A bill to keep federal diversity in building architecture

Tom Temin Congresswoman Titus, good to have you back.

Dina Titus Well, thank you for having me. I’ve been called worse, so it’s okay.

Tom Temin Well, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about the idea of architectural diversity. I’m taking it that this is in response to the Trump administration’s desire to have, whatever it means, classical architecture and uplifting architecture for federal buildings. So what would your bill do and what’s your reaction to that?

Dina Titus Well, that’s right, during his first administration, one of the things he did was to put out an order that all new federal buildings would follow the classical style. Now that’s something that dictators do, make everything look alike and in their image. I didn’t think every federal building should look like Mar-a-Lago, so I was opposed to it, but it wasn’t just me. The architects nationally were in an uproar because this went against long time standards that had been set under John Kennedy’s administration, where you use the latest in architecture style, and you base it on the region. You make it fit with whatever the culture is of where the building is constructed. And you don’t just pick one style fits all, because a building that would look good in Santa Fe wouldn’t necessarily look good in Boston.

Tom Temin The bill then would simply, what, give discretion to [the General Services Administration] to, it wouldn’t be the architect of the Capitol, but GSA and maybe Veterans Affairs, which also has control of its own construction, that type of thing.

Dina Titus Well, that’s right. And when President Biden came in, he immediately undid the executive order that Trump had put in place. So it wasn’t a problem during his administration. But once Trump came back into office, he immediately had GSA conduct a study with a report due in 60 days. Now we haven’t seen that report, but we’re pretty sure that it’s going to be similar to what he did the first time and go back to that one style, whatever his definition of classical is. So this would just say that you will not have one style and we’ll go back to using those standards of architecture that have been in place for such a long time.

Tom Temin Can we all agree, though, that maybe another Housing and Urban Development or another, what used to be the Health Education and Welfare, now Health and Human Services building, maybe we don’t want too many more of those.

Dina Titus Well, you can certainly pick federal buildings around the country that you wouldn’t want to emulate, but you know, the classical style and the type of interior and decoration and all that Trump likes at Mar-a-Lago is really not appropriate for federal buildings either. It should reflect where they are built and the culture of the community that they are a part of.

Tom Temin Well, my grandmother had an adjective for Mar-a-Lago type of architecture and design that was called chaluscious, and so some of the people know what we mean by that.

Dina Titus I do, that’s a good term.

Tom Temin All right, and then the bill that would help [Department of Homeland Security] special events program, what’s that all about and what would that bill do?

Dina Titus Well, in Las Vegas, we are having more and more major events. We had the Super Bowl. We have music concerts. We’re going to have now a baseball team. We got soccer, basketball, all kinds of things where a lot of people gather that are often considered soft targets. And so we want to be sure that when people come to enjoy those things, they are safe. And this is true all around the country. Now, when you have a Super Bowl, you can apply to DHS to get Sears funding, which means you get more resources from the federal government, from bomb dogs to technology. But it’s an arbitrary thing. You may get it, you may not, there are different levels. It seems to be kind of a capricious way to make policy. And I’d like to just kind of standardize that so people know what the requirements are for getting that federal assistance and that they’re better able to provide it without going through a lot of rigmarole, bureaucratic red tape and time spent getting ready for some of these events. It’s all about public safety.

Tom Temin And by the way, we should note that on this bill and on the architecture bill, you do have Republican support. These are bipartisan measures.

Dina Titus Well, that’s right. And then that’s important. Neither of those two things should be a partisan issue. Public safety at concerts or, you know, we had the worst shooting in my district in modern American history several years ago. We don’t want to see anything like that repeated.

Tom Temin We are speaking with Democratic Congresswoman Dina Titus. She represents Nevada’s first district. And then your third bill, I guess it’s more of a letter yet, not really in law form or in bill form, but you are urging the fiscal 2025 appropriations, and we can talk about what might happen in ’26, but to simply get more air traffic controllers trained and on the job.

Dina Titus Yes, I serve on the aviation subcommittee of transportation and infrastructure, and we’ve seen the real lack of air traffic controllers around the country for a number of years. And so when we reauthorized the [Federal Aviation Administration] I got language put in that we would hire the maximum number of air-traffic controllers that the Academy could produce in a year because we were so shorthanded. But that takes funding just because we want to hire them. You got to recruit, you got to find qualified people, you got train them and Congress has to appropriate the money. So we were having an airplane accident a week practically around here. And up until now, the U.S. Has been the standard bearer for safety, but there are a lot of problems that we need to address and air traffic controllers is just one of them. When they had the accident in Washington, it was shown that the tower was not fully staffed. Now they haven’t said that’s what caused the accident, but it is a real fine point to say, look, we need these air traffic controllers. You get in the plane, you want to know you’re gonna be safe and you’ll get in there like you’re supposed to.

Tom Temin Yeah, it’s amazing how many ground sight and ground incursions and crossing of runways and clipping of wings and so forth is happening on the ground, which may not be necessarily a disaster in terms of lost life, but it sure is a disaster if you’re trying to get from point A to point B sometimes.

Dina Titus Exactly. Now, the secretary of Transportation has said he wants to hire more air traffic controllers, and I totally support that, but the devil’s in the details. We want to be sure he doesn’t decrease training for those air traffic controllers. He doesn’t go after the union when he starts talking about hiring more, and that he’s willing to really put the funding in the budget that will be needed. So it’s the right statement. Let’s be sure he does the right action.

Tom Temin And what’s your feeling just looking ahead on revival of an idea to change the structure of air traffic control such that the FAA becomes an oversight body and air traffic control operations are done by some external entity, whether it’s contractors or a nonprofit corporation. This has come before Congress before and it had bipartisan backing, it even had union backing and yet somehow it kind of died on the vine.

Dina Titus Well, that’s right. Several years ago, that was before this subcommittee talking, and it’s a step towards privatizing, which you’re seeing in so many of the different federal agencies from the Post Office to the IRS. But the arguments then were that this is something that is so essential to be provided, public safety, air safety, that we really shouldn’t leave it to the private sector. And so we didn’t go down that path. But you’re right. It did get some bipartisan attention and I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back.

Tom Temin Well, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, they’ve all outsourced it.

Dina Titus Well, that’s true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should do it. Don’t you remember when your mother told you just because Johnny did it doesn’t mean you should do too?

Tom Temin Well, of course, too often I did it anyway. But then the second question I had following the idea of staffing the FAA is modernization. And the Secretary [Sean] Duffy has said they want to modernize and rebuild the systems. But they’ve been on a modernizing drive for at least 35 years that I’ve been following it. And there are some modernizations that have happened, but it sounds like there’s some fundamental pieces missing.

Dina Titus Well, that’s right. I had a piece in the FAA reauthorization bill to look at modernizing airports, infrastructure, just the technology. FAA is a very hidebound agency and they often hide behind the need for safety for not wanting to make change. I think there’s no reason in the world we shouldn’t keep up with the latest technology. And you mentioned other countries look to see what they are doing. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to that. So let’s have the best equipment and the best trained people so that we maintain those safety standards in the air.