LANL DIRECTOR FORMS PANEL TO OVERSEE SPENDING CUTS

By ExchangeMonitor

With his lab facing a potential budget shortfall of $200 million, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan has established a senior executive panel to oversee the lab’s belt tightening. McMillan said in a memo to employees last week that he was forming a Laboratory Integrated Stewardship Council that will be headed up by lab Executive Director Rich Marquez that will make staffing and spending decisions and approvals “in order to keep Laboratory spending in line with the budget realities we face.” The panel will include leaders from the lab’s five principal directorates: Alan Bishop (Science, Technology and Engineering), Bret Knapp (Weapons), Terry Wallace (Global Security), Carl Beard (Operations and Business), and Paul Henry (Capital Projects). McMillan said the panel would operate through the end of Fiscal Year 2012 and would make decisions for all hiring and procurements over $100,000. “The LISC is tasked with bringing prudent financial management to our current budget situation while at the same time ensuring that we continue to meet our national security mission and research and development assignments,” McMillan said in the memo.

The memo mentioned nothing about any layoffs at the lab, and McMillan was clear in his memo that the purpose of the panel was to mitigate the impact of the uncertain budget situation facing the National Nuclear Security Administration and the lab. “I recognize that this will require us to start making harder choices in our spending actions, but it is necessary in our current economic climate,” McMillan wrote. “We must be aggressive in our management of costs early in the fiscal year to avoid having to take more drastic actions later.”

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