Proposed Legislation Concerning the Acquisition, Operation, and Maintenance of Presidential Libraries

Testimony was given concerning three bills which propose different ways to reduce the costs of acquiring, operating, and maintaining presidential libraries. Existing presidential libraries were constructed with private contributions, but the Government pays to operate and maintain them. Under the current system: (1) because the libraries are disbursed throughout the country, research involves travel; and (2) the Government has limited influence over the size and design of the libraries and over the amount of operating costs it will assume. H.R. 2446 proposes to establish one central presidential library which would allocate space based on the length of a president's term. This would reduce the amount of space and associated costs devoted to specific uses, reduce staffing levels, and simplify scholarly research; however, the costs of designing and building the central library would be borne by the Government. In addition, depending of the design and location, a central library may not be less costly to operate. H.R. 3138 would terminate the use of appropriated funds for the maintenance of presidential libraries and shift operation and maintenance costs to library donors. However, requiring an endowment for such costs may aggravate fund raising problems for future libraries and might leave the Government with the full responsibility for storage and preservation of some official presidential papers. Because of the uncertainties involved in such a proposal, GAO stated that the bill needs to more clearly define the specific cost that would be covered by the endowment income. H.R. 4017 would terminate the Government's authority to accept gifts for creating presidential libraries or make agreements with outside organizations to use property belonging to that organization as a presidential library. This proposal might eliminate future presidential library costs, but many costs would just be transferred to another Government-owned archives system.