Evening star., 1951-08-26
A Dangerous Bill

The General Services Administration a rela-
lively new agency charged with many house,
keeping functions of the Federal Government,
has come up with another demonstration of its
phoba for decentralization.
bill is under refinement now by the Senate
Committee on Expenditures in the Executive
Departments which confers an amazing degree
of power on this agency, giving it authority to
move an unlimited number of Federal agencies
and their employees away from Washington and
a 25-mie radius of the White House, and to
make such transfers permanent.
Newspaper accounts of this BILL when it was
introduced, spoke of moving $4,000 jobs out OF
Washington. What the bill says is not less than
$4,000 positions. There is no limit on the number
of agencies that could be moved, or the number
of people who could be transported without
further consultation with Congress.
When the administrator of this bureau
passed the word, after deciding how many
agencies and people he would move from the
Seat of Government to other places, the transfer
would take place over period of three years.
One fourth would be evicted in the first year;
not less than one-half would get their travel
orders in the next year and the mass migration
to points now unknown would be completed with
in three years. Within this three-year period,
an embargo would be laid down on bringing more
than $4,000 Government employees to Washington
or anywhere within a 30-mile radius Of the
White House.
This is an astonishing bill in itself. 1t should
not be approved. The disappointing thing about
the philosophy of the legislation is its negation
of the idea of creating. in this area set aside
for the purpose, a Capital City befitting the
United States of America. Jess Larson, the ad-
ministrator of the General Services Administra-
ton, may have been pushed into the advocacy
of this last plan by a feeling of futility For in
the past several years neither the administration
nor Congress has maintained the tradition OF
Capital building and with emergency sue
ceeding another great numbers of employees have
been brought to this city without providing for
them the adequate and fitting Office accommoda-
tions that should accompany growth of the Fed
eral Government. Instead of thinking up all
sorts of eXpedentS to nullify the concept OF
Washington as the Seat of Government, the
effort should be to provide for its orderly develop
ment There is plenty of room still remaining
within the District for permanent Government
housing erected according to plan. There is
plenty of room adjacent to the District itself
In which to extend this development. What has
been lacking has been the leadership and the
will to carry out sensible plans for sensible de-
velopment
part of the bill for moving not less than
$4,000 employees out of Washington authorizes
and directs the administrator to demolsh tenn
porary buildings constructed before and during
World War II. That is a commendabe aim, of
course, long urged by The Star. But the demoli-
tion of temporary buildings in Washington
should be the accompaniment of Washington's
continued development as the Capital Of the
United States, not as possibility to be realized
only by gradual desertion of the Capital as the
g-rolling proposition of selecting agencies for
removal to other parts of the country really gets
under way.