The Obama administration hopes to sell nearly 14,000 unused or outdated federal properties and raise roughly $15 billion for its trouble. This is a good thing. It will be even better when such a move trickles down to Virginia, where the state’s property portfolio may finally be getting the once-over it so desperately needs.
According to the Division of Real Estate Services, the commonwealth has quite a bit of property on its hands:
Delegate Jim LeMunyon patroned legislation last year to regularly inventory these holdings and find ways to dispose of whatever wasn’t needed. A portion of the monies raised would go into the Transportation Trust Fund. That bill was put aside until this year, when it was taken up again and passed by large majorities. As with last year’s measure, fiscal impact statements were included. But not included in this go ‘round was a statement from the state’s investigative arm, JLARC. In the 2010 session, JLARC called the creation of an inventory “ambitious.” Why? In part because of bureaucratic inertia:
The state’s property problem has been known for a long time. It’s even been addressed – sort of. Except the last time it was, state agencies weren’t required to tell anyone how much property they had or what they intended to do with it.
LeMunyon’s bill should overcome that, and lead to a yearly inventory that allows everyone to know what the state owns and a more rational means of selling what it doesn’t absolutely need.
That’s all good. However, in conference, LeMunyon’s original proposal to divert some of the monies from land sales to transportation was changed. Now 50 percent of all the money realized from sales will go to…the state park acquisition and development fund.
So the state will sell surplus land in order to help fund the purchase of more land. Even so, this counts as progress.
