Legislative efforts to sell surplus state-owned land should get a boost from a highly critical report on state government that reiterates the absence of a coherent system of property management and emphasizes the need for reform.
The state Commission on Management, Accountability and Performance (MAP) concludes that the system of state property management "encourages illogical and wasteful decisions."
The gubernatorial-appointed citizens commission recently released a report with extensive recommendations to make state government more efficient and economical.
State-owned property is managed separately by 25 agencies and 17 educational institutions, a system that encourages parochial decision-making at best.
Too often, surplus property simply remains fallow, because, as the MAP Commission found, "property administrators face little incentive to evaluate and reshuffle property holdings to maximize their value."
The value of surplus property can be improved through productive, private use, which also puts land back on the tax rolls. And diminishing the state's holdings of surplus property reduces the government's costs for upkeep and administration.
The MAP Commission recommends that property management be placed under a cabinet-level agency answerable to the governor. But even if that's not legislatively possible, the commission urges that the system be improved through a central authority under the Budget and Control Board.
Centralizing property operations would provide for a master plan to forecast state property needs that could be matched with the existing inventory of public land. A workable plan for property management would require all state land to be titled to the state, not to individual agencies, as is now the case.
The commission recommends a process of checks and balances, including internal audits, to protect against malfeasance in the use or sale of public land. It notes that current procedures for control vary from agency to agency.
Not counting university holdings, improved oversight of state-owned land could allow the state to reduce property holdings as much as 1 percent for each of the next five years.
If that level of reduction could be achieved, the state could expect to gain a cash return of $200 million, reduce recurring administrative and maintenance expenses by $1 million a year, and increase local tax coffers by putting land back on the books, the commission reports. Any one of those highly desirable results would be reason enough for the Legislature to adopt a better system to identify and sell surplus state property.
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