Border Trade Alliance (BTA) is stunned that the most determined member of this Administration committed to building more capacity at our nations ports of entry has resigned. Lurita Doan, Administrator of U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), has single handedly energized a moribund national effort to build more lanes, inspection booths, bridges, and ports of entry all in an effort to speed the flow of legitimate trade and travelers across our borders.
In a press-release issued by GSA today, Administrator Doan states, “It has been a great privilege to serve our nation and a great President. The past twenty-two months have been filled with accomplishments: together, we have regained our clean audit opinion, restored fiscal discipline, re-tooled our ability to respond to emergencies, rekindled entrepreneurial energies, reduced bureaucratic barriers to small companies to get a GSA Schedule, ignited a building boom at our nation’s ports of entries, boldly led the nation in an aggressive telework initiative, and improved employee morale so that we were selected as one of the best places to work in the Federal government. These accomplishments are made even more enjoyable by the fact that there were lots of people who told us they could never be done. I have great faith in the abilities of GSA’s dedicated team.”
At the recent BTA International Conference - “Understanding Wait-Times: Border Delays’ Impact on Trade”, Administrator Doan outlined GSA strategies and commitments to improving our nation’s land ports of entry (POE) in an effort to mitigate or eliminate delays affecting cross-border trade and travel, while improving security. GSA’s commitment to our borders under Doan’s leadership was a landmark development in border region and national efforts to address the overburdened and aging infrastructure at these critical POEs. For her trans-formative leadership, BTA awarded Lurita Doan the prestigious “Friend of the Americas Award.”
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