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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm really good, and one of the reasons why I'm good this morning, Nia, listeners.
N. Rodgers: Coffee.
J. Aughenbaugh: One, coffee. Well, let's take a step back. One, I'm alive, two, I have coffee, and three, last night, my daughter told me that she loved me and she wished I slept well.
N. Rodgers: There you are. That's all you really needed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But I'm particularly good morning, Nia, because we, once again, are going to give you an opportunity to play one of your favorite roles, and that is, you get to be a unicorn. What I'm talking about here, listeners, is today's episode is going to be about a job search that is going on in the federal government for a position that, if I dare say, most Americans probably don't now exists. But if Nia had a chance, I have a feeling.
N. Rodgers: Oh, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: This would be yet another federal government job that she would love to have.
N. Rodgers: I'd paint all the doors red.
J. Aughenbaugh: The job that I'm talking about, and we're not making this up. This is a real job. There is a job advertisement for it.
N. Rodgers: It's a currently open job. Even when you hear this recording, we're recording this a little earlier than you'll hear it, but even by then, it won't be filled, I bet.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. If I had to venture a guess, we will be well into 2024 before this position gets filled on a permanent basis.
N. Rodgers: That's what I think too.
J. Aughenbaugh: What we're talking about is the architect of the Capitol. Which is an actual position with an agency underneath it. Nia, why is the position opened?
N. Rodgers: Because as far as I can tell, nobody seems to be able to do that job without vast amounts of corruption. Wait, we should start off by saying, there have been, since the beginning of the United States, 12 architects of the Capitol. The first guy was hired by President Washington.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the dude's name was William Thornton. Again, I just like that last name. I like that hard /t/ sound.
N. Rodgers: Isn't he the one who, like he designed the US Capitol?
J. Aughenbaugh: He did. He designed the US Capitol.
N. Rodgers: President Washington said, "You ought to be the architect of the Capitol." He went, "I?" He was the architect of the Capitol. I'm sure it was more formal than that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But President Washington went to Congress. Congress authorized the position, funded the position. But there's only been 12 in the history of the United States.
N. Rodgers: In 230 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: In most of these folks, and I think they've been all male.
N. Rodgers: They've been all, well, now almost all dead white guys. But they've been white guys of a certain age. Most of them have not been young.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, no.
N. Rodgers: They have been older in their career. A couple of them were young-ish, in the sense that they were in their 50s or 60s. But this is not a position where you hire a 22-year-old out of architecture school, even as awesome as they are, Frank Lloyd, IM Pei.
J. Aughenbaugh: IM Pei, yeah.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. Any of those really awesome architects still would have wanted to be aged a little before.
J. Aughenbaugh: They serve a really long period of time.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. They all do like eight or 10. Only a couple of them have done short stints, including the last one, which we will get to in a little bit. But a lot of them go over presidents. They're 10 years, 15 years. They're serving multiple presidents.
J. Aughenbaugh: For most of our country's history, it was an unknown, uncontroversial position. Even though it has awesome and extremely difficult responsibilities. Listeners, I'm just going to give you a short list of some of the things that the US architect's office is responsible for. First of all, it is to maintain more than 200 acres of grounds and 18.4 million square feet of buildings of the federal government. We're talking about the Congress. You're talking about the White House grounds. You're talking about the Supreme Court building.
N. Rodgers: The Library of Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Which just speaks to my heart because there's a whole bunch of those buildings and they are complicated to run.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Anybody who's ever run a library will tell you just humidity is the most dangerous thing in the world, let alone everything else, fire and all that other stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Storing, painting, etc., you got all that. By the way, listeners, this is maybe a future podcast episode where Nia and I do our favorite US government buildings. Because as many of you can probably imagine, for me, the temple, the shrine is the US Supreme Court. But a very close second for me is the Library of Congress.
N. Rodgers: Because it's beautiful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not only is it beautiful.
N. Rodgers: But it holds all our knowledge.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It has books and books. But anyways, I digress. The architect's office, in addition to what I just described, it manages restaurants, because what many Americans don't understand is, most federal government buildings have restaurants, cafeterias.
N. Rodgers: The visitors' center has several restaurants, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That you can go to the botanic gardens, which they also manage, has a restaurant and a cafe. They have to do all that. They have a power plant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they have a power plant.
N. Rodgers: The Capitol has its own power plant. Which makes sense when you think about in terms of security.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you could turn off the power to the Capitol, that would be really bad. One would hope that that is very hardened against attack.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or to think about this, the city council for the District of Columbia gets upset because Congress slashed its budget.
N. Rodgers: It's a rolling brownouts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Rolling brownouts. We'll put the screws to you members of Congress. The architect's office also manages parking garages. Because a lot of federal buildings have parking garages, not only for the people who work there, but for the visitors who have business there. They manage gymnasiums. Congress has multiple gym.
N. Rodgers: That's true.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Supreme Court has its own gymnasium. The so-called highest court in the land includes a basketball court in the Supreme Court building. I bet many of you all don't know that the Supreme Court has a basketball court.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The main reason why I found this out is when I did my dissertation research about Byron White, Byron White played basketball well into his 70s while he served on the court, and he was known as a bruising player.
N. Rodgers: Excellent.
J. Aughenbaugh: They run a subway system. Nia, where's the subway system?
N. Rodgers: It's under the Capitol grounds. It's the way that you get from one building. There's a whole set of tunnels and subway-style things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. This allows lawmakers to get from one congressional building to another, so they can cast votes in committee hearings and on the floors of both the House and the Senate.
N. Rodgers: Side note, there are eight congressional office buildings, because you have to house 635 people plus all of their staff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Five hundred and thirty five.
N. Rodgers: Five hundred and thirty five plus the Senate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Four hundred and thirty five.
N. Rodgers: Four hundred and thirty five plus the Senate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Plus 100.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. Well, my math went totally bonkers there, I added an extra 100.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, I was just like, well, did we just amend the Constitution? I'm like, oh, no.
N. Rodgers: Yes. I just did. I should be allowed to do that at will. Five hundred and thirty five people plus all of their staff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They have to have a bunch of buildings, because you wouldn't be able to have those people in one building. It would have to be like a World Trade Center style building. It would have to be huge. Can we briefly, I know it's a side note, but can I just name the buildings?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Cannon, Ford, Long Worth, O'Neill, Rayburn, Russell, Dirksen, and Hart.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: What do all of these names have in common?
J. Aughenbaugh: They're dead white males that served in the United States Congress.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is that's who you name buildings after, apparently. When you serve in Congress, if you serve in Congress long enough, or.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's no woman and there's no person of color.
N. Rodgers: Maybe eventually we'll get a, well, anyway. But you're talking about a huge campus. If you're talking about a total of 200 acres of land plus the acres that are under the building, so four or 500
acres of land, that's a lot of acreage. That's a lot of management that's just day to day. How many employees do they have?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, wow. Do you have that figure?
N. Rodgers: I think it's more than 2,000, but I can't remember if that's right. Hang on, we're going to look it up, 2,444.
J. Aughenbaugh: The annual budget for the Architect's office is 1.3 billion. Now, compared to other agencies within the federal government, that's a drop in the bucket.
N. Rodgers: But that's not a small amount of money to control. I could do a lot of cool stuff with that money, Aughie. I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is great. I didn't know this. It manages Union Station.
N. Rodgers: Well, that makes sense because Union Station is right there at the foot.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, right.
N. Rodgers: Is at the foot of the mall. That makes sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it never dawned on me that the Architect's office would go ahead and manage Union Station.
N. Rodgers: Now can we talk briefly about the qualifications of the Architect of the Capitol? Do you have to be an architect?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, you do not. Nope.
N. Rodgers: Do you have to live in DC?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, you do not.
N. Rodgers: Do most people move to DC?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they do.
N. Rodgers: To the Architect of the Capital?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they do.
N. Rodgers: I'm assuming that you have to be pretty politically adept. Is that the main qualification is that you have to be able to sit with all the partners.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, this is a source of controversy because you don't have to be an architect though.
N. Rodgers: You probably should be or the engineer or something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well the largest professional association of architects basically has been making the argument that you need to be an architect. But one of the difficulties of this job is that there are so many disparate functions. On one hand, you could argue it should be an architect simply because you're talking about the management, development, maintenance. I mean, these are landmark.
N. Rodgers: Important historical buildings.
J. Aughenbaugh: Historical buildings. You want an architect. On the other hand, you can make the argument it should be an engineer because many of these buildings were built hundreds of years ago.
N. Rodgers: They're slowly crumbling.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, so how do you retrofit them so that they exist for the 21st century.
N. Rodgers: How do you even manage the electrical wiring in a building that was built in the late 1700.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: For modern computing, I mean think about that mind blowing problem.
J. Aughenbaugh: You think about the power plant and its connection to global warming, climate change. Do we use fossil fuels? Do we use green energy? You should probably have some science background. On the other hand.
N. Rodgers: On the other hand.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, post 9/11, how do you maintain the safety and security of all of these important government officials and all of the visitors, guests, and other folks who have business in the Congress, in the Supreme Court, in the White House, etc?
N. Rodgers: Well, and on the other hand, and I've lost now how many others we have.
J. Aughenbaugh: We need to be octopus.
N. Rodgers: I would argue that, exactly this person needs to be an octopus. That's exactly right, Aughie. They don't need to be a uniform to be an octopus.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of course.
N. Rodgers: Because they need to also have just basic management skills for a sprawling thing that you are in charge of. Think about you're in charge of the botanical gardens and you're in charge of the K9 Unit for the Capitol Police. You're in charge of housing and caring for all of these disparate, not to mention Senators and Congress people and Supreme Court and all the protesters, all the visitors, all the people who come because you want everything to be a safe and working environment. That just needs a basic person who can do administrative management.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, if not an octopus, a world class juggler.
N. Rodgers: Yes, with chainsaws, not just juggling balls because anybody could do that, but like juggling live chainsaws or fiery torches or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about this Nia, for most of the world, the buildings we just mentioned are the representations of the United States to the rest of the world.
N. Rodgers: Hence the attack on the Pentagon during 9/11.
J. Aughenbaugh: During 9/11.
N. Rodgers: The potential attack on the White House. They weren't sure where that plane was going. These are monuments.
J. Aughenbaugh: These are the representation of the leading country of the Western world to the rest of the world.
N. Rodgers: No pressure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you mentioned politics. You're managing buildings with some, I'm going to be diplomatic, high ego individuals. They think they are experts on everything. You're talking about members of Congress, you're talking about the Office of President, you're talking about nine Supreme Court justices. These are folks who have been told at a very young age that they were the smartest person in the world. Even if they don't know anything about architecture, engineering, providing security, my goodness, they have their opinions. Now, to make matters worse, the most recent architect, an individual by the name of J. Brett Blanton, who was a Trump appointee, he by many accounts was not up to the job. Nia, you mentioned about staying at home or not being in Washington, DC. One of the sins that Mr. Blanton committed was apparently he stayed home during the assault on the Capitol in January of 2021 because he said getting to the Capitol with all of the protesters and traffic was just not possible.
N. Rodgers: Which may or may not be true. But if you're asking yourself why he would need to be at the Capitol during the January 6th fracas, part of that is that is that position sits on the Capitol Police Board?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which that day failed to call in reinforcements in a timely enough manner. There were all kinds of things. But he's also been accused of all kinds of stuff. Sexual harassment and not showing up for work and contracting irregularities. That at that last point is one I'd like to talk about briefly if we could, is this idea of contracting. If you're the Architect of the Capitol, and you're contracting out work to be done at the Capitol, that is a big feather in a contractor's cap. To be able to say we rebuilt the dome of the Capitol Building or whatever, we reinforced the concrete. That's a selling point for that company. There's a lot of money and a lot of prestige that can be traded on with that position. You have to be really careful. It's not just I don't want to pick on Mr. Blanton. I feel certain that other architects have had maybe underhanded dealings of that kind of thing. But also the scrutiny of this position is so much more than it would be in a regular architectural firm. But I will tell you that regular architects have their favorite contractors. When architect is hired by the state to build a building, they lean towards certain people because they know their work, they know they're dependable, they know they'll get the job done right. They push contracts in some people's direction, I think, because they know they're going to get the work they want. That's a really hard thing to avoid.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a difficult balancing because you want the contracting to be open and transparent.
N. Rodgers: For little firms to have a chance of getting one.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Little firms, new firms. Firms that are.
N. Rodgers: By owned by owned firms.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That are run by individuals who previously didn't have access to government contracts. On the other hand, if you're somebody who's picking a multimillion dollar contract.
N. Rodgers: For a monument of the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: United States that's going to be closely scrutinized by, for instance, let's say the Capitol Congress, 535 members of a hyperpartisan, polarized body, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. There's no winning there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: There's a reason this job has been empty for a while.
J. Aughenbaugh: For a while, and here's the other thing.
N. Rodgers: Well, it's not actually empty because technically we have an acting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we have an interim architect and what's her name?
N. Rodgers: She's an engineer. I think she's the engineer. Because the architect of the Capitol and the engineer of the Capitol are two different people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Chere Rexroat. Who, by the way, is a licensed architect, but had been the agency's chief engineer. Is the acting architect of the Capitol. But here's another point. The job pays $212,000 annually.
N. Rodgers: We're not trying to be ugly me and Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia and I both read an article in the New York Times about this job vacancy. There's a quote in the article, similar private sector jobs command more than twice that.
N. Rodgers: You've got problem after problem, you've got pressure after pressure. You've got all this stuff it's got to be done within the budgeting process of the United States, which is fully dramatic, and it's got to be done within the contracting, the way the contracting is done in the United States. I don't think 212,000 is enough, I'll be honest. I don't.
J. Aughenbaugh: I know some of our listeners are like, man, I would love to have a job that pays 212,000.
N. Rodgers: Me too.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, me too. But with what we just described.
N. Rodgers: That's not enough.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm telling you right now, Nia, if they offered me three quarters to a full million dollar a year, I would still have to take a weekend and decide whether or not I would want that job, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. Just the stress level on this job is really high.
J. Aughenbaugh: My family doctor would more than likely not recommend I take it simply because he would like to see me stay alive for longer than the tenure of being in this job.
N. Rodgers: Well, and think too about the nit-picky BS. Notice I did not curse. BS that you have to put up with. So let's back up, Mr. Blanton. One of what was seen as one of his giant sins was during the Kevin McCarthy we're going to have 1,700 votes to be speaker.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, whether or not he would become Speaker of the House.
N. Rodgers: He moved into that office. He moved into the speaker's office before he was actually elected speaker, and Mr. Blanton was blamed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, he was roasted by the Democrats.
N. Rodgers: Because they said he shouldn't have allowed Kevin McCarthy to move into that office. Now, listeners, there was never a question about whether Kevin McCarthy was going to be the.
J. Aughenbaugh: Speaker of the House.
N. Rodgers: It was just what it was going to cost him. The votes cost him all kinds of things. That's why they kept having votes, but there was no question that it was going to be anybody else. Not really. I don't think anybody else was really close.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It was just what torture they were going to put him through before they gave him the job. Blanton not letting him move into an office would have just been churlish on top of everything else. That's so petty.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was a no win situation for Mr. Blanton, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because if he waited until McCarthy was officially voted as speaker, then McCarthy as we saw it play out, would have been without an office for a week.
N. Rodgers: Where's the speaker? He's out on the porch. You know what I mean? You can't do that. The speaker's business needs to be continuing as much as it can because that's part of the continuity of government.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's down at the Visitor's Center.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. He's at the botanical garden on a picnic bench.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's at a table.
N. Rodgers: Watch out for the Secret Service, they'll knock you down if you try to get close.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's got a table at the Visitor's Center and he's holding meetings there.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Or better yet, he's in the water gate, because there's never been any history of trouble with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's on the subway system.
N. Rodgers: Just riding around.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's just riding back and forth taking meetings. Next stop. Oh, we have the junior members of the House of Representatives. It's your turn to lobby the future speaker.
N. Rodgers: Also keep in mind, Mr. Blanton was not an architect, Mr. Blanton was an engineer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I am sure that as an engineer, especially being an engineer with the Navy and with other, wasn't he with the airport? I think he was with the airport authority.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he was with the Washington Metropolitan Authority which manages what.
N. Rodgers: Dulles and Reagan.
J. Aughenbaugh: Dulles and Reagan.
N. Rodgers: He is probably a very practical human in many ways. His statement about not going down because he wouldn't have been able to get through the traffic is practical in some ways. It's also probably not cool and he could have gotten through if he'd had police making a way for him. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. But I'm saying, practically speaking, he looked at that situation and thought, well, he's going to end up with the office anyway. We might as well just move him in and yet he caught Helena handcart for that. In addition to other things, now I'm not saying that he's a good guy because clearly he had a lot of problems. Clearly, yes. Sexual harassment and the irregularities. Blanton was not the the best person for that position. But also, he couldn't win that job. There was [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: In many ways, Blanton was very characteristic, and I apologize to the Trump supporters who may be listening. Very characteristic of other Trump appointees.
N. Rodgers: Of his appointees and of President Trump himself.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because they come from different life experiences, and the Byzantine ways that the federal government operates is not for everybody. It's not for everybody. We talked about this, the first season of this podcast, that the people who go to work and run agencies for the federal government are from a very select, unusual group of people who can do certain jobs.
N. Rodgers: The successful ones are unique, that's why we called them unicorns, although I'm liking your octopus.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh yes, I mean because.
N. Rodgers: Because that's way better. You got to have at least eight arms to be able to handle all that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah or you.
N. Rodgers: In fairness to Mr. Blanton, hard job and to get back to the job itself, something that people should keep in mind if they're going to apply for this job which we are encouraging you to do, there's no reason you can't.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have been consistent on this podcast, we recommend government service quite obviously, we believe in it because we both have government jobs but nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: Here lately, some of the senators have been trying to depoliticize the work that this job does. They've been trying to take some of the politics out of it. Isn't that what they're trying to do is to try to say, we're not going to have about how the appointment is created and how it's done so that they have a better to the Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. What we have right now is a proposal, and it's co-sponsored by a Republican representative from Wisconsin, Bryan Steil, and Democratic senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, that would make the architect of the capital position an employee of Congress.
N. Rodgers: Because right now it reports to the president.
J. Aughenbaugh: President.
N. Rodgers: Part of the executive.
J. Aughenbaugh: Executive. The interesting thing here is from what I've read, the Biden administration is not opposing this proposal. But if you think about how much of the job is doing things for Congress or agencies that have been authorized into existence by the Congress, you could possibly make it an argument that this perhaps should be an employee of the United States Congress and that President should not have the appointment authority to reward perhaps supporters who may not be qualified for this rather difficult job. Let's make no bones about it. We've cracked jokes in this episode, etc, but this is a difficult job and it's an important job. If anything, Nia, and you've heard me say this about other government agency jobs, one could possibly make an argument that this position needs to be split up into multiple positions.
N. Rodgers: It's an awful lot to ask somebody to do when William Thornton was architect of the Capital, there was our building. He did have to drain a swamp. He did have to actually have some, he was an amateur architect by the way. He wasn't a formally trained architect.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was unprofessional.
N. Rodgers: The City of Washington was dark-water Hickville. We've talked about that before that was literally a swamp and they had to drain it out and put a building there, but they didn't have a huge like now. It is so involved that position that it really has evolved into something that probably ought to be two or three different jobs.
J. Aughenbaugh: You could go ahead and just remove, for instance, the policing and security function into a completely different unit.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not saying that architects and engineers are unfamiliar with policing and security, but I think one could possibly make that argument.
N. Rodgers: I think you could too. I agree with you there.
J. Aughenbaugh: You could even just have a separate position just to manage the business elements, the gift shops, the parking garages, the food, etc. Think about just having somebody focus on transportation, union station, the subway system, etc.
N. Rodgers: We do know that the 2,444 employees do that. There are sub heads of the agency then that are in charge of those things, but maybe if you broke those things out and had a council of leadership that included an architect and the head of the transportation and the head of, then maybe it wouldn't be so stressful a job and maybe you could get people to take it because people get flattered to be asked but they don't say yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, they don't.
N. Rodgers: You know what I mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's a weird and part because of the low pay and part because of the stress and the political stress that's involved, and now I'm a little worried and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the future of this position. I'm a little worried that if it comes under Congress, it will get even more partisan. Can you speak to that a little?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because the concern here is in listeners, what Nia is referencing is. Let's just say for instance you have a divided Congress, which is what we currently have. The Republicans control the House, and the Democrats control the Senate. Do those divisions play out in a position controlled by Congress? Could they ever get to an agreement on who should be the architect?
N. Rodgers: If we have the struggle that we have with Supreme Court nominees, are we going to have that same struggle?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or think about this. Think about how power has quickly shifted back and forth between the parties in both houses of Congress. We have an architect picked by a Democratic controlled Congress, but then we have mid term or presidential year elections and the Republicans regain control of the Congress. Do they go ahead and terminate an architect simply because that architect was picked by the Democrats or [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: It's a real consideration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do we want that turnover in a position that has that much responsibility?
N. Rodgers: That is an excellent way to put what I was worried about because I vaguely worried and that's exactly it. Is turnover. People who have served in this job 10, 15, 20 years. You need that continuity because these building project, hey Aughie, when's the last time you built a Capital Dome? I'm betting it took more than six months. You know how bathroom renovations go. That's been a two year ongoing saga in your life and will be another two years before it's finished. If that's a bathroom in your house in Richmond, listeners, I've never been to Aughie's bathroom in his house in Richmond, but I'm betting it's not like the Taj Mahal. I'm betting it's a relatively reasonable sized bathroom.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a small bathroom, but part of the issue, and this goes back to a point we made earlier in the podcast. My house was originally built in 1955. Part of the difficulty is, how do you go ahead and replace pipes and plumbing that in a couple of the instances are original to the house. If you're renovating, for instance, again, making reference to an article that both Nia and I read, there's a renovation to the Cannon building in Congress right now. It's long delayed, wildly over budget. In part because the Cannon building was built decades ago. How do you retrofit that building? Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Asking a modern question. How do you accommodate changing bathroom more as in the United States, where we have gone from straightforward male-female to non gender specific, which is a great thing. It's more inclusive and they're awesome to use because they tend to be individual bathroom spaces, which is nice because then nobody's talking on the cell phone next to you. Not that I'm bitter about that, but you know what I mean? Those are wonderful but we just did that in the library on VCU's campus and it took better than a year to put in three bathrooms. They're great. They're wonderful, and they're great for patrons. They're great for staff, but three bathrooms took one year, and that's in a building that we have almost sole control over.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I mean, if you think about it.
N. Rodgers: What about a building that's considered a historical preservation or monumental thing? I know I just made that term up, but.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia to your point. An example that comes to my mind is when the Supreme Court had to get a new AC unit, and I was thinking that it was like either in the 1980s or the 1990s. The court made the proposal to Congress and had the approval of the Capitol Architect's office, but it took multiple years for Congress to consider it. Then you had to have the bidding process.
N. Rodgers: Which has to be open for a certain length of time, federal government, depending on the amount of the contract, because these would have been big.
J. Aughenbaugh: This was huge. Mind you listeners, the Supreme Court building itself was built in 1935. In terms of US Federal Government buildings in Washington DC, it's like a baby compared to some of the other buildings, but it was a project that took nearly 10 years to complete.
N. Rodgers: Exactly, and if your turnover is every two years at an election. There's not enough continuity. What we want with this architect's position, it really is 15 year. You want somebody to start a project and be able to see it through, or at least be able to see it through multiple stages of the project so that it can be handed off. In a reasonable if you had to hand off a project like that every two years, it would take an additional 10 years plus the 10 years that already it took to get it done.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got it done.
N. Rodgers: Because somebody's got to come up to speed, that takes a while. They got to figure out who everybody is, what all the players are, who all the contractors are, all that kind of stuff, and then they have to communicate with those people and if they decide to change something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, good Lord. You get a new architect who comes in and says, okay, you.
N. Rodgers: I think it should all be in the right style of straight lines and you're like, wait.
J. Aughenbaugh: You get a new architect with their new folks, and they come in and say, this project has not been managed well. We're going to redo the deadlines. We're going to start from scratch, and now you got members of the Congress, you got, folks at Union Station or, you know, the botanical Gardens and they're going. What what?
N. Rodgers: You kidding. All we want to do is put a pipe in right over here. No, we have to revisit the entire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Here's the other thing, and this is not for nothing. I don't think it is. Think about how many Americans impressions of their federal government is affected by going to these buildings.
N. Rodgers: The first time I stood at the Supreme Court, it felt like a cathedral and I've never been actually in the building. I've because it was closed when I was there, but it's so big.
J. Aughenbaugh: White.
N. Rodgers: And so posing. Like a It says to you, I am the law. You say, oh, I'm just going to stand here quietly.
J. Aughenbaugh: I am justice. The first time I went into the Library of Congress and I was just like, I need to get out of here because I'm overwhelmed.
N. Rodgers: That really is a cathedral.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm overwhelmed.
N. Rodgers: Notre Dame in some ways to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: But think about what happened in front of a lot of these buildings after the 9/11 attacks and barriers were put up.
N. Rodgers: The Bollards and all the other things.
J. Aughenbaugh: All of a sudden you had all of these visitors. Who are like, I don't have access to my government buildings. I have traveled with my family. I've come on class field trips and, we want this experience.
N. Rodgers: Oh, when I was a kid living in North Carolina, I was like, okay, kids troop onto the bus. We're going to DC and you'd get up and go really early in the morning and you'd go to the Smithsonian or you'd go to but you'd walk the mall. Which this architect is responsible for, so we're encouraging you to apply for the job, but we are encouraging you to do it with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that it is a difficult job that is highly publicized.
J. Aughenbaugh: Eyes wide open.
N. Rodgers: Eyes wide open.
J. Aughenbaugh: This isn't a Stanley Kubrick movie.
N. Rodgers: Eyes wide shut.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: These are eyes wide open.
J. Aughenbaugh: Eyes wide open. But thanks, Nia. This was an episode that I pitched in Nia because I saw this article and one of my former students used to work in this office. I've just been fascinated by this office, until my student went to work there. I was unaware that this office existed.
N. Rodgers: Until Aughie told me I was unaware that this office existed. But now it makes me want to find other people in the government who are doing this kind of thing. There's like one person who's in charge of.
J. Aughenbaugh: All of this. Don't be surprised listeners if we do future episodes to where we find more of these types of government jobs because again, this goes back to the purpose of this podcast. We want to expose you to government documents, government processes, or in this case, government jobs and the important work that they do and how difficult they are. It's just truly phenomenal to me, the responsibility that this particular office has.
N. Rodgers: Well, and you know, this person gets called before Congress and the Congress people ask them questions that they think if you had taken one basic architecture class, you would know the answer to that question. The same way they do the tech industry where they're like, now if I log into this, is it going to log me in and you're like, you just used the words that answered your question, but. I'm sure that they get some of that too where they're called to answer questions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: By people who have no subject expertise and they have to break it down at the very basic level. That thing you need to think about the sandstone that these buildings were originally built with and what they do in terms of years deterioration and blah. Like they have to explain all that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The exterior of buildings. The paint the walls inside. The technology.
N. Rodgers: If it collapses, the death toll in certain buildings would be horrific. If the dome came down, I mean, people, there are hundreds of thousands of people working, going in and out of the building all the time. How many would be hurt? Thousands would be hurt.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or Nia, you know, drawing upon both yours and my emergency management background, think about if there was some natural disaster or terrorist attack of union station.
N. Rodgers: Oh, we can't even at nine o'clock in the morning.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, nine o'clock in the morning.
N. Rodgers: That would be horrific.
J. Aughenbaugh: During a work day. A typical work day, work week.
N. Rodgers: Tuesday, which is when 9/11 was.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, just think about that.
N. Rodgers: In 9/11, we were and I won't say lucky because that's not the right word, but we were fortunate that the buildings falling was timed the way it was because if it had been an hour later, it would have been the death toll would be 50,000 instead of 4,000 4,000 is still awful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, but nevertheless, yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's another thing that has to weigh on your mind as so we sound like we're not selling this job and that's not what we mean to do, we just mean exactly what Aughie said. Apply but go in with your eyes wide open, that this is, you'll need to be an octopus.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: If you are an octopus looking for a job, here you go.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have the ideal position for you.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thanks Aughie.
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