The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) voted against approving submission of a preliminary fiscal 2020 budget request to the White House Office of Management and Budget after three of the four board members questioned whether the document reflected the agency’s funding and staffing needs, according to a recently published voting decision.
On Oct. 17, the DNFSB members voted 2-1 against approving a preliminary fiscal 2020 budget request. Acting DNFSB Chairman Bruce Hamilton voted in favor of the proposal, Joyce Connery and Daniel Santos were opposed, and Jessie Hill Roberson abstained.
The vote record did not say how much funding the DNFSB is seeking overall for 2020, or how much members who disapproved of the request believe is necessary. The board has a roughly $30 million budget for the current fiscal year.
In the recently published comments, members centered their remarks on proposed DNFSB staffing levels for the 2020 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2019. The board has been attempting to cut its number of full-time-equivalent staffers to about 80 from the current 100. Congress has blocked the DNFSB from using fiscal 2019 funding to cut heads, but the board is free to propose a reduction in 2020.
“To agree to a policy of a reduction in numbers through attrition without an accompanying analysis that demonstrates the ability to accomplish the mission with reduced staffing seems irresponsible,” Connery wrote in a comment appended to her vote.
Roberson said the preliminary 2020 budget request allocated too much funding to “administrative overhead,” which she said clashed with the DNFSB’s drive “to evaluate and reduce contract management and staffing in the Technical organization.” Most of the personnel reductions Hamilton proposed to the DNFSB over the summer — cuts Roberson voted to approve — would be made in the Office of the Technical Director.
Federal agencies usually submit their preliminary budget requests for the next government fiscal year to the White House around Labor Day each year. The White House office provides the agencies with its comments on those requests around Thanksgiving, then submits its final budget request to Congress in February. The federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
