December 14, 1984, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: Metro; B1

LENGTH: 869 words

HEADLINE: Lottery Gives Some Congress Members a Place to Sit

BYLINE: By Alison Muscatine, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:

    . . . "Face it: Here, you've got American government at its visual best --
the marble, the columns, the rotundas, the sweeping staircases . . . . You've
got goals, you've got commitments, you've got aspirations, and inspirations. You
've got history, and tradition . . . .

   But have you got a place to sit?"

   -- From a guide for members of Congress distributed by the Congressional
Management Foundation

Coming into this week's congressional lottery for new offices on Capitol
Hill, Rep. Frederick Boucher and his staff knew one thing for certain: they
could hardly do worse than the Virginia Democrat's current quarters, Longworth
1723.

   "Everyone is sitting in everyone else's lap, plus we have the congressman in
our laps also," said Brooke Ramey, Boucher's press secretary, who is squeezed
next to four other staffers in a tiny compartment on the seventh floor of
Longworth. "I know all of the administrative assistant's personal business, and
he knows all of mine.

   "The other thing I can't understand is how the cockroaches get up to such a
high floor," she added, reflecting on a familiar Hill problem. "Of course, I did
see one riding up the elevator this morning."

   After two years of excruciatingly cramped conditions, and the inconvenience
of a separate suite down the hall for the legislative staff, Boucher and his
aides approached this week's lottery with a zealous sense of mission. With
blueprints of the Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn House office buildings in hand,
two aides were dispatched last week on an eight-hour tour of 40 offices,
enabling the congressman to draw up a list of his top 11 choices.

   Boucher and about 70 other members of the class of 1982 entered the lottery
on Tuesday, and the southwest Virginian clearly had luck on his side. He drew
his ninth choice, and his staff drew a sigh of relief in anticipation of the
move to a suite on the fourth floor of Cannon.

   Held every two years, the congressional office lottery provides the only
glimmer of hope for members of Congress who want to shift from virtually
unbearable conditions to ones that are, even in the best cases, merely
uncomfortable. The system is based on seniority, with the longest serving
members of Congress given first crack at offices vacated by retiring and
defeated colleagues. In turn, those senior members' offices are thrown into a
pool for the next class of Congress members, and so on.

   For the 43 newly elected members, who have their own lottery to divide the
leftovers, there is no chance of a coveted office in the newer and larger
Rayburn building, and virtually certain exile in the highly undesirable
Longworth building, where the rooms are small and the elevators notoriously
slow.

   "Rayburn offices are generally bigger and indeed are the most popular," says
Elliot Carroll, executive assistant to the Capitol Architect, who organizes the
lotteries. "Other factors have to do with where committee rooms are, and how
close the office is to the subway leading from Rayburn to the Capitol ."

   Most members of Congress have staffs of as many as 18 people, usually crammed
into an area of about 1,100 square feet. The average working space for a Hill
staffer is 30 square feet, compared with 64 square feet for comparable employes
in the private sector, according to a report by the Congressional Management
Foundation, which enlisted several experts this year to study space problems in
Congress. The cramped quarters are partly the result of a massive increase in
paper work and office equipment, as well as bigger staffs that are needed to
handle an ever-growing number of constituent problems.

   "I've been in Washington for 18 years and I had this vision of beau tiful
offices with a view of the Capitol," says space consultant Sandra Ragan,
president of the Friday Design Group, who spent a week inspecting conditions on
the Hill. "They are beautiful buildings but they are not built for the density."

   The crowding has tapped the creative potential of many Hill staffs. Bathrooms
in Longworth have been converted into rooms for computer printers or copying
machines. Bookshelves are often on the edges of desks serving as artificial
walls. Lacking space for meetings, many staffs use the member's office for
private discussions.

   Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Pa.) has come up with one of the most unusual arrangements.
Edgar gave up the large space normally reserved for the members and divided it
into a work space for six of his staffers. He has a desk in a tiny room in the
middle of his suite in the Rayburn building.

   While some area members from Maryland and Virginia harbored hopes of
switching into larger suites, only Rep. Stan Parris (R-Va.) had a high enough
lottery number to make a change. He is moving from Cannon to Longworth to be
closer to his committee rooms.

   At the top of the draw this year was Rep. John J. Duncan (R-Tenn.), now in
his 10th term, who will be ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee. He
will move in Rayburn from 2458 to 2206.

   "We'll be closer to the committee room and we'll have a view of the Capitol,"
said Duncan's press secretary Patrick Willard. "We'll have a lot more visitors .
. . . so it's good to have a new office and a new look."