Buildings, Bidders and Bandits

In Washington, the General Services Administration tends to get treated as a backwater agency. But it has a nationwide presence, and it's easy to forget that everything GSA does has political implications. Here's today's case in point. In a column in the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel yesterday, Kevin Leininger reported that Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., has a beef about the new Social Security Administration office GSA has arranged to construct near the city. Local critics have already complained about the site picked for the building, because public transportation is limited. Now Souder says he thinks GSA should have gotten more than two bids for the project. Potential local bidders, he says, may not have even known about the opportunity because they don't routinely monitor federal procurement Web sites.

“People sit in Washington offices and look for that stuff,” Souder said. “That’s why we call them ‘Beltway bandits.’ You can’t bid if you don’t know about the contract.”