Somerset office used for 9/11 education slated for DOGE termination
A downtown Somerset office leased by the U.S. National Park Service for Flight 93 and 9/11 education is being targeted for the chopping block by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
On the DOGE website, the Somerset office appears under the “leases” section, where it’s one of 643 terminations meant to achieve about $291 million in savings.
The Somerset building is 2,361 square feet and costs $29,693 per year to lease. The DOGE website lists the lease termination date as March 3.
Though the downtown Somerset office doesn’t have employees there on a daily basis, the space is used for meetings on a biweekly and monthly basis, according to the Pennsylvania National Park Service.
About 60 full-time employees and another approximately 20 seasonal employees from five parks use the space.
The building is considered a distance-learning center for the Flight 93 National Memorial. Rangers can produce live broadcasts in a studio there to educate children in schools around the globe, according to the National Park Service.
The Park Service did not return TribLive’s request for comment about the possible impacts of the lease termination.
Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.
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