amtrak owns 531; and we lease commercially 237. GSA is always 

our first choice. The annual cost to operate this fleet is roughly $25 

million. In the fall of last year, at the request of management, me 

to Tom Howard, OIG reviewed our vehicle fleet management program and noted some issues with the internal control and monitoring processes for our vehicle fleet. These were ultimately memorialized in the IG report published in October, which identified a 

set of weaknesses in the way in which our vehicle fleet is managed 

as well as specific control weaknesses and vulnerabilities to fraud, 

waste, and abuse. 

There was some underutilization of portions of the fleet. Not all 

required inspections were being completed, and leasing decisions 

needed improvement. Alternate garaging and fuel overfills were 

also identified as areas of concern. 

I’d like to stress a couple of important points. We have worked 

closely with the IG as they developed their findings, and this partnership has helped us to work collaboratively to develop the very 

specific response plan, which has been reviewed in detail with your 

staff and which I will outline for the committee. 

In a more global sense, this partnership is a key component of 

a much larger framework of control, audit, and risk-management 

functions that we work to implement at Amtrak over the past 4 

years. This system of enterprise risk management has been a particular priority of mine, and it stems, in part, from a recommendation of our inspector general that Amtrak should have and develop 

an enterprise risk-management function. 

Our management-control framework provides the company with 

a formal process for ensuring that we identify risks to both the 

business and the enterprise within the context of our strategic objectives and our business process objectives. The foundation of our 

framework is a system of risk assessments undertaken by the controls organization that we have created to implement the management-control framework. The framework itself provides a consistent methodology for identifying control-improvement opportuniVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:10 Feb 16, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\23405.TXT APRIL

KING-6430 with DISTILLER
40 

ties, documenting them, and managing the organizational response 

to ensure that we have a consistent and effective response and implementation across the organization. 

We’ve also sought to incorporate external review and audit processes into the framework, because I believe they bring a different 

perspective, and this helps us to identify and address potential 

risks. 

The IG report’s recommendations are captured and tracked 

through this same process. Our plan to address the management 

challenges with our vehicle fleet should be understood within the 

context of the management-control framework. It’s not just that 

we’ve created a plan to address and identify an issue; there is now 

a mechanism for facilitating plan development, monitoring 

progress, and ensuring that the identified risks are addressed and 

properly carried out. 

We’ve benchmarked BNSF railroad centralized vehicle fleet program and see many opportunities to improve our program. We’ve 

created an action plan to improve compliance oversight for drivers 

and vehicles, and we’re in the process of updating our policies and 

procedures. We’ve implemented a pilot program, which supports 

our transportation department, and we’re now in the process of implementing improved management programs for our police and engineering departments. We anticipate completion of a rollout for all 

three programs, all departments, by June. We’re creating a governance council to oversee the vehicle management program and determine whether Amtrak should ultimately continue to administer 

the program or outsource some or all of the program to a third 

party through a competitive process. 

I think it’s important to emphasize that this plan is not something that we pursue in isolation. There’s a system of controls in 

place and an organization that’s empowered to monitor and oversee 

the implementation of new processes. We also have a system of 

independent checks, including external audits and our inspector 

general, to provide effective oversight. Creation of a system of this 

type is, I think, the most important single action we could take to 

address weaknesses of the type addressed in the IG report. And I’m 

confident we will be able to use it to ensure that issues are properly addressed. 

Thank you very much. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Boardman follows:] 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
41 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 27 here 23405.027
42 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 28 here 23405.028
43 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 29 here 23405.029
44 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 30 here 23405.030
45 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 31 here 23405.031
46 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Boardman. 

And thank all of our witnesses. 

And now we’ll turn to some questions. 

First of all, I want to turn to GAO. Ms. Rectanus, your little 

study—you didn’t study all of the agencies. As you said, we have 

a very diverse and scattered agency fleet operations and management, but you looked at five agencies, was it? 

Ms. RECTANUS. Yes, sir. We looked—excuse me. We looked at 

four departments, and then, within Interior, we looked at National 

Park Service and—— 

Mr. MICA. I said four or five—— 

Ms. RECTANUS. So five, yes. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. And you found that we could save approximately how much to—describe that again? 

Ms. RECTANUS. Again, what we found in looking at the various 

steps along the way of what agencies should be doing to ensure 

they fully utilized their vehicles and justify, we found almost— 

about 2,500 vehicles that cost them about $9 million. How we calculated that is that’s what they paid to GSA in fiscal year 2004 to 

maintain those vehicles. 

Mr. MICA. Didn’t the President put out an order some years ago 

saying that all of the agencies had to set forth a plan for management of their fleets? 

Ms. RECTANUS. There’s been a number of those mandates that 

have come out. Yes, in 2011, there was a Presidential memo that 

talked about optimizing the fleets and eliminating unnecessary vehicles. 

Mr. MICA. I think the deadline was last year. 

Ms. RECTANUS. December 2015, correct. 

Mr. MICA. And I think you’re also doing another report for us, 

a review for us? 

Ms. RECTANUS. Yes. You have given us a request to look at a 

number of issues with owned vehicles, not just vehicles but construction vehicles, aircraft. You’re keeping us busy. 

Mr. MICA. Well, we extrapolated some of the savings, and I estimate, you know, you just take from your four samplings, it’s somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars is lost a year. It’s fairly 

significant fleetwide. 

We’ve got some instances of purchases that got us down. We’ve 

got about a third of the fleet, I guess, is the post office, 600,000 vehicles, whatever we have. And the GAO reported the Postal Service 

had purchased about 43 alternative fuel vehicles and indicated the 

post office might not be able to operate vehicles using alternatives 

as fuel, because the fuel, one, wouldn’t be available, or it would be 

more costly. That was your finding there? 

Ms. RECTANUS. Yes. That work was from several years ago, 

where we looked at some of the challenges the Postal Service was 

having with its outdated fleet. It doesn’t have the money to replace 

the fleet, but, yes, we found—— 

Mr. MICA. When they bought replacements that had alternative 

fuel, some of the vehicles wouldn’t have access to the fuel, or they 

turned out to be a much more costly exercise. 

Ms. RECTANUS. Correct. They either had vehicles that were not 

within proximity of fuel availability, or just because they didn’t 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
47 

want their carriers to have to go way out of the way to get alternative fuel in, they sought a waiver from DOE—— 

Mr. MICA. The IG of Amtrak produced a very good report. And 

could we put up that chart 6? It shows a comparison of GSA and 

commercial leased costs for common vehicles in Amtrak’s fleet, and 

it showed that the type of vehicle, if you look at the red there, 

that’s what they paid. So—and GSA cost, they could acquire the 

same type of vehicle, in most instances, for less than half and 

sometimes they paid—Amtrak paid 10 times as much. If you look 

at the fuel and waste truck comparison, the dump truck, SUVs, 

three times as much. Is this what you found, Mr. Howard? 

Mr. HOWARD. Yes, that’s correct. 

Mr. MICA. And you said just on one sale, it was like a quarter 

of a million, some $200,000—— 

Mr. HOWARD. —212,000, yes, on commercial leases. 

Mr. MICA. I’m sorry. That was a lease, and then we looked at 

purchase. Where is the chart here on the purchase? Here’s eight 

vehicles, just eight vehicles—and this is also yours—that they purchased. They could have purchased new for 295,000. They did a 44- 

month commercial lease and paid 422,000? Is that correct? 

Mr. HOWARD. That’s correct. 

Mr. MICA. So a substantial saving both in leasing at lower costs 

and then lease versus purchase, which brings us back to, we 

haven’t had the cost-benefit analysis of looking at whether it’s better to lease than purchase. That seems to be ignored kind of agencywide. You found that at Amtrak, Mr. Howard? 

Mr. HOWARD. Yes, we did, sir. 

Mr. MICA. And you found that, Ms. Rectanus, governmentwide? 

Ms. RECTANUS. We have not actually looked individually by vehicle that lease versus purchase. 

Mr. MICA. Well, maybe in your upcoming report we can—— 

Ms. RECTANUS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MICA. —we can get more information on that. 

Then we had another issue, it’s kind of interesting. I worked 

some on the railroad when I was going to college in the summer, 

and I know sometimes they have to buy more fuel than they put 

in the tank of the vehicle. But there were a number of instances, 

pretty extensive number of instances, in which the purchase of fuel 

exceeded the capacity of the vehicle tank. 

Did you find that, Mr. Howard? 

Mr. HOWARD. Yes. Yes, sir. We had several investigations of 

those issues. They were referred to our office by GSA’s fraud unit. 

They monitor the fuel usage of vehicles on the GSA—that are 

leased with the GSA. 

Mr. MICA. And speaking of fraud, I mentioned the fuel credit 

card, and I just got, a day or two ago, a notice from you of a case, 

one case, I guess this employee was ripping off the credit card, and 

he, I guess, has been fired. But you had mentioned that you have 

gone after these folks. This is just one instance in the last 2 days. 

How many people have we had to go after on this, or have we successfully prosecuted? 

Mr. HOWARD. We have done nine cases that we’ve completed. We 

will still have a couple of cases that are under investigation. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
48 

Mr. MICA. Well, that’s a, again, unfortunate but, again, something we have to pay attention to. 

I know Amtrak has a lot of issues, and I’ve worked over the 

years with Mr. Boardman on food service, for one, and we reviewed 

accidents. They have a pretty tough safety record of accidents with 

their trains, but this was quite interesting, this operational data. 

And I believe this is from your report too, Mr. Howard. These are 

accidents with vehicles, and it showed accidents percentage of 

times the government—or a government employee was at fault 

versus the employees in all the agencies. And in accidents in which 

an Amtrak employee was involved, they were at fault 97 percent, 

96.8 percent, versus, in other accidents across the government, 65 

percent. 

Is that pretty accurate—is this accurate? This is your production, 

sir? 

Mr. HOWARD. No, sir, that’s not mine. That’s the—— 

Mr. MICA. I’m sorry, this is the GSA. 

Mr. HOWARD. Oh. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. GSA, Mr. Toth, this was a document we got from 

you, then? 

Mr. TOTH. I don’t believe we submitted that document. We do 

provide that information to all of our leasing customers, so Amtrak 

would have that. 

Mr. MICA. But, again, this is information that we have from one 

of the investigative agencies showing, in fact, 97—that’s Amtrak’s 

leased fleet I’m told. But, again, 97 percent of the time, we have 

an Amtrak employee—sounds like we need to do a little bit better 

job of driver training at Amtrak. 

Just a couple of quick questions for Mr. Boardman, and then I’ll 

yield to the ranking member. 

Where are we on the use of charge card for food service with Amtrak? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Charge card for food service? 

Mr. MICA. Yes. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I’ll have to get back to you on that. I do not—— 

Mr. MICA. Are we at 100 percent? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I do not know, sir. I will get you—— 

Mr. MICA. We are going to leave the record open—— 

Mr. BOARDMAN. —a written response to that. 

Mr. MICA. I said even people who do lawn maintenance now, you 

can charge on—and we’ve not had that on Amtrak either for purchase of tickets onboard or for food, and we’ve lost a billion dollars 

in 12 years in food—Amtrak food service. 

What was Congress’ contribution to Amtrak in this current fiscal 

year? I think it’s $1.9 billion? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. It has been 1.390 for the last 3 years, sir. 

Mr. MICA. But it’s a significant underwriting, and if you have 31 

million passengers, you divide that, that’s a cost of about $40 million per ticket we’re underwriting, and some of those we’re not sure 

on the sale. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. That does include the capital cost, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Yes. But, again, it’s a cost that the Federal Government is paying. I would love to operate any company and have the 

government subsidize my capital cost. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
49 

You were moving forward on purchasing passenger vehicles, and I thought that was in the $2-plus billion range to replace Acela, is 

it? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Passenger rail vehicle, sir? 

Mr. MICA. Yes. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. Is that still underway? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Have you done a cost-benefit analysis to see if they 

can be leased? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Yes, they are a business plan. I don’t think we’ve 

done a leasing cost, but almost all of our trains wind up being 

leased in the end through a financial institution of some sort. 

Mr. MICA. Well, I think it would be interesting to see some of 

what’s being considered in that regard. I know across the world, in 

some instances, State supported rail and then private rail are leasing their vehicles as opposed to purchasing them, and that’s pretty 

significant purchase; $2 plus billion is the estimate, I believe. 

Ms. BOARDMAN. You’re talking, sir, excuse me, just about the 

high-speed rail trains? 

Mr. MICA. Yes. Well, Acela trains. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. Maybe you can get back to us on the record 

with that. So, with that—and I’ll have additional questions we’ll either ask or submit—I’d like to yield to our ranking member. 

I see, also, we have the member—the ranking member of the full 

committee has joined us. But we will take go to Ms. Duckworth 

first. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am of the opinion that Amtrak is a public good, and it’s worth 

the investment from the government. And, with that said, I understand that Amtrak has initiated a significant restructuring of its 

fleet management program focused on centralizing the decisionmaking and oversight process. 

Mr. Boardman, can you describe the specific steps your company 

is taking to improve the management of its fleet, and what’s your 

timeline for full implementation of the planned changes? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Our planned changes for the three areas that 

we’re concentrating on right now would be June of this year, which 

is the operations, the engineering, and the police department, 

where we saw the need most at first. 

We have worked hand in hand—maybe the initial kinds of issues 

that were really raised by the Office of the Inspector General really 

defined for me the need to get in a much deeper view of what was 

happening with our vehicle fleet. So one of the early things that we 

did was we went out and benchmarked against what we considered 

a well-managed vehicle fleet on a railroad, being Burlington Northern Santa Fe. And at the same time, we began to look at what the 

real problems were, and it was something that Amtrak suffers 

with, and the chairman has pointed this out as well as the IG for 

a while now, and that is internal controls. 

And, in 2012, the IG provided for us an evaluation of our risk 

and risk management, enterprise risk management. And when 

they did that, we created a management-control framework. And 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
50 

that management-control framework included looking at business 

risks and also the objectives that we were trying to get done with 

projects. 

And so coming together from all of that, one of the things that 

was important in looking at vehicle fleet management was having 

consistent regulations, consistent controls that would maintain. 

Amtrak existed, really, with all these independent sort of organizations, and they set their own criteria for what they were going to 

provide vehicles for. So what we’re pulling together is a centralized 

look at how we do that with a governance program that identifies 

and evaluates what needs to be done for the future and that those 

independent decisions won’t be made like that in the future, and 

that’s what’s being done. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Are you doing that also in terms of fraud, 

waste, and abuse when it comes to the fuel card program as well? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. We’re looking at the fuel card program to try to 

find a way that we can find quicker that there was—there is waste 

fraud and abuse. We would like to have a better system to do that, 

so it’s included in that particular part of it. We’ve had discussions 

with GSA about how we might be able to get that quicker. We’re 

a very small part of what GSA really does, but we think—we look 

to GSA first, and for example, in the testimony that I heard, over 

two-thirds of our fleet comes from GSA, and it’s two-thirds of other 

fleets that are actually owned. So we really do look for GSA to help 

us with that. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. Howard, do you believe that the steps that 

Amtrak is proposing would address your findings and ensure that 

Amtrak can effectively and efficiently both manage its fleet and 

prevent waste, fraud, and abuse, both in the fleet program and in 

the charge card program? 

Mr. HOWARD. Yes. I think that there’s steps in the right direction 

that they have taken. As I mentioned in my remarks, I think that 

there needs to be a sustained commitment to that and senior management attention on changing the status quo. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. So, Mr. Boardman, how are you going to ensure that sustainment through the effort occurs? Is there a periodic 

review? How are you holding people responsible? Or is there an actual timeline? How are you going to make sure that that 

sustainment, that commitment to a real culture shift is going to 

happen along with the programmatic changes that must happen 

also? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Well, the Governor’s group, for one. But, more 

importantly, in the overall and—overall element of what we’re trying to make happen is this management-control framework. We’re 

tracking IG recommendations. We’re tracking our business risks. 

We call them control-improvement opportunities. And we’re looking 

for ways that we reduce the risk on the company for these kinds 

of incidents. 

And as long as this company continues in that fashion, then 

we’re going to see that sustained commitment for the future. And 

I believe—and the way that it’s currently structured—and every 

month, I sit across from Mr. Howard at the board meetings, and 

we go through all the elements of what he’s providing as recommendations. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
51 

For example, since 2014, I think we looked at, in 2014, we had 

174 open recommendations from the IG, and that was just too 

many. So we began right away really looking at, how do we control 

this and the management-control process? And in that period of 

time until the end of this last year, we closed 158 of these recommendations while 49 were being added, so we wound up with 65 

recommendations. 

And those kinds of things really indicate to me that our system 

works so that we can keep control of it. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time, but I wanted 

to follow up with the GSA. 

Mr. MICA. Go ahead. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your indulgence. 

Mr. Toth, speaking to what Mr. Boardman said that, you know, 

going to rely on GSA for help, you provide many tools and services 

to help with management of these vehicles, such as the Federal 

Automotive Statistical Tool. Does Amtrak participate in FAST or 

take advantage of fleet information-management services you offer? 

Mr. TOTH. So the FAST tool was actually administered by the 

Department of Energy on behalf of GSA and our office of governmentwide policy. I believe, as a quasi-government entity, they are 

not required to. 

And I actually would defer to them. I’m not sure whether you 

participate in the FAST process or not. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I do not know the proper answer to that. We 

may or may not, but I will respond to you. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. Toth, it does not appear that Amtrak is included in the Federal Fleet Report. Is that accurate? And can you explain why this 

would be the case. 

Mr. TOTH. It’s my understanding they are not in the Federal 

Fleet Report. And, again, that data is compiled through the FAST 

process, so depending on what they’re submitting into the FAST 

process. Therefore, it’s not compiled into the Federal Fleet Report. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. 

Mr. Boardman, what percentage of your corporation’s vehicles 

meet the use criteria recommended by GSA—or either the ones developed by GSA or by Amtrak itself? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. One of the issues that the IG identified was that 

each one of these independent organizations creates their own criteria for the selection of a vehicle and the use of the vehicle. And 

so we don’t have that. That’s something we’re centralizing as a part 

of this process. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Okay. Thank you. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady. 

Vice chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Grothman. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Sure. I just want to go over some numbers that 

were previously stated. You said there were 153 cars with—I think 

it was Mr. Howard—153 cars using less than 15 gallons of fuel. 

Mr. HOWARD. Yes, that was in 1 month last year. The company 

had identified that. They track fuel usage, and they’ve set the 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
52 

standard of less than 15 a month to identify potential underutilization. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Just a general question for Mr. Toth: 

About how many miles or years on a car before you turn them 

over? 

Mr. TOTH. So there’s standard requirements for the entire Federal fleet in the fleet management regulations. All agencies are 

bound to abide by those. Then, on top of that, in our leasing program, we have more stringent requirements. And they vary by the 

class and the type of the vehicle, you know, from a sedan on up 

to, say, a coach bus, where a coach bus has to go 10 years and a 

million miles. I can provide those standards for you all in the 

record. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Just a basic about, you know, like a basic—— 

Mr. TOTH. The Federal standards for like a Sedan are 3 years, 

36,000 miles. GSA extends both the years and the miles on its 

fleet. A truck runs like 7 years, 60,000 miles. These are minimum 

replacement criteria, not shall be replaced. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. What’s the norm? 

Mr. TOTH. It varies by agency and by use, as well as vehicle condition. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. You’d sell a car after 36,000 miles? 

Mr. TOTH. The regulations allow it. That’s the minimum before 

it’s allowed to be sold. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. But what’s the norm? Do you know? Do you 

have any just ballpark idea? 

Mr. TOTH. Again, it varies all over the place, depending on the 

condition and the usage of the vehicle. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. 

Question for Mr. Howard, and this goes back a little bit on the 

fuel cards. You uncovered criminal actions related to fuel cards following the 2013 review by the Amtrak Finance Department’s Management Controls Group that identified weaknesses in internal 

controls. Is that right? 

Mr. HOWARD. Correct. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Mr. Boardman, why didn’t Amtrak take 

action at that time to address the weak controls? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Actually, we have been taking those actions. 

That’s part of the process that we’re doing. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Up here—and maybe it’s just a small 

amount. The chart was up here before, but when they say that 97 

percent of the accidents in these cars are the government driver’s 

fault, or your guy’s fault, is that—— 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I have never seen that chart. I don’t know where 

it comes from. And if somebody can tell me where it comes from, 

we’ll respond to it. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Kind of alarming. I guess GSA’s fleet report. 

Maybe, Mr. Toth, do you know more about that chart? 

Mr. TOTH. I don’t know who provided it to the committee or directly what report it comes from. For our leased vehicle program, 

we do maintain statistics and provide that to our customer agencies, so it could have come from that information. I did not provide 

it or prepare for it today. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
53 

Mr. GROTHMAN. I guess Amtrak itself provided it to the committee, I’m told here. Is that possible? Maybe you don’t—— 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I don’t think that’s—at least from the people 

that are here, I don’t believe that. But—— 

Mr. GROTHMAN. We should track it down, because if that’s true, 

that’s just almost beyond belief. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I agree. The only thing—again, I just don’t understand it. That’s all. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Kind of amazing. 

Why don’t you tell us a little more—Mr. Howard, we talked 

about the take-home policy on vehicles. Are there any problems 

about that? Could you maybe tell us a little bit more your opinion 

of that policy? 

Mr. HOWARD. We think that the policy needs to be improved. It 

requires that the take-home vehicle be justified, but there’s no specific criteria for supervisors to use when they’re approving the 

take-home of the vehicle, so there’s no cost-benefit analysis. So it 

kind of boils down to employees just basically making a case that 

it’s good for them to have a vehicle. We would like to see some very 

structured criteria that could be applied and audited. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Are there any standards? I mean, if I take home 

a vehicle at night, are there any standards to make sure I’m not 

using it to, you know, everywhere under the sun, or are there tight 

standards to just make sure I’m going home? 

Mr. HOWARD. No, sir. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. So I could take it home on a Friday night and 

drive a million miles or whatever and use it to bomb around all 

weekend, just kind of a perk of the job? 

Mr. HOWARD. Right. You’d be driving something probably with a 

big Amtrak logo on it though, so hopefully that’s a bit of a deterrent. But, no, sir, there’s not. And we have some cases that we’re 

investigating, looking at those abuses. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Thanks. 

My one final comment, Mr. Boardman, is it does look like we 

have problems here. And, obviously, your agency is always being 

scrutinized, you know, look at the subsidy and that sort of thing. 

And it’s something I would be very—feel more contrite about. I 

mean, I know you understand that. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I understand that, sir, and that’s part of the reason I asked the IG to help us with this. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Can I just say—— 

Mr. MICA. Go right ahead. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Staff is handing me a binder here, which says 

on the front, ‘‘GSA Department of Transportation Amtrak National 

Account Report, Third Quarter.’’ And right under their contacts, 

Tom Moriarty, Stephen Olds. And right beside there, on page 8, it 

gives the percentage of government at fault in accidents and incidents. And that’s where we get it from. If you don’t have it, I suppose we can give you a copy of it. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I just got handed something here. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Yeah, you can see on page 8 there, it says: 96.8 

percent of the time, accidents and incidents, the Amtrak—the person driving the Amtrak car is at fault, or at least that’s what it 

implies on here. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
54 

Mr. BOARDMAN. So I have got to understand what that means. 

Does it mean the vehicles that are out on the right-of-way that are 

engineering vehicles, operations vehicles that are single car, damaged by something along the right-of-way of the railroad? I don’t 

understand the report. So we’ll find out what the report means and 

respond. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Maybe there’s statistical anomaly. It does compare to government agencies in general at 65 percent. So it’s 

alarming on the face, but why don’t you get back to us. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Can I just ask a question? Would this be against 

the 644,000, our 65 percent, and this report would be against our 

2,500? 

Mr. TOTH. This report is an annual report we provide to Amtrak 

with all of the data on their vehicle usage, to include accidents and 

incidents. And it summarizes the number of accidents and incidents and those that are at Amtrak’s fault and/or they are liable 

for. 

Mr. MICA. And it’s comparable to it? 

Mr. TOTH. It’s not necessarily vehicle accidents, but it could be 

improper usage where a fender was dented, you know, operating 

off-road or something like that and where they bring the vehicle 

back an in unsatisfactory condition. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. But this would just include—and I’m sorry. I’m 

over here—but would it include normal, over-the-road vehicles? Or 

is this some anomaly here where they’re including like those vehicles they have that operate on the railroad itself where it would 

have to be—— 

Mr. BOARDMAN. It would be anything that would be leased from 

GSA. So, since nearly 80 percent of our fleet is leased, we probably 

have all of those conditions exist. And that’s why I’m looking at it 

and say: That’s just never hit me before, nor has it hit the IG. So 

we will find out what it really is, Congressman, and get back. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Well, thanks. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. 

Let me yield now to the ranking member of the full committee, 

Mr. Cummings. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing today and for your oversight and the ranking 

member’s oversight over vehicle leases entered into by Federal 

agencies and by Amtrak. 

I’m deeply concerned by the inspector general’s findings about 

Amtrak’s fleet and management practices and urge Amtrak to expedite the implementation of the efforts it has underway to centralize and strengthen the management of its vehicles. 

However, I want to direct my time that I have available to an 

ongoing issue of great concern to me and to my district and to the 

entire Baltimore area congressional delegation, and that is the redevelopment of Baltimore’s Penn Station. I want to acknowledge 

that some improvements have been made at the station, but they 

are generally improvements to the most basic amenities, like the 

bathrooms. And I note that it required significant persistence before these improvements were made. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
55 

Penn Station is a central gateway into Baltimore, and we need 

that station to be an economic engine. For nearly a decade, there 

have been many fits around the station without any actual starts. 

Much of the building is still empty, and in no way does it serve as 

the anchor point for Baltimore that it could and should be. 

Obviously, today, we have both Mr. Boardman, the head of Amtrak, and Mr. Howard, the Amtrak inspector general here. You 

both received letters from the Baltimore delegation led by Senator 

Mikulski. So let’s get to the central issue. 

Mr. Boardman, why do you believe that enlisting a master development team is the most effective and efficient way to develop the 

Penn Station? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. We think that there is an ability to do a tremendous amount of improvement because you have people that have a 

larger view of what could be done. And just, for example, last week, 

we received almost—I think it was nine proposals to improve that. 

There’s tremendous interest in developing Baltimore station. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, Mr. Howard, you wrote that you were, 

quote, ‘‘skeptical of Amtrak’s readiness to undertake and oversee a 

master development procurement approach of this scope in a timely 

manner.’’ 

Why are you skeptical, and what other options do you believe are 

available to Amtrak to redevelop the Penn Station, particularly 

given current budgetary constraints? And do you believe that any 

of those options would more efficiently and effectively lead to the 

redevelopment of the station? 

Mr. HOWARD. Sir, we’re skeptical of Amtrak’s ability to do this 

because of our past work, which has identified significant problems 

with program and project management. We’ve reported to those. 

The company has taken action to improve them, but given its track 

record, we’re skeptical. 

We have not yet looked at other alternatives to the terminal development issue. Based on the last letter that we received from you 

and the other delegation, we have initiated some additional work 

to do that. And it’s our hope that we can—out of this additional 

work—we can identify perhaps some alternatives that the company 

may be able to consider or at least offer it—some suggestions on 

how the terminal development initiative can be better implemented. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, Mr. Boardman, Amtrak has moved ahead 

with a two-pronged effort to redevelop Penn Station. One effort involves undertaking the work needed to bring Penn Station into a 

state of good repair. The other effort will move forward with the 

selection of a master developer. I want to understand both efforts 

in more detail. 

What is the specific work that will be undertaken to bring Penn 

Station into a state of good repair, and what is the status of that 

effort? Particularly, how much do you expect to spend in 2016 on 

the state of good repair work? What projects will be completed this 

year? How long will it take to complete all of the state-of-good-repair projects? And what do you have the funding—or do you have 

the funding that you need to complete all the work? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. So I’d like to follow up with a written response 

to you, but let me give you kind of a thumbnail here. We’re planVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:10 Feb 16, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\23405.TXT APRIL

KING-6430 with DISTILLER
56 

ning on spending about $3 million this year on the projects. Part 

of that has to do with this master development partnership, which 

is about $300,000; part of that has to do with a program development with a consultant to identify and prepare for the redevelopment activities. So a lot of those activities are not identified and 

fully completed in what needs to be done this next year. 

But there’s a new generator going in; platform lighting and construction upgrades; station WiFi upgrades; Penn Station master 

plan planning activities, which I’m covering; and then a B&P Tunnel new lighting. And some of the $22 million that we’ve spent 

since 2010 in Penn Station, some of it you identified as restrooms 

and other facilities, basic stuff. We did have to start with basic 

stuff. 

And I know you know that, Congressman—— 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yeah. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. —because you’ve been involved with it. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Very much so. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. But we will get back, even with an analysis of 

this program partnership, to the delegation just as soon as we’ve 

gotten through it. There’s about nine proposals that are in there. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just with the chairman’s indulgence, I just have 

two more questions. 

If all went according to plan, when would the master development process be finished and a redeveloped Penn Station be ready 

to open its doors? 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I don’t have that final date. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Okay. And, finally, what opportunities will 

stakeholders in Baltimore have to weigh in with the master development process? And, as you know, many stakeholders in Baltimore have been working for years—for years—with Amtrak officials to jump start the redevelopment of Penn Station. And we 

want to make sure we have a say. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. We have had—Congressman, I think you know— 

ongoing quarterly meetings with all the stakeholders. We could expect to continue doing that. I think we have the March, April meeting coming up here very shortly. So we’re going to stay very tight 

with the stakeholders for Baltimore. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I really appreciate your indulgence. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you so much, Mr. Cummings. 

The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, you’re recognized. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Rectanus, you said earlier that your agency had studied or 

looked at 16,000 and found 2,500 were underutilized or misused or 

whatever. And you said it would be an interesting exercise to expand that out to the vehicle, to the total fleet. And so it’s, you 

know, pretty easy math. That comes out to about 100,000 of the 

635,000 or 640,000 vehicles that would fit into that category. So it’s 

quite a significant number. 

And you heard me mention that my wife and I have had several 

vehicles that we’ve driven 200,000 miles, and yet I mentioned that 

a constituent who, many years ago, met with me complaining about 

the Forest Service. And I don’t remember if he said that their vehicles were being auctioned off either with less than 40,000 miles or 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
57 

with an average of 40,000 miles, but I remember the 40,000-mile 

figure. 

Do either you or Mr. Toth, in looking into this or studying this, 

can you tell me what is the average mileage when these vehicles 

are replaced? 

Ms. RECTANUS. We did not look at that specifically vehicle by vehicle, again, because that would be asset-level information. I think 

what we did find, however, in our work is, in many cases, agencies 

are not doing the life-cycle cost analysis to really know when is the 

right time to replace a vehicle or eliminate a vehicle, because in 

some cases, it’s the opposite; they keep a vehicle longer than they 

should. In some cases, they get rid of it before they should. So the 

work we’ve done has really supported having them have better 

data so that they make the right decisions. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Can either of you tell me how many new vehicles 

were purchased by the Federal Government last year? 

Mr. TOTH. Yes. It was just under 50,000 vehicles. 

Mr. DUNCAN. 50,000 new vehicles were purchased. And how 

many new leases were entered into last year? 

Mr. TOTH. The leased fleet has been about—been stable for the 

past several years. Some are turned in as agencies downsize the 

fleets, as other agencies either reduce their commercial leases and 

lease from GSA or have new mission requirements increase them. 

But the leased fleet has not grown or declined much over the past 

several years. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, how many new leases are entered into each 

year though, roughly? 

Mr. TOTH. About 2,000. We’ve also had some consolidations, 

which has varied year over year, but we seem to have 2,000 come 

in and 2,000 go out roughly each year. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And what department has the largest number of 

vehicles? Would that be the Department of Defense or—— 

Mr. TOTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. And how many have—I understand that—I’m told 

that, in the Department of Defense, that some of the vehicles come 

under your control, and some do not. Is that correct? 

Mr. TOTH. Yes, sir. We only lease nontactical vehicles or nonmilitary-type vehicles, if you will. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So how many vehicles would that be in the Department of Defense? 

Mr. TOTH. Of our 200,000 vehicles that we lease, they are about 

50 to 60 percent of all vehicles. So 100,000, 110,000 vehicles total 

across the Department of Defense. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So 200,000 of your vehicles are leased, and the 

total fleet is 635,000 or 640,000. Is that correct? 

Mr. TOTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Mr. Duncan, and other members, for participating. 

A couple of quick questions. Now, these hearings are nice, and 

I think this hearing has—and some of your review, both at GSA, 

also GAO, and Amtrak IG have resulted in some action being 

taken. Now, GSA, it’s my understanding that you have a new 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
58 

agreement or pending agreement that you’ve done with Amtrak on 

your commercial leases. Is that—— 

Mr. TOTH. Yes, they are eliminating over 100 of their commercial-leased vehicles and going to acquire them from GSA through 

a lease. 

Mr. MICA. And that should result in substantial savings. And we 

have evidence of both from the IG and Amtrak and GAO about cost 

savings, correct? 

Mr. TOTH. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. Because you don’t want to just do these hearings and not have anything. 

And, Mr. Boardman, you’re cooperating. And I mean, you cited 

some of the steps you’ve been taking since some of these things 

that have been revealed here today, but you’re going to cooperate 

on that basis. 

Are there any other major areas in purchases that were in fleet 

management that you can cite today, Mr. Boardman or Mr. Toth? 

Mr. Boardman. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. No. I think we’re moving—as I said, we had, to 

begin with, over 70 percent of our fleet was leased from GSA, and 

with this addition, it just goes up more. And I think that helps us 

save more. 

Mr. TOTH. And we’ll continue to partner with Amtrak to assist 

them in any way we can in managing their fleet. 

Mr. MICA. Well, this is—again, I said a meat-and-potato hearing. 

Let me just say, also, we solicited and received a somewhat troubling report from Amtrak. It’s an automotive fleet report. And this 

is just for 1 month at the last—I guess we could get before the 

hearing. It’s a monthly data information collected by Amtrak engineering department. This is December of 2015. 

Now, you go down and you see at the bottom some of the problems with fuel cards. This is just for 1 month: purchases exceeding 

fuel tank capacity, 26; incorrect type of fuel purchased, 87 transactions; incorrect mileage entered at the pump, 28 vehicles; nonfuel 

purchases, 102 transactions. 

Then we go down to some of the compliance and safety review 

under Federal motor carrier roadside inspection affecting Amtrak’s 

compliance here. Out of compliance vehicles: expired DOT inspections, 33; expired high-rail inspections, 35; expired crane inspections, 19; expired—looks like diesel—the electric inspections, 3. 

Then we look at the drivers, and you have, out of compliance 

drivers: expired medical cards, 52 drivers; expired—this is I’m not 

sure exactly how—but it’s a violation list, I guess, for drivers—36 

drivers. This is very troubling, and this also needs attention. 

So this is provided by Amtrak. It isn’t from the investigations 

you’ve done, but this is just 1 month showing that it’s not operating 

the way it should operate. So we’d like attention to that, maybe for 

the record, Mr. Boardman, if you want to respond. I don’t want to 

put you on the spot here, but we would like a response. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Part of the response is this is a yearly total. This 

isn’t 1 month. This is at the end of December. 

Mr. MICA. It says monthly data. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Right, it’s the monthly data summarized at the 

end of December. 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
59 

Mr. MICA. Again, even if it is for the year, it’s still troubling. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. I understand. Just, it’s a lot more troubling if it’s 

for the month, in my view. 

Mr. MICA. Well, again, we’d like to see that. And we have the 1 

month that we did review and that was provided for us. So this is 

the status. It’s not acceptable. We need improvement. And if it was 

for the year, it’s just as troubling. 

Mr. BOARDMAN. Understand. 

Mr. MICA. But, again, we’re leaving the record open for the next 

10 days. 

Did you have any additional questions, Ms. Duckworth? 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Not at this time. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Cummings? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. No. 

Mr. MICA. And I thank the members for participating. 

We have some open recommendations from GAO that remain for 

GSA. And we will actually be submitting some questions to some 

of the witnesses today after this hearing. We’d like a response so 

it could be included in the record. And we will get you the specific 

questions after the hearing. 

There being no further business before the subcommittee, I want 

to thank our witnesses for their participation, the good work that 

they’ve been doing in helping with this important study. We look 

forward to having you back as you complete your study on some 

of our vehicle review of the Federal fleet. And, again, I thank everyone for their attention to that. 

I’m sorry. I don’t want to preclude anyone. Our vice chairman of 

the committee would like to make a closing remark. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Right. I just will say, both as far as Amtrak and 

the government as a whole, what we’ve heard here today is alarming. I mean, this isn’t the type of hearing that attracts, you know, 

30 people from the press corps, and you’re lucky we don’t attract 

30 people from the press corps, because it’s—I mean, unless there 

are things that we’re told on the followup answers or if we have 

another hearing that kind of explains some of these numbers, it’s 

kind of alarming, kind of sloppy. 

I mean, you know, how quickly we’re turning in the cars or not 

knowing how quickly we turn in the cars. I would think, you know, 

there are always some irresponsible people who turn over their 

cars really quickly, and if they want to be spendthrifts, that’s with 

their own money. But the possible numbers out there are alarming. 

The number of accidents perhaps caused by government employees 

is alarming. 

I sometimes think—you know, I’m a new guy up here in Washington—that people here just think this is good enough. But, you 

know, people right now are very alarmed about what they feel is 

an out-of-control government. And I’ll just say that I think the government collectively is lucky we don’t have a lot of members of the 

press paying attention today because this is the type of thing if I 

talked back home to a Rotary Club or Kiwanis Club or something, 

they’re like, holy cow. 

So I hope you leave here with a sense of urgency in changing the 

way we spend people’s money. But I’d like to thank the subVerDate Nov 24 2008 09:10 Feb 16, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\23405.TXT APRIL

KING-6430 with DISTILLER
60 

committee chairman for bringing the very interesting topic to our 

attention. 

Mr. MICA. Again, I thank the vice chairman, the ranking member 

of the subcommittee, full committee, and others for their participation, our witnesses. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 10:37 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
(61) 

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD


KING-6430 with DISTILLER
62 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 32 here 23405.032
63 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 33 here 23405.033
64 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 34 here 23405.034
65 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 35 here 23405.035
66 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 36 here 23405.036
67 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 37 here 23405.037
68 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 38 here 23405.038
69 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 39 here 23405.039
70 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 40 here 23405.040
71 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 41 here 23405.041
72 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 42 here 23405.042
73 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 43 here 23405.043
74 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 44 here 23405.044
75 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 45 here 23405.045
76 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 46 here 23405.046
77 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 47 here 23405.047
78 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 48 here 23405.048
79 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 49 here 23405.049
80 

Æ 


KING-6430 with DISTILLERInsert offset folio 50 here 23405.050