Acting administrator Stephen Leeds administered the oath to Martha Johnson over the phone  because of the snow that pummeled the D.C. area Friday and Saturday, the spokeswoman said.

The storm forced the closure of D.C. federal offices yesterday and today, and in doing so also forced GSA to cancel Johnson’s swearing in ceremony and a town-hall meeting with employees planned for today.

GSA rescheduled the ceremony and town hall for next Tuesday.

The Senate convenes at noon, and according to the calendar, the cloture vote  on Johnson’s nomination will occur after the chamber votes on the nomination of Patricia Smith to be solicitor for the Labor Department. If cloture is invoked, a final vote on Johnson’s nomination will follow.

Johnson’s nomination has been delayed by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. Bond held up the confirmation vote because he wanted GSA to promise to move a federal complex to downtown Kansas City, Mo.

Brita is the staff director for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. The subcommittee has oversight of GSA’s Public Building Service and federal real property management.

She replaces Barney Brasseux, a GSA career veteran, who recently retired.

This announcement fills one gap in the agency’s leadership team which has seen an unusual amount of turnover in recent weeks.

Just before Christmas, Stephen Leeds took over the role of acting administrator from Paul Prouty, who decided to return home to Colorado and to his career post as GSA’s Region 8 Public Building Service commissioner.

Earlier this month, Danielle Germain, the agency’s chief of staff, resigned to head up the Collaboration Project at the National Academy of Public Administration. In making the move, Germain said the hold Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., has maintained on Martha Johnson’s confirmation to lead GSA was a factor in her decision. Bond’s hold on the final approval of Johnson’s nomination means the agency has been without a permanent administrator since 2008.

Kempf, who most recently served as the assistant commissioner for the FAS Office of Acquisition Management, replaces Tyree Varnado, who recently retired. Kempf will continue to serve as assistant commissioner of FAS’s office of acquisition management until a replacement is named.

Kempf joined GSA in 1992.  FAS sells more than $53 billion worth of goods and services to federal agencies each year.

On the appointment, FAS commissioner Jim Williams said of his new No. 2:

Steve knows FAS inside and out, and his long history with the organization ensures continuity in our delivery of outstanding service, innovation and value to our customers and the American taxpayer.

The New York Democrat unsuccessfully introduced a bill during the last Congress to ban smoking within 25 feet of any federal building’s entrances, exits, windows that can be opened and ventilation intakes. Engel reintroduced the bill Nov. 18 to correspond with the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke Out smoking-cessation campaign.

The Surgeon General reported in 2006 that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. One step we can take in limiting such exposure is to free the entrances of buildings of the clouds of smoke often found when smokers gather outside of entrances and exits. The problem with this is simple – how else are people going to avoid secondhand smoke when the only ways in and out of a building is blocked by smoke?”

The bill would clarify various levels of guidance involving smoking near federal buildings. The General Services Agency banned smoking in courtyards and within 25 feet of doorways at GSA-controlled buildings, effective June 19, 2009.

A 1997 executive order banned smoking in all Executive Branch buildings, as well as all inside space owned, rented or leased by the Executive Branch.

What say you, feds? Is smoking an annoyance at your workplace? Or are you a smoker that would be annoyed by any new regulations?

Since the two offices share a common mission of developing procurement policies, merging them will better coordinate these efforts, improving the agency’s ability to manage taxpayer dollars, GSA said in a statement to Federal Times.

Federal managers might not like the cuts, either: The revised Senate stimulus plan eliminates billions of dollars that were allocated for federal agencies.

One of the biggest cuts will hurt the General Services Administration. The House stimulus bill gives GSA almost $7 billion to make federal buildings more energy-efficient. The Senate version cuts that in half — to $3.5 billion.

Other items cut from the Senate plan:

• $122 million for the Coast Guard’s new polar icebreakers;
• $200 million for new screening equipment for the Transportation Security Administration;
• $75 million from the Smithsonian, which the institution would have used for capital improvements (the House bill included $150 million);
• $200 million for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program;
• $200 million for the National Science Foundation;
• $1 billion for Head Start.

Many believe Change.gov to be emblematic of how President-elect Barack Obama will use the Web to advance his priorities of a more participatory and transparent democracy.

Over the next few days other federal Web sites will also start to look a bit different as dozens of familiar names, like Michael Chertoff and Condoleezza Rice, are erased from government Web sites and replaced with the new administration officials, like Janet Napolitano or Hillary Clinton.

The process is likely to be quick, said Casey Coleman, chief information officer for the General Services Administration. GSA plans to have all the names of Bush-era political appointees off the agency’s site and replaced with acting career officials or Obama appointees within 48 hours of the inauguration. Many of the names will change a lot faster than that, she said.

With the exception of a Google Web cache, this may be the last time Bush-era agency appointees see their names on government Web sites. The National Archives and Records Administration will not do a Web harvest of pre-Obama sites, an agency spokeswoman said.

Instead, if an agency determines that its Bush-era Web pages must be persevered under NARA’s Guidance for Managing Web Records, the agency will follow the rules set out in this handy archiving guide.

This guidance, of course, does not apply to Bush’s WhiteHouse.gov, which falls under the Presidential Records Act.

The Temporary Executive Office Building.

The District Department of Transportation released a detailed description of the location in a press release about traffic restrictions to protect the transition office. Here is what the DDOT had to say:

• D Street, NW between 5th and 6th is closed to vehicular traffic and parking is restricted.
• Northbound 6th Street St, NW, between Indiana Avenue and E Street, is reduced to one lane of traffic. The other 2 northbound lanes are blocked off.
• Indiana Avenue, NW, between 5th and 6th Streets, has been temporarily converted to accommodate two-way traffic until the traffic restrictions are lifted on D Street.
• No parking is allowed on the west side of 5th Street, NW, between Indiana Avenue and E Street.
• No parking is allowed in the curb lane on the south side of E Street, NW, between 5th and 6th Streets.
• The east side of 6th Street is closed to pedestrian traffic.

 What’s more, an intrepid worker in a nearby building snapped the above photo with his iPhone.

The office space is outfitted with enough desks, computers, telephones, chairs and assorted other office supplies to support 500 people, said Gail Lovelace, GSA’s chief human capital officer, who is overseeing the transition. And Congress has appropriated $5.3 million to pay for it all.

Lovelace said the exact location of the office is still being kept under wraps because the Obama team has not given permission yet to release it. She noted they’ve been a little busy getting down to business.

At the same time GSA is helping the Obama-Biden administration transition into office, it is also helping the Bush-Cheney administration transition out.  A team of GSA employees is working with the current administration to find post-administration office space, Lovelace said. That effort has $2.2 million appropriated for it.

Bonus fun fact: GSA provides lifetime support for former presidents.

A press release issued by GSA just says the office space is somewhere in downtown D.C.

Yesterday, Diane Merriett, a GSA spokeswoman, refused to tell yours truly where the office was located, stating that GSA decided to leave it up to the president-elect’s team to release. 

This FedLine found funny because the new boss is a transparency advocate. But old habits die hard.

Incidentally, Obama has announced his transition team today. We hope they like the new digs… wherever they are.

In a speech during the GEIA Vision Conference today, Williams mentioned that one little known duty of his office is to declare an apparent winner of the presidential election on Nov. 4.

Since the Electoral College won’t meet to officially declare a president-elect until Dec. 15, GSA needs to name an apparent winner so the agency can move forward quickly with its transition duties in the slim 77-day time period between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20, Williams said.

 From my perspective I don’t care who wins. I just don’t want it to be close, because the administrator has to pick a winner and hand over the keys and say ‘Let’s get started.’