NATIONAL VISITOR CENTER ACT OF 1967 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1967 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10:16 a.m., in room 2167, Rayburn Building, Hon. Kenneth T. Gray (chairman) presiding. Mr. GRAY. The Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds will please come to order. The subcommittee is in open hearings this morning in consideration of H.R. 12603, and related bills, to supplement the purposes of the Public Buildings Act of 1959 by authorizing agreements and leases with respect to certain properties in the District of Columbia for the purpose of a National Visitor Center and for other purposes. If enacted into law, it will be known as the National Visitor Center Act of 1967. This is the fourth day of hearings. I notice in the room this morning we have one of our very distinguished and able colleagues from Illinois, Congressman Erlenborn. We will be delighted to hear you first this morning. Let me on behalf of the subcommittee welcome you and thank you very much for coming. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN N. ERLENBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS Mr. ERLENBORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have copies of my statement here. Mr. GRAY. Thank you. We will be glad to pass them out. Mr. ERLENBORN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to file my statement for the record and I will just summarize very briefly. Mr. GRAY. You may proceed in any manner you so choose. (The prepared statement follows:) STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN N. ERLENBORN Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear before you in support of H.R. 12603 and the several identical bills, including my bill, H.R. 12825, to be cited as the "National Visitor Center Act of 1967." It is anticipated that 15 million tourists will visit our Nation's Capital during 1967-an average of more than 40,000 a day! They come Americans and visitors from foreign countries alike to gain miration we have felt in viewing our country's memorials to Lincoln, 139 Washington, and Jefferson; to see our government at work; to seek a better understanding of the meaning of the American dream, of what makes America. And I think most experience what they seek; but along with it, they experience a nightmare of frustrations: Where to park? Where to get a sandwich on Capitol Hill? How to make the most of their limited funds and time and still see all there is to see? Hardly a visitor to my office and some days it seems that all 40.000 of our Capital City's visitors stop at my office fails to utter these frustrations in one way or another. I don't blame them. For most, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event, a family affair planned months in advance, with a breathless countdown to the day of arriving here. They find a beautiful city, built to be the seat of our national government; and I suspect that many have contemplated, as have you and I, that the men who planned it and who have seen it grow during the past 18 decades must have had prophetic vision of the greatness which was to come to these United States; but how sad that so few along the way had the foresight to envision the 20th century invasion (which I highly recommend) of American families and visitors from afar intent upon seeing our Nation's Capital. From almost my first day in Congress, it has been a source of embarrassment and a thorn in my side that we allow the enthusiasm of our guests to be dimmed and thwarted by what are sheer frustrations and not mere petty annoyances. I was heartened last year when Congress wisely enacted legislation creating a Commission to study the need for a National Capital Visitor's Center. The findings of that study are embodied in the legislation being considered today. Enactment of this legislation will go a long way toward eliminating these frustrations and making a visit to Washington the memorable experience it should be. With enactment of the National Visitor Center Act of 1967, the conveniently located Union Station will be converted by its owners, the Washington Terminal Company, into a visitor's center which will be leased to the Administrator of the General Services Administration and the Secretary of the Interior on behalf of the United States. The Center will contain needed restaurant facilities. It will contain movie theaters where our visitors will be able to view a documentary film that will assist them in planning to see the sights in an orderly, comfortable, all-inclusive fashion. The Washington Terminal Company will provide 4,000 parking places. These, combined with a bus service from the Center to the Capitol and around the mall, will solve the where-to-park dilemma of our visitors and relieve the traffic congestion that affects us all, be we visitors, residents, or commuters. The railroad terminal of Union Station will be replaced by the WTC with a rapid rail train station to be constructed underneath the new garage. Thus we see this plan serving many worthwhile purposes: It will bring to our visitors the service they deserve, the welcome feeling we want them to know. It will bring millions of dollars more income to our Capital City. It will reduce the amount of our Federal payment to the city. It will do all this and yet it will NOT add to the already strained budget of our Federal government-No Federal funds are involved in the 19 million dollars estimated cost for the renovation of the Union Station and the construction of facilities in the Center, the 4.000 parking space garage, and the new train and rapid rail station under the garage. The 1919 million dollars will be spent by the Washington Terminal Company, and the lease payment of 2.9 million dollars the U.S. Government will make to the WTC will be recouped from parking fees and the sale of services and goods. I am convinced that H.R. 12603 is a necessary, sound, and realistic approach for meeting our responsibility to the millions of people who we want to know the wonder and marvel of our Nation's Capital. I believe this Committee and the Congress will agree. Thank you. Mr. ERLENBORN. Thank you. I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today in support of H.R. 12603 and the several identical bills, including my bill, H.R. 12825, to be cited as the "National Visitor Center Act of 1967." It is anticipated that 15 million tourists will visit our Nation's Capital during 1967, an average of more than 40,000 a day. We all know that they come from all parts of this country and from all over the world. They experience great frustration. I think that all of us have heard the comments of visitors who come into our office as to their problems of finding a place to park, a restaurant to get their meals, and the other frustrations that they face because of the lack of proper facilities for visitors here in our Nation's Capital. I think with the passage of the bill now pending before this subcommittee, these frustrations will be brought to an end. I think that the work of the committee that led to the drafting of this bill is to be complimented, because they have fashioned an answer to this problem of the visitors to our Nations' Capital that will not have a great impact on our Nation's budget, which is of course being strained to its utmost. I think that the agreement contemplated herein between the owners of the Union Station and the U.S. Government for the construction of the Visitor Center and its operations will provide the necessary facilities without great expenditure of our national budget funds. I trust this subcommittee will give due consideration to this bill. I hope it will pass and I hope as a result of this, in the near future, we will have happy constituents in our offices thanking us for the facilities that we furnish them. Thank you. Mr. GRAY. Well, thank you very much for a very fine statement, and I certainly want to thank my distinguished friend and colleague from Illinois for introducing his bill on this subject. I might say that we certainly have bipartisan support for this legislation, not only in this committee and in the House, but also in the other body. We have had several Members of the Senate introduce identical bills. This is a bipartisan measure and I hope we can move to passage in this spirit of cooperation. It is a very serious. problem, as you so ably pointed out in your statement. Are there any comments on my right? On my left? Mr. WRIGHT. I join my chairman in complimenting our distinguished colleague. We appreciate your coming. Mr. ERLENBORN. Thank you. Mr. GRAY. Thank you very much. At the conclusion of the hearings on yesterday, there was one witness remaining that had not been heard, Mr. Avery. I am wondering how your time schedule is, sir? We have one other witness, if you do not mind, we would like to run ahead. Are you pushing for any Mr. AVERY. Mr. Chairman, I have a room full of lawyers waiting for me back at the Transit Commission. We are starting the D.C. Transit case today. Mr. GRAY. Fine. Well, go right ahead. We will take you, sir. You were so patient, I would not want to further impose on you. Mr. AVERY. I would be willing to wait all day, but I feel badly about the people back at the Commission. Mr. GRAY. Fine. We have Mr. George A. Avery, Chairman of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission. Mr. Avery, again on behalf of the committee, I want to say how thankful we are for your patience yesterday. The Secretary of the Interior, you know, took more than an hour and we ran a little behind. We had you scheduled for testimony on yesterday. But I do appreciate 85-894-67- -10 so much you coming back and we deeply appreciate your consideration in appearing here before this committee. You may proceed in your own fashion. STATEMENT OF GEORGE A. AVERY, CHAIRMAN, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT COMMISSION Mr. AVERY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be able to appear. It was a pleasure to sit and listen yesterday to the fine plans that have been made by the Commission and by the Secretary for the Center. I am the Chairman of the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, and also Chairman of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission, and it is in this latter capacity that I appear before you today. I would like first to give you some background facts concerning the Transit Commission and concerning some previous Commission actions which involve the subject matter of the bills in question. The Transit Commission is an agency of the District of Columbia, the State of Maryland, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, created when the three jurisdictions entered into an interstate compact, the Washington metropolitan area transit regulation compact. Congress gave its approval to the District of Columbia to enter into this compact and consented thereto by Public Law 86-794, enacted in 1960. The purpose of the compact was to concentrate in one agency the regulation of transportation of persons for hire in the Washington metropolitan area. Succinctly stated, under the provisions of the compact, no person, with certain exceptions which will be discussed later, may engage in transportation for hire in the District of Columbia and its surrounding suburban area, without first obtaining a certificate of convenience and necessity from the Commission and without being subject to the regulation of the Commission with regard to its rates and services. The primary objective of the legislation you are considering today is to authorize designated representatives of the United States to lease Union Station for the purpose of converting it into a National Visitors Center, with attendant facilities. Our interest and concern with the bills does not involve those sections thereof which concern the Visitors Center, although as a citizen and a resident of the area, I heartily express my own personal approval of the concept. In my official capacity, however, I am concerned only with section 5 of the bills, which contains certain language concerning transportation. Section 5 does not concern itself solely with the Visitor Center but with the transportation of visitors in the Mall area of the District. Such transportation has been the subject of much discussion and litigation in recent months and you cannot understand the import of section 5 without some knowledge of that litigation. So, I should like to take a few minutes to explain it to you. In March of this year, the Interior Department entered into a contract with a private concessionaire and to provide transportation on the Mall and instructed their concessionaire that it would not be necessary to obtain a certificate of convenience and necessity from the Commission. The Commission had previously informed the Interior Department of its conviction that the concessionaire's operation was covered by the compact. To settle the question, the Commission brought an action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in which it asserted that the Interior Department's concessionaire must obtain a certificate from the Commission. The end result of that litigation was a decision by the court of appeals that, while the Interior Department could enter into a contractual arrangement with a concessionaire, that concessionaire must comply with the provisions of the compact. Thus, the court rejected the Interior Department's position that it had exclusive jurisdiction over transportation on the Mall and held, instead, that dual jurisdiction existed. In so ruling, the court rejected the Interior Department's argument that transportation by Interior's concessionaire was transportation "by the United States" and thus within the specific exemption in the compact, which exempts transportation by the Federal Government and by the other signatory governments. With this background I believe you can now see the problems raised by section 5 of H.R. 12686 and its related bills. Section 4 fully empowers the Secretary of the Interior to enter into any concession arrangements necessary to administer the Visitors Center. Section 5 may seek to go beyond that. If the language is enacted, the argument might be made that the rulings in the litigation on the Mall shuttle, which I have just described, had been overruled by this bill. It might be said either, No. 1, that this language provides a new basis for an assertion of exclusive jurisdiction by the Secretary of the Interior; or, No. 2, that this language brings Interior's concessionaire within the exemption in this compact of transportation "by the Federal Government." If the Department is seeking, under section 5, to reverse the holding of the court of appeals in the Mall shuttle case, certain problems are raised which you should consider. First, there is serious question whether enactment of this section would accomplish that objective. As the committee is undoubtedly aware, the Commission's jurisdiction is vested, not solely through an act of Congress but by means of an interstate agreement between the Legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, as well as by the Congress, on behalf of the District of Columbia. It is doubtful that the jurisdiction conferred by the compact as approved by Congress could be divested through the unilateral act of one of these legislative bodies. Since the impact of this bill on existing provisions of the compact would be unclear, enactment of this section might only lead to further litigation and serious delay. There is, of course, a much more important question than the somewhat legalistic matter I have just discussed. Assuming that the purpose and effect of section 5 is to exempt transportation on the Mall from our jurisdiction and transportation between the Mall and Union Station from the jurisdiction of the Transit Commission, it is the Commission's view that this would be a very unwise policy to adopt. It would, of course, completely reverse a policy adopted by Congress just 6 years ago. Thus, the very purpose of the compact, when it was first enacted, was to unify the regulation of transportation of persons for hire in the Washington metropolitan area under one regulatory agency. |