Florida govt 'loses' 18,000 buildings

State officials in Florida are having trouble determining how many buildings the state owns and where they are, according to a report in The Palm Beach Post .

Officials were asked 10 months ago to create an inventory of their buildings, but nearly 18,000 building have not been detailed. The official charged with finding these building now wants to hire an outside company to find each building Florida has misplaced.

Department of Management Services Secretary Linda South was tasked with locating surplus state-owned properties and buildings that could be sold. South found that there was no single list of all the properties taxpayers own, WFOR-TV reported. She does have a list of the 115 state buildings her department is responsible for.

"I think it's amazing the state doesn't know what our inventories are," Ways and Means Committee chairman, J.D. Alexander, of Lake Wales, told South at a hearing last week.

Officials were surprised to learn that there was no single list of buildings and that the Department of Management Services did not have the manpower to compile such a list. South told legislators, "We do not have the knowledge base, the expertise in-house to understand what those values are. We need to ask the commercial real estate sector to tell us how we can get that done."

As WFOR reported it appears that Florida taxpayers will eventually pay to find the buildings they also paid to build.

Arizona officials have floated the idea of selling state buildings to generate money to close state budget shortfalls. The New York Times reported that state buildings like the executive office tower, the buildings that house offices for both chambers of the state legislature, as well as 10 prison complexes, a state mental hospital and other buildings valued at $735 million are for sale. The historic Capitol building is not on the market.

And city officials in Sacramento are working with the state of California to sell some state buildings so that the buildings would move onto the city's tax rolls.