The Keeper of the House

The House of Representatives took a break this week, but Dan Beard's job is never done.

BlackBerry broken? Dan's your man.

Upholstery ripped on the congressman's favorite chair? You know who to call.

Raise didn't show up in this month's check? Yep, it's Dan's signature on the 10,000 paychecks issued from the House.

Beard is the new chief administrative officer for the House, a title that doesn't quite convey his role in keeping the equivalent of a small, rarefied city running.

He's the guy you never hear about who roams the deep tunnels of the Capitol complex, supervising the drapery makers and upholsterers, making sure the 250 computer techs get the 1 million daily e-mails smoothly to and from users, and directing the three cafeterias and the private members' dining room.

And that's not the half of it.

Under his purview are 125,000 pieces of furniture, 7,000 BlackBerrys, 15,000 laptops, 5,800 parking places, 11,500 phones and what may be the last working horsehair picker in America. (More on that later.) "When you look at a job on paper, it's one thing -- but this job has tentacles that keep going in all directions all the time," said Beard, 64, a grandfather who decided to scrap his third try at retirement when offered the job by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Beard said that if there is a mayor of Capitol Hill, the administrative officer would be the city manager.

Beard is an officer of the House, elected by the members to the patronage post, which pays $160,000 a year. It was created in 1995 by the new Republican majority and has grown in scope over the years.

All told, Beard oversees a $1.5 billion House operating budget in a glorious but antiquated building, still governed by arcane rules and laws. "I think the biggest challenge has been to bring modern technology and modern business practices to an institution that still has many 19th-century traditions and ways of operating," he said.

"There are curious laws that were passed to address a particular problem at a particular time," he said, "and now when you reflect back on them, they don't make any sense."

He is exasperated, for instance, that he is required by law to pay Hill staffers monthly on the last day of the month and to pay legislators on the first of the month -- instead of doing payroll once every two weeks. But congressional pay has long been a touchy issue among the elected officials and, Beard says, "when you bring up pay, it's difficult because everyone gets wrapped around the axle."

"You have to take political imperatives into account in just about everything you do," he said -- quite challenging, he adds, with 440 demanding bosses (voting and nonvoting members of the House). "You don't get here unless you are an outgoing individual, and these are 440 people who are not shy about letting me know when they have a problem. . . . And saying no is difficult in this institution -- always has been."

Beard had recently left a job at Booz Allen Hamilton and had settled briefly into retirement when after the election he heard from Pelosi's chief of staff, John Lawrence, with whom he had once worked in the office of Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a close Pelosi ally. Lawrence told Beard he was well suited to the demanding job.

One of Beard's first mandates was to develop a preliminary report recommending how to make the House complex more energy efficient and eco-friendly. To that end, he will eventually outfit 17,000 lamps with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Among other options, he has his sights set on reducing the number of cars that come into the parking garage daily. (Another tough one to take on!) In addition, Pelosi directed him to try to reduce the wait list for the House day-care center. "What I want to do is try and develop a good benefits package that will give employees a reason to stay here and make this a profession, not just a pass-through place for young people," says Beard. "We need better day care, tuition reimbursement. We offer no short-term disability, . . . don't have dental, eye care."

Now in his fourth month on the job, he recently gave a visitor a tour of his stomping grounds, complete with a meal in the packed Longworth House Office Building cafeteria. Walking through the tunnels that a layman would never find, one sees a draperies workroom with massive bolts of red and blue fabrics lining the walls, a recording studio with 20 monitors from which House employees direct C-SPAN coverage, and a work space for refinishing and recovering furniture.

Which bring us back to the horsehair picker, a shaky wood and metal contraption tucked away in a dark stuffy room that -- yes -- picks horsehair.

As it turns out, virtually all the upholstered furniture in the House is stuffed with horsehair. Instead of acquiring new furniture and new fillers, the old hair is hand-fed and refluffed in this 50-year-old machine and then restuffed into old frames. It is a time-consuming process, and there has been talk over the years of doing away with the machine.

But this item clearly brings Beard joy, as he explains its intricacies and history. Suffice it to say, this is one thing he has no interest in updating.