The nomination of one agency head continues to be held up in the Senate: Martha Johnson, tapped by the president in April to be head of the General Services Administration.

The culprit: Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.

The reason: real estate.

Specifically, Bond is trying to squeeze GSA into closing down the federally owned Bannister Complex outside Kansas City, Mo., and relocating the 1,200 federal employees there to leased space downtown.

GSA had earlier planned to do that, but it now intends to keep feds working at the Bannister Complex until it constructs a new building, a plan that GSA says will save money in the long run.

"Neither leasing space nor a lease-construction project is our preferred option," GSA's Public Building Service commissioner, Robert Peck, wrote in an Oct. 9 letter to Sens. Bond and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. In a lease-construction project, a private developer builds space to the government's specifications and then leases it to the government.

"Fiscal analyses show that building and owning a federal building is the lowest long-term cost solution. Kansas City also has sufficient federal agencies in leased space to support incurring additional federal ownership of space," Peck wrote. "Accordingly, we are prepared to begin site selection and design for a new federal building in Kansas City's central employment area as soon as we can secure the requisite congressional approvals and funding."

Peck also noted that before entering a lease-construction agreement, GSA first must hold a competition to see if suitable space is already available. And because Kansas City has plenty of vacant office buildings, a lease deal is more likely than a lease-construction project, he said.

That explanation hasn't appeased Bond. He has not lifted the hold on Johnson's nomination. Bond's spokeswoman, Shana Marchio, told Federal Times in a statement, "We need answers on the how and when this project will move forward," adding that "without those answers, we cannot know how to evaluate the message from GSA."

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