From the 2026 budget audit
Building maintenance is a market service — so why does the Academy run it in-house at your expense?
A 3,374.1 million Ft in-house facilities operation replaces a competitively tendered contract price with an administrative one — with no test of whether the in-house unit is cheaper.
Roughly 820 Ft per taxpayer per year — 3,374.1 million Ft for building maintenance that any private firm tenders competitively.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the Academy's buildings maintained by its own staff under an administered budget. The unseen: the competitive market price that a tendered contract would reveal — and the difference, if any, that falls on taxpayers as an unexamined overhead.
Objection
"In-house teams know the buildings better and are more reliable than contractors."
Answer
That may be true for some specialist functions. It is an argument to test in a competitive tender, not to assume without one. A four-year phase-out to competitive contracting converts the unpriced internal cost into a tendered price — and staff with general facilities trades have direct employment options with the firms that win the contracts.
Share if you think the state should test whether in-house costs are competitive before locking them in for decades.
The analyst's verdict
MTA Facilities Management Centre
Rationale
A facilities-management centre is not a research function and not a function of a learned society — it is a property-services operation: building maintenance, utilities, estate administration for the MTA's real estate. Property services are the most thoroughly contestable activity in this chapter. A market in commercial facilities management exists; building maintenance, cleaning, security, and estate administration are bought competitively by private firms and public bodies alike, and the price the market quotes for them is observable. An in-house centre with 1,122.9 millió Ft of personnel cost replaces that observable price with an administrative one — there is no test of whether the in-house unit delivers the service at or below what a competitively tendered contract would cost. This is the recurring pattern across the budget where the state owns an internal services unit: the function survives not because the in-house arrangement is demonstrably efficient but because the unit is already there and its staff depend on it. Phasing the centre out and contracting facilities management competitively converts an unpriced internal cost into a tendered one and exposes it to the discipline of rival bids. The four-year horizon reflects the realistic time to run a procurement, transition building-by-building, and honour the notice and severance owed to permanent staff.
Transition mechanism
Severance-with-overlap on the payroll component. The payroll component is the personnel line plus employer contributions: 1,122.9 + 171.1 = 1,294.0 millió Ft. Affected staff keep their full salary for a 24-month transition window and may take private-sector employment — including with the facilities contractors who win the MTA's tenders — during that window, keeping both incomes. The non-payroll operating and capital components (1,990.6 millió Ft operating, 89.5 millió Ft capital) are not protected by severance: as buildings move onto competitively tendered contracts the in-house operating spend is replaced by contract prices, which the framework expects to come in at or below the current administered figure. The schedule below treats the bridge as the payroll component held for the first two years, with the line reaching full saving once severance ends and the estate is fully on tendered contracts.
Affected groups
Facilities-management staff — on the order of a few dozen employees, with general labour-market skills (maintenance trades, estate administration, security coordination) that transfer directly to private facilities firms, which is why severance-with-overlap rather than a longer bridge is the appropriate protection. The MTA's buildings themselves are unaffected — the service continues under contract rather than in-house.
Free Society Institute
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