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“… The DOGE website features a “wall of receipts” listing contract terminations, grant terminations and lease terminations totaling more than 9.5 million square feet across 748 facilities nationally. The lease terminations would supposedly save $660 million in total over the life of the leases.DOGE website says Franklin’s Social Security office to close
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DOGE website says Franklin’s Social Security office to close
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been eager to propose federal budget cuts that purportedly save taxpayers money, but as the proposed cuts trickle down to the neighborhood level — like closing the U.S. Social Security Administration office in Franklin — residents are just as...smokymountainnews.com
Yeah, I was curious about the cost as well and the rental cost per square foot is consistent with / on the low end of the range for office space generally in Franklin NC from what I could tell, so not like it is some exorbitant lease.276,000 a year for 8500 sq feet of office space seems like an OK deal. And if Elon's team is micromanaging to this degree, they are wasting their time more than I thought.
good, good.“… The DOGE website features a “wall of receipts” listing contract terminations, grant terminations and lease terminations totaling more than 9.5 million square feet across 748 facilities nationally. The lease terminations would supposedly save $660 million in total over the life of the leases.
In North Carolina, 20 such leases are listed, from the mountains to the coast.
… Besides Franklin, additional Social Security Administration offices in Elizabeth City, Greenville and Roanoke Rapids are also listed as subject to lease termination.
… While many of these tasks can be completed by phone or online at ssa.gov, internet service isn’t universally available or affordable in rural Southern Appalachia, so visiting an office in person may the most convenient option, although it’s strictly necessary in certain cases.
For example, some disability claims require in-person interviews, and people applying for a Social Security card for the first time must show up in person.
… Of the 37 pre-DOGE Social Security offices in North Carolina, Franklin’s serves North Carolina’s westernmost residents and is the only one west of Asheville’s office, 68 miles from Franklin. Another office in Toccoa, Georgia, more than 50 miles distant, may also be an option for residents of the far west.
.., The DOGE website says that the lease for the 8,995 square-foot office costs $276,309 each year, and that the termination of the lease will save just over $1 million.
Although the Social Security Administration’s website suggests the office is still operating under its usual 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. hours Monday through Friday, DOGE’s information on the Franklin office says that the listing is a “True Termination — Agency Closed Office,” which came as quite a surprise to an operator reached in the Franklin office by The Smoky Mountain News on the afternoon of March 3.
The operator appeared to be shocked by the news of the closing and said they hadn’t heard anything about the possibility. An office manager subsequently directed all comment to the Social Security Administration’s regional public affairs office in Atlanta. No one answered the phone at the public affairs office, and no one has yet responded to a voicemail or email inquiry. …”
Well...
“… Jeremy Lewin, one of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has also played a role in DOGE’s incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed as making just over $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator within the General Services Administration.
Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed as drawing a salary of $195,200 through GSA, where he is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that any “General Schedule” federal employee can make annually, including bonuses. “You cannot be offered more under any circumstances,” the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.
Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visible internal role interviewing GSA employees as part of DOGE’s work at the agency, is listed as being paid just over $120,500 per year. According to DOGE’s official website, the average GSA employee makes $128,565 and has worked at the agency for 13 years.
When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as “tedious” and noted that “compensation is zero.” WIRED previously reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied in part on a team of engineers associated with Peter Thieland was carried out on platforms like Discord.
… Although Musk has described DOGE as “maximum transparent,” it has not made its spending or salary ranges publicly available. Funding for DOGE had grown to around $40 million as of February 20, according to a recent ProPublica report. The White House did not respond to questions about the salary ranges for DOGE employees or how the budget is allocated to pay them.
… Other prominent DOGE staffers appear to be unpaid volunteers. Edward Coristine, Ethan Shaotran, Luke Farritor, Derek Geissler, and Nicole Hollander draw no salary through their assignments at the General Services Administration. (It is not currently known whether they are drawing salaries elsewhere within the government.)
The agency now openly discusses the idea of compensation on its recruitment page, which describes “full-time, salaried positions for software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.”
In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News last month, Musk claimed that "the software engineers at DOGE could be earning millions of dollars a year and instead of earning a small fraction of that as federal employees."
In Silicon Valley, the median salary for a software engineer hovers around $184,000, with workers a decade into their careers earning over $220,000, according to Glassdoor.…”