Poor data leaves lawmakers in the dark on capital projects

Federal agencies continue to provide Congress with incomplete cost estimates for multi-year capital projects, making it difficult for lawmakers to know the true cost of such projects, according to the General Accounting Office. Chastened by the spiraling costs of projects such as Boston's Big Dig, GAO and the Office of Management and Budget have urged that capital projects be fully funded before work begins. OMB requires agencies to include full cost estimates for capital projects in long-term capital plans. But when agencies ask Congress to fund ongoing projects, they often provide no total cost estimate, leaving lawmakers in the dark as to a project's overall cost, GAO said. "We found a significant number of ongoing capital projects for which total estimated project costs were not provided and could not be computed accurately because future funding requirements data also were not provided," GAO said in its report, "Budget Issues: Agency Data Supporting Capital Project Funding Requests Could Be Improved," (GAO-01-770). For example, the Federal Aviation Administration provided no total cost estimate for 15 projects in its fiscal 2001 budget request, including an air traffic management project that had already received $490 million from Congress. Some agencies also do a poor job of describing how a budget request will be used to advance a capital project, according to GAO. While the State Department did submit a total cost estimate for the renovation of a chancery in Brazil, GAO could not tell what exactly would be renovated in 2001. "There is no sense, either from the project description of schedule of project phases, of exactly what the fiscal year 2001 funding will provide and, particularly, whether it would result in a useful asset absent further funding," said GAO. To help lawmakers make informed decisions on capital project requests, OMB should require agencies to share their long-term capital plans with Congress, GAO said. OMB officials agreed with this recommendation and will direct agencies to provide this information, according to GAO.