DOGE claims another $14 million in savings on Alabama federal buildings: Is it true?

America’s newest federal agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), now says on its website that it has saved taxpayers over $14 million from terminating the leases of a dozen more federal offices in Alabama.

This totals out to roughly $20 million that the department claims to have saved in the state since its creation two months ago.

It further claims that it has saved taxpayers $105 billion nationally in that time.

While Alabama representatives are worried about how these cuts could impact residents, some agencies are bringing into question how valid the site may be.

According to the DOGE website, it has cut spending by terminating the leases at a dozen more federal offices in the state as of this month.

Those are:

  • Montgomery- Office of U.S. Attorneys, $3,210,894
  • Montgomery- Farm Service Agency, $3,041,170
  • Montgomery- Internal Revenue Service National Office, $1,259,025
  • Montgomery- Forest Service, $800,734
  • Montgomery- Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, $158,518
  • Mobile- Occupational Safety and Health Administration, $493,540
  • Mobile – Employment Standards Administration Wage and Hour Division, $104,460
  • Daphne-United States Fish and Wildlife Service, $311,781
  • Birmingham- Internal Revenue National Office, $2,807,854
  • Birmingham- Internal Revenue National Office, $126,702
  • Birmingham- Mine Safety Health Administration, $1,699,269
  • Huntsville-Government Accountability Office, $68,611

The list also includes the closure of Fort Payne’s National Park Service office but lists the total savings at $0.

The annual cost to lease the office is $78,171, according to the site.

Representatives for U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala. told AL.com Tuesday that House Ways and Means Committee Democrats obtained a document indicating that the Trump Administration is terminating the leases of seven IRS offices in Alabama including two in Birmingham.

In a post to X, Sewell said that “This will make it much harder for working class Alabamians to get help filing their taxes!”

Sewell also spoke out against recent cuts to Birmingham Social Security offices that impacted at least 100 federal employees across multiple states.

“Elon Musk’s reckless power trip is directly threatening the livelihoods of my constituents,” she wrote in a post to X.

“This madness must stop!”

While DOGE cuts have already started to impact the state’s workforce, there has been trouble verifying the validity of the department’s savings claims.

Kenneth Stripling, district director of the Wage and Hour Division in Mobile, said he was not aware of any lease termination and said their offices remained “open and ready to serve the public.”

And Congressman Robert Aderholt’s office recently told Alabama Daily News that the Jasper and Cullman Social Security offices are open and will remain open, despite DOGE’s claim that their leases will be terminated.

“The adjustments being made involve the cancellation of lease agreements covering hearing spaces, not the areas used for day-to-day operations,” Aderholt, R-Haleyville, told Alabama Daily News in a statement.

“These changes will not affect the ability of residents to access Social Security services at these locations.”

Dustin Gautney, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District also told AL.com previously that without an address, the Corps’ real estate division is unable to pinpoint what lease is referenced on the DOGE website.

Gautney later reached out to clarify that the Corps did not say DOGE didn’t terminate a lease of which it may have been the initial leasing agent.

“We just cannot confirm or deny based on the data provided,” he said.

The Corps of Engineers Mobile District manages real estate for the military all over the Gulf Coast region, Gautney said, so it’s difficult to know what the lease is related to.

Around a year ago, the Corps did terminate a lease with the U.S. General Services Administration for the second story of a federally owned building on St. Michael Street in downtown Mobile. The approximate square footage the Corps leased was 24,000 square feet.

The building was used by the federal court system until 2020, and since then has been used by several federal agencies, Gautney said.

But the lease was terminated prior to the creation of DOGE, which was created via executive order after President Donald Trump was inaugurated last month and therefore could not have been involved with the lease termination.

A recent NPR analysis found that the site overestimates DOGE’s $105 billion government spending slash, which has more than doubled since last week, by several billion dollars.

“Six other current and former federal contracting officers who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation say that the DOGE savings page is misleading the public with the data it includes — like overemphasizing the maximum possible value of contracts cancelled — as well as with what it leaves out, they say, like how much has already been budgeted and spent to fulfill the contract,” NPR’s Stephen Fowler writes.

Although he said he hasn’t heard any news about the predicted lease terminations in his district, Rep. Philip Ensler, D-Montgomery, is concerned about how the loss of these federal offices could impact the community.

“In general, the federal DOGE firings are of deep concern to many residents in my district as they are having a devastating impact on middle class Americans, communities, and important government functions,” he wrote in a statement to AL.com.

“If these cuts happen in Montgomery, it would be deeply hurtful to many hard-working residents, our local economy, and potentially to government services.”

Efforts to reach all of the federal offices included in the list above, with the exception of Mobile’s Wage and Hour Division, were not immediately successful.