Senate Committee reviews H.50 to inventory underused state buildings and land

Commissioner Wanda Manoli, commissioner of the Department of Buildings and General Services, told the Senate Committee on Institutions on March 19 that H.50 would create a consolidated inventory of underused state buildings and land and require the department to collect additional fields and report to the legislature.

Manoli said the department already compiles an annual “space book” that lists buildings the state owns, operates or leases, including location, occupancy and square footage, and that H.50 would add information such as whether a building is vacant or whether land is “necessary for state purposes.” “Every July, [we] issue what is known as the Buildings and General Services space book,” Manoli said. “I will present it in the space book in the format that we we use today.”

The bill would expand data collection beyond properties managed by Buildings and General Services (BGS) to include property held by other agencies, such as the Agency of Transportation and the Agency of Natural Resources. Manoli told the committee she expects to work with those agencies to incorporate their inventories into a single dataset. She said some agency inventories exist already but that the state’s consolidated system is currently a collection of spreadsheets rather than a single database.

Committee members asked how the inventory would treat sites that are idle or in special categories. Manoli said correctional facilities have different accounting and that she did not have an immediate classification for the Windsor site, which a senator noted is currently unoccupied. Manoli described current minimal maintenance there: “We are doing minimal at Windsor. We’re making sure the heat’s on…we make sure the water doesn’t freeze.”

Lawmakers pressed for financial detail related to space. Manoli explained that the state’s internal “fee for space” is set regionally and based on a two-year look-back at expenditures; it is used to allocate the cost of heating, electricity and basic upkeep across agencies by square footage. She told the committee that some operational or tax costs tied to pilots or site-specific activities appear in appropriation bills or other budget documents rather than in the space book itself.

The bill specifies that the head of each agency must indicate in the form whether a building is vacant or whether land is unnecessary for state purposes, and that the commissioner shall submit the inventory to the House and Senate Committees on Institutions on January 15 of each new legislative biennium. Manoli said she believes existing statute gives BGS authority to collect the data but that the bill clarifies and standardizes the form and reporting schedule.

Committee members asked whether BGS could link the inventory to geographic information system (GIS) data and whether the current systems could handle the proposed fields. Manoli said she has started collecting the information and will verify where the data will be stored and how it will be linked, and cautioned that the current process relies on multiple spreadsheets. She told senators she would confirm technical capabilities and return with more specifics.

No formal motion or committee vote on H.50 is recorded in the hearing transcript provided. Manoli said she would email committee members a link to the current space book and follow up with more detailed information about where and how land and cost data would be stored and reported.