The Hanford Advisory Board is asking the Department of Energy to increase its budget to allow more meetings, including sessions around the Pacific Northwest.
The federally chartered 32-seat board is tasked with offering advice on key Hanford Site cleanup issues to DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington state Ecology Department. It includes representatives from the Hanford workforce, environmental and business organizations, unions, and the public.
The board has reduced its schedule from five meetings in fiscal 2016 to four in fiscal 2017 to have enough money to conduct one of the meetings outside the Tri-Cities. The board also will have fewer committee meetings. In fiscal 2017 “we can’t afford to do everything we usually do,” said board member Bob Suyama. In earlier years, the board has held six full board meetings per year, with two of them outside the Tri-Cities in other Washington, Oregon, or Idaho communities. The board is requesting $590,000 in funding for fiscal 2018 and increases for inflation in later years.
In recent years the board has received an annual budget of about $450,000, close to the amount it had in 2006. That includes the current budget year, in which federal funding is frozen at fiscal 2016 levels under a continuing resolution through April 28.
Inflation has eaten away at the spending power of that amount. Before the budget dropped back to about $450,000 in 2013, it had been as high as about $600,000 in 2008. The board told DOE that having meetings outside the Tri-Cities in places such as Portland and Seattle allows for interaction with people in those communities and hear regional viewpoints. Only a few people have attended many past out-of-town board meetings. But Hanford Advisory Board members said they want to attract more people to meetings by having evening sessions focusing on timely topics.
