Let's Get Government Out Of the Rental Business

The May 16 issue of C&E News contains an article on NUFO. This is an organization, of which I had not previously heard. The acronym stands for the National User Facility Organization.

Rajendrani Mukhopadhyah discusses this organization. It is essentially an organization with members from universities and industry who are interested in using government facilities to foster their research. Thom Mason is the Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the government facilities allowing access to use of its equipment. He is quoted as saying that the US was the first country to set up large-scale scientific facilities and currently is the best equipped in the world, with an infrastructure of large-scale instruments.

Private companies rent these facilities as part of their research efforts, rather than invest separately in this expensive equipment.

The spotlight shines only recently, because of overall attempts to reduce government expenditures. There are two aspects to the NUFO problem. On the one hand, rental income to the government may support the continued existence of these facilities. Presumably if the rent were high enough, the government could even make a profit. However, the C&E News article contains nothing on the economics. In fact, it seems to presume that the rental of the facilities is a losing proposition, because there is a program to petition Congress for increased funding.

My position is that the US government should not be in the business of owning facilities, which are rented to private organizations. The likelihood is that the various government agencies had availability of sufficient taxpayer funds that they decided to purchase expensive equipment, which they no longer need. Hence, their ability to allow rental time to private industry.

At the beginning of World War II, the US government could foresee a shortage of rubber for military vehicles and the need for production facilities of the newly discovered penicillin, which could be used in the field to combat soldiers' infections. In those days, government was able to operate rapidly and constructed synthetic rubber factories and penicillin production plants. At the end of the war, the facilities were sold to private industry, presumably on the premise that it was not government's business to own manufacturing units in a piece-time economy. It retained all aspects of manufacture of nuclear weapons, which is an obvious justification.

Taking a clue from our governmental predecessors, I propose that the government facilities which are being rented to private industry for its research, should be sold at public auction. The synthetic rubber and penicillin facilities were sold at the end of World War II at very low prices. This could be repeated, with the taxpayers taking the loss from the original investment, or pricing could be more consistent with present market value. If individual companies could not purchase the required facilities, they could work out the financing to develop a consortium of company ownership for the total purchase.