NNSA GOVERNANCE PANEL TO HOLD FIRST MEETING IN EARLY SEPTEMBER

The 12-member panel assembled to study governance options for the National Nuclear Security Administration will meet for the first time in early September, study co-chairman Norm Augustine told NW&M Monitor. The long-delayed study’s first meeting will take place in Washington, D.C., but the final date has not been set, Augustine, the former Lockheed Martin CEO, said in an email exchange. Augustine and study co-chairman Richard Mies, the retired admiral who served as the head of U.S. Strategic Command, have been in contact for months, but the beginning of the study was delayed due to complications from a Continuing Resolution and sequestration while the Pentagon lined up funding for the panel.

The panel was initially required to complete a final report by Feb. 1, 2014, but House and Senate lawmakers drafted language in the FY 2014 version of the National Defense Authorization Act to extend the study. Currently, the language says an interim report is due Oct. 1, and a final version of the study is due March 1, 2014, but those dates are likely to be modified again due to the panel’s late start. Augustine said the panel will hash out a schedule at its September meeting, but he said the panel was definitely planning site visits and hearings. “Our official schedule is not fixed at the moment due to delays from continuing resolutions, sequestration, etc., however you can roughly ‘restart’ the legislated schedule to early August,” he said.