Letter: DOE playing dominoes with tax money for move from federal building

After I read the article in the Herald titled “DOE employees moving out of the federal building” (June 1), I believe a better title would be “DOE is playing dominoes with our tax money.”

It appears from the article that for each DOE employee moved, there will be a domino effect and two DOE-funded contractor employees will be moved, one contractor employee to make room and one to backfill the office vacated by DOE. Therefore, based upon the article the estimated cost of $3,000 per DOE employee will total $9,000. The $9,000 doesn’t include any disruption cost.

It seems odd that DOE has been able to operate the Hanford site for more than 50 years from the federal building. Since the funds approved for Hanford are for the cleanup mission and are our tax money, DOE should be required to submit to the Herald for print its cost analysis demonstrating the planned move is cost-effective and will result in reduced cleanup costs.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 3:22 AM with the headline "Letter: DOE playing dominoes with tax money for move from federal building."