itol complex area? And is that a very extensive amount of time? Are you trying to secure these buildings?

Chief ABRECHT. No. It is incidental to our patrol of the Capitol grounds that we go outside. We recently had a Senator who received a threat and was quite concerned, and had been involved in a situation here in the District such that there might be some validity to the threat, and he lived in the District of Columbia, and so we went up and checked his residence several times a day for a while, because of that concern.

So there are occasions when we have to do things like that. If they are reasonably convenient to the Capitol complex, we will do that ourselves. If it is far away, we will sometimes impose on our colleagues in local law enforcement and in the suburbs, for instance, to do that sort of work for us.

But no, it is incidental really to our major function.

Mr. MILLER. Last question. In the Cannon garage, it looks like they are getting ready to install a magnetic reader, maybe you are not involved in that as such. I assume that is a magnetic card reader. Is that to put a gate up?

Chief ABRECHT. I don't believe there is any intention to put up a gate. Garages present a real security vulnerability. I think there is an intention to try to ensure that you can't steal a car with a Capitol sticker on it and load it up and drive it into one of the garages unhindered. We are hoping to be able to match, ultimately, the car to the driver to make sure that the right person is in the right car. That is one of our real vulnerabilities.

Mr. MILLER. You don't do the parking lots at the National Airport?

Chief ABRECHT. No, sir. The Washington Metropolitan Airport Authority Police are the responsible agency out there.

Mr. MILLER. When you get into these magnetic cards, one thing you get, I know I have an office building back in Florida, we know any time anybody comes and goes. It gets into a privacy issue with Members. Does that present a problem?

Chief ABRECHT. I don't know as to Members. Staff are required to sign in after hours anyway if the building is closed to the public, so we know, I guess, if we were interested. We have no real interest in trying

Mr. MILLER. I know you are not interested.

Mr. LIVINGOOD. That can be deleted or not.

Mr. MILLER. It doesn't bother me.

Mr. LIVINGOOD. It is not a problem either way.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PACKARD. I think we are looking into whether there are technological ways to make our voting cards more effective rather than just a voting card, but make them useful in terms of access in other ways, maybe elevators during a vote, maybe the garage, et cetera. But that is in the early stages of review.

Mr. MILLER. My company installed new equipment in this building in 1984, and we have a card which controls access to the parking garage, access to the air conditioning equipment on weekends, because we charge extra if you run the air conditioner on weekends. It is not magnetic, you just wave it. There has to be a better technology than that.

Mr. LIVINGOOD. You mentioned garage doors. Currently it is not, but that is not to say down the road we would not request garage doors be put on the system so that the card could open the doors. It wouldn't be used during the heavy traffic hours, because you would back up traffic to the South Capitol Street Bridge. But it would be weekends or evenings, to be when the garage isn't heavily used, to be sure somebody doesn't pull up and surprise the officer, before he has time to react.

Mr. MILLER. I look forward to hearing your assessment.

Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Livingood is conducting a security review of the House. Mr. Greene are you anticipating doing the same or participating with Senate on theirs?

Mr. GREENE. Yes, sir, we are. As a matter of fact, the Secret Service is conducting a review of the Senate and House and it will include the office buildings we have; the new page dorm that is being constructed down on 4th and Massachusetts. The whole complex will be under a security review by the Secret Service and the Capitol Police.

Mr. LIVINGOOD. And the Sergeant at Arms offices. We felt it wouldn't be any good to just do the House.

Mr. PACKARD. I think there would be some weak spots in security if it wasn't jointly done. That is fine.

Mr. GREENE. I am hoping we can expedite that. We are anxious to get that started.

Mr. LIVINGOOD. As quickly as we can, realizing that we want to be thorough.

X-RAY EQUIPMENT

Mr. PACKARD. Congressman Blute has expressed some concerns and we have heard them from other sources, too, concerning the ongoing upgrades of detection and X-ray equipment. Are the upgrades on hold because of the security review?

What was the procurement process of the past upgrades and what are they for the current? And are you planning to make any changes in those procurement processes?

Mr. GREENE. I will defer to the Chief on that one. We are in the bidding process right now of purchasing 32 or 33 magnetometersI am sorry, X-ray machines of the same quality used at the White House, which is about the best you can get, and we are in the process of that. Beyond that, Chief, if you can pick up on that.

Chief ABRECHT. Presently, all of this equipment is procured through the Architect. And Mr. White is performing the procurement. So I guess he is probably the best person to speak to the issue of how it is being-specifically how it is being procured.

Mr. WHITE. Right at the moment, bids are expected in, I think, on the 24th of this month. We extended the bidding period because of some changes that needed to take place in the RFP, the request for proposal.

The units that were selected to be purchased were not on the GSA schedule where you can just buy them and have them delivered. We had to have them bid.

Mr. PACKARD. Open, competitive bids? So it is not a single source?

Mr. WHITE. Yes. And in order to be certain of that, because of a desire on the part of the police to have a particular kind, it was difficult to write the proposal in such a way as to avoid protests.

So it had to be done in a very fair way, which it was. That took some time to prepare. But that is now all behind us. There has been already a letter from a competitor objecting to the selection criteria being used.

Mr. PACKARD. Has it been put out to bid now?

Mr. WHITE. It is out now with bids due on the 24th of this month.

Mr. PACKARD. So you don't know at this point how many bids you will have?

Mr. WHITE. No.

Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Fazio.

Mr. FAZIO. I was going to ask Howard, did you get that tie from the owners or players?

Mr. GREENE. I don't have anything to do with players. It is the

owners.

Mr. PACKARD. Does that mean you have something to do with the owners?

Mr. FAZIO. You have taken sides?

Mr. GREENE. Yes, sir.

Mr. FAZIO. Anyway, I like your tie. Maybe Mr. Miller would like to wear it home this spring.

Mr. PACKARD. He only asked that because C-SPAN is not here this afternoon.

Mr. FAZIO. It is good to see you all. I am pleased to hear that there is a cooperative spirit, and that we are now going to get where we wanted to go on a unified budget. That is going to happen, is that correct? We have a good shot at that, both Houses?

Mr. PACKARD. We covered that earlier, Vic, and they have assured us they are moving forward and hope to have it accomplished before the end of the year.

Mr. FAZIO. I think that will be the twelfth straight year we have been assured of that. That is why it is reassuring.

Mr. PACKARD. I sense we have it on the record that we have commitments.

Mr. FAZIO. Anyway, I am looking forward to that, and the leveling of the responsibilities on both sides. I am particularly pleased, that there seems to be a new initiative on going to New Orleans, to the National Finance Center, which this committee has always promoted as the easiest way of having an accurate budgeting process. So I am pleased that that seems to be in the works, as well. And with that, I am just looking forward to some clarifying, I guess, on how we are going to handle the salary issues. I gather in the past, our subcommittee has given to the Oversight Committee first responsibility to set salaries, but now that we have a uniform approach, does that mean the Senate Rules Committee will be acting on this issue, or are we still somewhat out of sync? I understand under the current law you would have the ability to unilaterally make those decisions.

Mr. GREENE. We have to get our direction from the Senate Rules Committee.

Mr. FAZIO. Maybe we could clarify that in any statute we need to adopt on the authorizing committees to take care of the final— the leveling of the playing field, so to speak, for the police.

I think any other questions I would have at this point, Mr. Chairman, I will put in the record.

Mr. PACKARD. Thank you. We appreciate you being here.

Mr. FAZIO. I am sure Mr. White is enjoying being the third vote. Instead of having one to one to one votes, we can have three to nothing votes, right, George?

Mr. WHITE. That is the way it ought to be.
Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Livingood-

SECURITY COORDINATION TEAM

Mr. LIVINGOOD. Could I add something for the record? We were talking about the security equipment, and there are two items that I felt that we as a Board had some preliminary observations prior to our study, and there is a security coordination team on the Police Board, for the record, so you know, we are going to reorganize it. It will consist of the members of the Board, the House Sergeant at Arms, and the Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol and his representatives, and the Capitol Police.

Previously it has basically been the Capitol Police and the Architect's representatives. We are going to add a little weight to it, if I may use that word, to that by adding the Sergeant at Arms so we can oversee the equipment they are getting in, maybe speed the process as much as possible.

Secondly, I think the Board and the Chief ought to be in the position to determine the security needs and establish the priorities. We are going to change that a little bit.

Last but not least, I think consideration should be given to approval of a permanent amendment to H. Con. Res. 550, which was September 1972, which provides that funds to procure, install and maintain security apparatus for the United States Capitol buildings be available to the Capitol Police Board, and that Board is authorized to expend such funds.

And I think currently that is for the Architect of the Capitol, if I am not mistaken. We were hoping, thinking that down the road we might be able to change that and give the money and authority to the Police Board, since the Police Board is really the organization, I feel, that should decide where devices should go, where they shouldn't, and the priorities, to make it fair for both sides, both the House and the Senate.

Mr. PACKARD. Vic, if the Oversight Committee, which I think will be the one to do this, wants it done, obviously it would be simple to put it in our bill as a simple process.

Mr. FAZIO. Yes.

Mr. PACKARD. So we may want to consider that.

Mr. FAZIO. Mr. Thomas will decide, I guess, whether he wants to try to move a bill or whether he would not mind this committee doing it for the Oversight Committee. I think Mr. Manton, formerly a member of House Administration, produced a bill that was ready to go last year, and for whatever reason it didn't move. I think it may have been opposition in the Senate. But I think we ought to move on with it one way or the other.

Mr. PACKARD. If there is consensus then, our bill may be an easy way to facilitate that process.

Mr. FAZIO. I wanted to say, Mr. Chairman, as I said in the authorizing committee the other day, I am very, very close friends with and have a high regard for Werner Brandt, who was the last Sergeant at Arms here. I wanted to say for the record I think the move to a professional security person is really a very wise one, probably long overdue.

Bill, we are happy to have you, on our side. We look forward to the kind of changes that will really be reflected, a professional analysis of what we need here, and we are going to have to make some changes, and hopefully it won't be too disruptive, but it is understandable in the circumstances we operate under today.

Mr. PACKARD. The expertise and experience of Mr. Livingood has already shown up in some of the deliberations and some of the decisions, and I think your statement is very well put.

REPROGRAMMING REQUESTS

Before we close, I want you to insert for the record all fiscal year 1994 reprogrammings you requested last year and the disposition of same.

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