Printing office predicts layoffs if monopoly ends

The Government Printing Office would have to lay off 1,500 of its 3,000 employees if federal agencies stop using the agency's printing services, GPO officials said recently in response to a Bush administration effort to end the office's monopoly on government printing. Printing office leaders also contended in an analysis prepared last month that the government's printing costs could rise by as much as $250 million a year if the monopoly ends. But the Bush administration says costs would drop by up to $70 million a year if executive branch agencies could directly contract out printing to the private sector instead of going through GPO, which is part of the legislative branch. "Buying printing is not like buying paper clips," GPO officials said in a June 6 analysis prepared for the congressional Joint Committee on Printing, which oversees GPO. "A knowledge of printing requirements and processes is essential to ensure the acquisition of the best possible value. GPO printing contracts are developed and carried out by knowledgeable printing experts." In May, Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels said he would ask the government's procurement policy council to let agencies buy printing services without going through GPO. Daniels said agencies could still go through GPO if the agency offered the best value, but he instructed agencies to compare GPO's services with the services offered by private firms. In response, federal procurement officials have drafted a proposed rule that would eliminate the mandatory use of the GPO from the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Al Matera, chairman of the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and an official at the General Services Administration, circulated a draft of the proposed rule on June 26. The Joint Committee on Printing has scheduled a hearing on the proposal for July 10, and the OMB has scheduled a public meeting on the issue for July 22. GPO chief Michael DiMario said in a June letter to the Joint Committee that the cost of closing GPO facilities, laying off workers and offering retirement incentives would be $79 million. He also said that citizens could end up with less access to government information because GPO funnels publications to federal depository libraries throughout the country. The American Library Association has adopted a resolution opposing the administration's plan. GPO already contracts out about 84 percent of its printing work. The office's estimate for layoffs assumes that agencies would pull all of their work from GPO. But a 1998 report by Booz Allen and Hamilton, a private consulting firm under contract to the General Accounting Office, found "universal support" in the executive branch for the GPO's services. "These agencies viewed this service that GPO provides as an example of 'government at its best,' and none of them felt that they wanted to or could do this function better than GPO," the report said. The Bush administration will also likely face opposition from Capitol Hill. The GPO monopoly is codified in law, but the Bush administration says that Congress cannot force the executive branch to use GPO.