WRD "field notes" [formerly, "notes from the program office] To: "A - Division Chief and Staff", "B - Branch Chiefs and Offices", "DC - All District Chiefs" cc: "Wendy E Norton, Program Analyst, Reston, VA" , "Joanne C Taylor, Secretary (Typing), Reston, VA" , "Janet N Arneson, Secretary (Typing), Reston, VA" , jmcneal@usgs.gov, tsaunder@usgs.gov Subject: WRD "field notes" [formerly, "notes from the program office] Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 10:35:27 -0500 From: "James G Peters, Acting Program Officer, Reston, VA" Note 29 Greetings, once again: It's been a while since we've sent you some news so here's our next installment. The news media around "the beltway" have been focused on the Republican primaries and have spent very little time on budget issues. But in Tuesday's Washington Post, Newt Gingrich is quoted as being optimist about an agreement on the FY96 budget. The apparent new interest in compromise comes from recently released economic information that projects a less-than-rosey near-term future for the economy based somewhat on the budget stalemate. Mr. Gringrich apparently believes this information will stimulate teh President to be more flexible on budget issues. Congress and the White House are discussing a possible "omnibus" appropriation bill to cover all remaining agencies without approved appropriations for FY96. So, although having CR's for the remainder of the year, as described in Gordie's latest Benchmark Notes, is still a real probability, a signed appropriation bill is not out of the question. We may have to wait until closer to March 15th, the date the current CR runs out, for more information. As for the FY97 budget process, the Bureau has received its "passback" from OMB. It enables the USGS to submit a budget request to Congress that is equivalent to the Conference report for FY96, plus a $5M increase to National Mapping Division for some sort of classified mapping assignment. For WRD, this means that our total budget in FY97, if unchanged by Congress, would look very similar to the FY96 conference budget. On a related note, the 97 budget contains six new bureau initiatives. How each division participates in the initiatives is being discussed in the implementation teams for each initiatives. Bob is developing a message to the field explaining the ways in which districts can participate in both ongoing work and with some limited new funding for the initatives. He hopes to have information out in the next few weeks. Our first FY97 Congressional budget hearing is scheduled to be with the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on Interior, chaired by Congressman Regula, on March 20th. Just 2 days before our hearing (3/18), the President is scheduled to publicly announce his FY97 budget. We have heard that the Hearing on teh 20th may be the only one we have this year. Recall that we had three hearings last year. Actually, having only one hearing is much more common for USGS. We expect that a large amount of hearing time will be spent discussing issues related to the merger of NBS and BOM with USGS and proportionately less time spent discussing programs. Following a meeting with Central Region District Chiefs, Jack has asked me to summarize the recent activity related to flood supplementals. Understandably, there is some confusion about the several different requests for flood information coming out Reston lately. Hopefully, I can clear some of it up. A few weeks ago Bob asked Tom Yorke and his staff to put together some information on our districts' expenses related to floods in FY94 and 95 as background information to developing a Division policy on funding flood work in the future. This exercise is still going on and presumably will lead to some ways in which the districts and the division can prepare for flood expenses with or without supplemental appropriations. Clearly, relying exclusively on supplemental appropriations has proven to be unacceptable. Soon after this request, the DOI announced a plan to submit a supplemental funding request to Congress for expenses resulting from Hurricanes Marilyn and Opel and recent floods in the Pacific Northwest and the east coast. In responding to this request, Tom sent out another request to affected districts for expenses related to these events. We went through several iterations with DOI on how much we could request and what could be included. The final amount we were allowed to request was about $1.2M out of nearly $2.2M submitted by the affected districts. We have since heard that the DOI request package for all bureaus has gone forward to Congress. We are awaiting word on how it's faring. As soon as we hear we'll alert you as to how much we receive, if any, and how much goes to each affected district. That's it for now. Let me know if you have topics you'd like more info. about.....