Mr. WHITE. I am guessing at a million and a half. But I think that may be a little Mr. CONTE. Is that the Senate, only? Mr. WHITE. It is the only place where the Minton tiles exist that are worn in the public corridors; yes, on the Senate side. Mr. CONTE. How about in the House? Mr. WHITE. The House doesn't have them in the public corridors. They are in a number of rooms, but those are generally not worn. For example, in the lounge behind the Speaker's lobby, there is Minton tile, and it isn't worn. Mr. CONTE. I suppose you are going to buy a couple of extra boxes and put them in the closet. Mr. WHITE. That is what we thought. Mr. BENJAMIN. I will submit the following and ask you to respond to this in the record. MODERNIZATION OF ELECTRICAL WIRING IN THE CAPITOL You are requesting an 11th allotment for the modernization of electrical wiring in the Capitol. When will this program be finished? What additional funding will be needed beyond the 11th? [The information follows:] This is a continuing program that provides funds to improve the electrical systems to allow the Capitol Building to function effectively and efficiently. It appears that only a few more years of the program will be necessary. CAPITOL GROUNDS Mr. BENJAMIN. We will put the following questions in the record and ask you to respond to them. The request for Capitol Grounds for 1981 totals $2,243,000 and 80 positions. We will take up the various additions requested. Pages 6.1 through 6.3 contain the deductions and mandatory items. Please justify the other increases for both annual recurring and nonrecurring on page 6.4 of the justifications. [The information follows:] The detailed justifications for these increases are found on pages 299-303 in Part I of the Legislative Branch Appropriations 1981 Hearings. As in other appropriations, the annual recurring increases reflect the increased costs of providing required services due to inflation. Those areas that can be maintained at as close a level to last year as possible without significantly disrupting our operations have not been increased. However, the need to increase some programs exists. Increases to Supplies and Materials and Miscellaneous Improvements are two programs where the cost of inflation has caused the need for the requests. The nonrecurring items requested are for replacement of existing equipment that has deteriorated beyond the state where it can be repaired economically. Without this equipment the ability to maintain the grounds would be severely impaired. HOUSE OFFICE BUILDINGS Mr. BENJAMIN. We will now go to House Office Buildings and, Mr. Michel, I think you have some questions. Mr. MICHEL. We were going to be doing something about the remodeling of the Longworth Cafeteria, but has that been all washed out now? Mr. WHITE. I am not sure how to respond to that. The word that I had from the Speaker's office was that the House Office Building Commission had reconsidered its- Mr. MICHEL. Do you have a request in here for money to do that? Mr. WHITE. Yes, for $950,000. I would think, however— Mr. MICHEL. Was that renovation for the current restaurant? Mr. WHITE. That is correct. Mr. MICHEL. With no expansion? Mr. WHITE. With no expansion. Now, it was probably more than we needed, because when we put that in the budget, we had several alternative designs which we presented to the Subcommittee on Services. They selected a design which was the least expensive, which was somewhat less than this, and we would be glad to take less, but we don't have House Office Building Commission approval at this point. I think some cosmetic activity could be done for very much less than this, such as a new floor, for example, and some painting, which perhaps would be agreed to by the House Office Building Commission. Mr. BENJAMIN. One of the reasons I think the Services Subcommittee looked at this is they felt that this would be the year, with the national elections, that you probably would have less use of the Longworth Cafeteria in the summer and fall months, than any other year in the cycle of four years. Is that, in your experience, an accurate assessment? Mr. WHITE. Election years normally give us some more time because the Congress is gone; it doesn't always happen, but it generally happens they are gone for a longer period of time in the fall of an election year. Mr. BENJAMIN. If you are going to do it this year, wouldn't that have to be in the 1980 supplemental? Mr. WHITE. It really would. If you were going to do it this year, this appropriation would come too late for us, frankly. We need it in a supplemental so we could do it this fall, and that gives us an opportunity perhaps to discuss it further with the House Office Building Commission and present it as a supplemental for reconsideration. Mr. BENJAMIN. Let me ask the Members here, do you have any feelings if they came back with a smaller figure Mr. MICHEL. I wanted to develop the subject as to, number one, how many people are we serving in the Longworth and Rayburn, or in the Capitol. Do we need additional facilities, and, if so, where would we go to get the additional space? I know there has been talk, with the Longworth, that they would push it through the stationery room down there, and then move them some other place; that that could be done. Mr. WHITE. Yes, that is a proposal we have worked on with the subcommittee, and we are prepared to make that proposal to this committee today, but again the House Office Building Commission felt that it was an expenditure that should not be made at this time. Mr. MICHEL. You say that figure you have in here now of $950,000, that would simply be to renovate the space we have now? Mr. WHITE. That is correct. LONGWORTH CAFETERIA EXPANSION Mr. MICHEL. And if you were to expand it? Mr. WHITE. That figure becomes between $7 million and $12 million, because the proposal would require moving a number of functions. We are talking about moving the stationery store, the folding room, and the police; virtually all of the people on that floor. That is the reason for that wide variation of $7 million to $12 million, because we really haven't finalized that program. MEALS SERVED IN HOUSE RESTAURANTS Mr. MICHEL. You may not have the answer, but you could get it, I guess would it be the Subcommittee on House Administration that overlooks the operation? Mr. WHITE. The Subcommittee on Services of House Administration. Mr. MICHEL. But why don't we have for the record here the number of meals they serve in the Longworth and Rayburn Buildings, breakfast and lunch; no dinners, obviously. Mr. WHITE. I am not sure whether Mr. Abernathy can supply that now. Mr. MICHEL. I wouldn't expect you could, off the top of your head, but let's have it for the record. I am curious to know how good our accounting system is to earmark, you know, which one is pulling its weight, which isn't, where the economies are, which one is operating more efficiently than the others, for what reasons. It is my understanding that we make money on the House Office Building restaurants and lose money in the Capitol. It raises a question: why? Are the prices different, the services different? It opens up a variety of questions, but I would like to have the basic information first, so that I would be able to make a little better judgment later on. Mr. BENJAMIN. Do you want to answer some of that now and expand on the record, Jim? Mr. ABERNATHY. That is entirely up to you, Mr. Chairman. The figures, the way they are being collected in terms of meals, if you say how many breakfasts and lunches, that is sort of an impossibility. With our records, it would be a guess. Mr. MICHEL. Do you make a count of how many people come in there one noontime for lunch or one time at breakfast time? Mr. ABERNATHY. No, sir. We have some new cash register equipment presently being installed which, hopefully a year or so from now, that will give us that. We have daily operating reports that only go back so far, but there is no break between breakfast time and lunchtime. We hope, as I say, in the future to have that. The equipment we had didn't provide it for us. On a daily dollars and cents figure, I sent some pencil figures up here, gross sales figures, in terms of the Longworth, made available to the staff to show where we are over a 4-year period, and what we are coming up against in the last six months of this calendar year, which is overlapping fiscal accounting. The catering business, out of all our business, has grown like topsy. We increased overall last year in the catering sales, includ ing the Rayburn Building, Capitol and Longworth kitchens, from $700,000 to well over $1 million in 1979 fiscal. Coming out of the presidential 1977, inauguration year, you see in those figures that the January month of the Carter inauguration is the highest month gross catering sales that we have had in the 4-year period. We approached it this past September, but we haven't passed it at any time. We feel with the level of service that the Members and the public are asking for, that it is going to be virtually impossible to shut down totally in the Longworth area, because it is the largest of the kitchens we have on the House side. CATERING IN HOUSE RESTAURANTS Mr. MICHEL. On that catering business, you make money on the catering business? Mr. ABERNATHY. We make a tremendous amount of money, and most of the catering sales we have-over 95 percent of these sales come from moneys that are generated off-Hill. In other words, the staff or Members are not paying for this; we are charging commercial rates for this catering and making a sizable, very sizable, profit on it, as we do on the cigarette and candy counter sales. This, in turn, is what justifies offsetting the additional labor cost that is our big problem here in the Capitol, because we have a kitchen in the basement, a dining room up here in a left-handed arrangement, the fact that we are open all the time during the legislative sessions, and there is no way to make the operation in the Capitol labor-effective. Mr. MICHEL. You may have been anticipating the next question. I was going to ask, if you had them available, the figures on gross sales for each of the restaurants, what the food costs were, and what the labor costs were. I recognize it is an in-house operation, but I would be curious to know what the food and labor costs are for all three of those. We only run three around here, don't we? Mr. ABERNATHY. We have broken down only one operating statement, for some 11 different units. It is costed that way. Mr. MICHEL. Do you have an in-house breakdown of those 11 units? Mr. ABERNATHY. Yes, and it is being audited. Mr. MICHEL. Would you supply that for the record? Mr. ABERNATHY. Yes, I would be happy to. [The information follows:] 71.647.52 39.8 465,163.18 43.6 143,916.90) 48.3 154,200.43 51.7 156,715.58 71.982.13 24.8 1,524.92 16,299.61 5.5 214.34 48,283.43 3,261.04 17.2 900.06 3. 7,502.22 .7 4) 1.150.20 4 7.821.12 486.41 2.6 11.757.85 6.6 29,635.69 132,389.08) 45.8 421,147,47| 41.9 103,508.46 44.6 145,895.28 2.1 410.19 2.2 599.34 3 13,671.471 1.3 361.74 .1 833.59 14,963.03 1.5 804.14 22.842.61. -1.5! 11.151.69 1.9. 21.474.64 1.2 24.500.12. .8.2 8.282.331 al 1.124.87 1.1 1.263.85. 1.812.17 11 100.15 224.175.08 11.9 184.3131 18 62.2 59.021-59 12.1 37.198.18 12.9 42,624.37 4.2 31.111.29 13.4 294,997.01 44.2 (35.782.451112.01 2.561.07! 12 |