Mr. TAYLOR. I have a number of questions in some other areas, but I would like to take up the Visitors' Center and go around the Committee because I think all of us have special questions in that area. Mr. Pastor, do you have questions? Mr. PASTOR. As I recall, we saw the model and then there were some additions and tunnels and whatnot. Now, what was the final consensus of what was going to be added or not added? Mr. HANTMAN. The members of the Preservation voted basically to approve, I think about four or five specific line items. First line item specifically related to the location for the Visitors' Center itself, which is on the east front of the Capitol. That was approved. The second line item dealt with the issue of these new elevators and stairs in the east front of the Capitol for $5 or $6 million additionally. That also was included. Another line item of I believe it was $10 or $12 million-was to take the truck entrance access across Constitution Avenue to New Jersey Avenue so we would not have to have a gouge in the Olmsted landscape plan and the security problem of every time a truck entered or left the Visitors' Center having police stop the pedestrians who are walking on the grounds in that area. So that also was approved. I think one of the issues dealt with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate being given clearance to develop a plan to raise private funds to supplement the $100 million that was originally appropriated. Those were the major issues that were raised and approved. In addition to that, several issues were raised relative to, say, a Library of Congress tunnel, the possibility of bringing_one from the Jefferson Building over to the new Visitors' Center. So we are actually dotting our i's and crossing our t's in this validation planning study to be able to look at that possibility of the tunnel, the pluses and the minuses, the costs, the implications of running above the Amtrak tunnel, and the security issues relative to screening people on the library side versus the CVC side as well. So that is being studied as are several other issues raised by members of the staff. VISITOR CENTER DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Mr. PASTOR. So right now you are doing a letter of intent for the design work which is getting to be 6 months? Mr. HANTMAN. That is correct, sir. Mr. PASTOR. What issues are still outstanding that will not be covered by this design? If I am going to do a letter of intent for design work, I am assuming that all of the issues are resolved and the design work is going to be for the final product. So the reason I asked the first question was there are still issues out there that are not finalized, and how are we doing a design letter of intent when there is still a few issues out there that aren't resolved? Mr. HANTMAN. Two things. First of all, one of the elements that I neglected to mention in response to your first question was the expansion area relative to the Capitol Visitors' Center. There is 150,000 square feet split evenly between the House and the Senate. That also was approved. As far as the design is concerned, design development is just that. We have a concept now. We have the lay the Preservation Commission is the issues of the meeting rooms that they may or may not want in this space, the configuration of the auditorium, the capacity of the auditorium. Mr. PASTOR. Let me stop you there. I have a hard time understanding how you are going to do a design and yet not know how many offices, how many rooms, what the auditorium is going to look like, I mean, that is a major design and you're going to have the design within 6 months. The Preservation Committee may not meet for another couple of months. Somewhere I am missing the boat. Maybe you might explain it to me. Mr. HANTMAN. Design development, actually, sir, serves that function. We will be going to the staff of the Preservation Commission with all of our questions. They will be bringing it to the individual members for resolution if, in fact, that is the nature of the type of question we ask. Design development is to do just that. We have an auditorium configuration, and we are looking at several alternative configurations at the request of the staff. We need to bring it to the Preservation Commission and say this is the one that makes the most sense, this it where we will go in the process. We will still have the construction document phase after the design development phase. There is another step of the design process. We are not turning them loose to do construction documents for bidding purposes until after this phase. Mr. PASTOR. I think you are being optimistic, to say you are going to get it done in 6 months. If you are going to have the Preservation Committee, first of all, get together and look at the different designs that you are proposing, so I think you are pretty optimistic, don't you think? Mr. HANTMAN. I think we need to be optimistic. Quite frankly, Mr. Pastor Mr. PASTOR. In this environment, yes, I will grant you that. Mr. HANTMAN. I frankly think if we hadn't been optimistic with the planning and validation phase, we wouldn't be as far as we are today. We need to put it out there and communicate most effectively. We plan to have monthly meetings with staff members of the Preservation Commission to feed them information, to give them issues that need their resolution, and hopefully they can bring back to us some kind of resolution themselves. VISITOR CENTER TIMELINE Mr. PASTOR. I want to understand the timeline. Right now you have a letter of intent? Mr. HANTMAN. That is correct. Mr. PASTOR. What is that going to do? Mr. HANTMAN. Basically we are having the General Accounting Office review the full contract that has been submitted by the consulting team. We need to have them sign off on that before we sign a full contract. But we know the full scope of work. We have been negotiating with them and before we go ahead-this is basically to get them started before we sign the full contract. But we have full intention and all expectations that their numbers are within the ballpark that we proposed and that we will be able to proceed with Mr. PASTOR. How much time do you think that is going to take, just to get the letter of intent okayed and issued and signed? Mr. HANTMAN. That is basically a done deal. We are working in parallel on a lot of these things, so we are in good shape. Mr. PASTOR. So we have 6 months left to do the design. Mr. PASTOR. That would put us what? Maybe July? Mr. HANTMAN. Correct. Mr. PASTOR. And we are not here August. We are gone the end of September. Mr. HANTMAN. Which is why the review and approval process should be a continuing line of communication. It shouldn't be a surprise at the end of design development. In the interim, we will be communicating clearly with the members of the staff upon the issues we are discussing and need resolution. By that point in time, there should be no surprises at the end. Hopefully, we will get a clearance to proceed directly on to construction documents while the Congress is not in session. Mr. TAYLOR. I envision if we are called upon as a committee, we could communicate with you, even past session, through the end of the year. But you are right, we are going to have to beat a lot of schedules. Mr. PASTOR. First of all, you are going to have the problem of having us come to an agreement. You know how hard that is. How many members? Mr. HANTMAN. There are 18. Mr. PASTOR. So you start with that. That will take a good deal of time. There is a potential of slippage, and I am just trying to be more realistic than optimistic because we may end up being criticized for being too optimistic and come next year we may not have accomplished the goals that we have set for ourselves. And so that will be another Roll-Call article, and you will be criticized, and here we go again. I am just saying let's be more realistic, because I know it is very difficult to get 18 members to agree, especially since most Members are going to be gone for most of the year because this is election year also. Mr. HANTMAN. I detected a very positive sense from most of the Commission, most of the staff that I have certainly talked to. It seems as if a lot of people really want this to happen. I think it is important to remain optimistic, to be pushing the envelope, if you will, so that we can make deadlines that make some sense. It is achievable, and hopefully we can work hand-in-glove on an ongoing basis, so there are no surprises, so we can get these approvals in a timely way. Mr. PASTOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Lewis? SUBCOMMITTEE SERVICE Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be with you all here today. You wouldn't necessarily be aware of this but for the first dozen years of my life on the Appropriations Committee, I have had the privilege of serving on this subcommittee. They kicked me off for a number of years because I |