The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) voted against 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 board had not scheduled another vote on its 2020 budget request as of Thursday, a spokesperson wrote in an email to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
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 reduce its number of full-time-equivalent staffers to about 80 from the current 100. This could be done entirely through voluntary separations, Hamilton has said. 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.
The DNFSB office employs about 80 percent of the agency’s workforce It is responsible for the nuts-and-bolts safety inspections and reporting on which the board bases its safety recommendations for Department of Energy nuclear cleanup and operations facilities.
Federal agencies usually submit their preliminary budget requests for the next government fiscal year to the White House around Labor Day each year. The Office of Management and Budget provides the agencies with its comments on those requests around Thanksgiving, then submits its final budget request to Congress in February.
The misfire on the 2020 budget request happened not long before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general warned that the board still faced challenges improving morale in fiscal 2019.
“[E]mployee morale at DNFSB is low and has been for the past several years,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inspector general wrote in the Oct. 23 report, titled Inspector General’s Assessment of the Most Serious Management and Performance Challenges Facing The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) In Fiscal Year (FY) 2019. “Low employee morale and the lack of Board collegiality are significant organizational challenges for DNFSB.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission IG also covers the DNFSB, which does not have its own inspector general.
