The National Nuclear Security Administration’s work may be hindered by a congressionally mandated cap on federal employees, a former agency official said Wednesday.
Madelyn Creedon, who served as the agency’s principal deputy administrator from 2014 to Jan. 20, noted that Congress directed a cap of 1,690 federal employees for the NNSA, excluding the offices of Naval Reactors and Secure Transportation. “NNSA needs relief from this cap . . . to manage current programs,” Creedon said during the ExchangeMonitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. She retired from public service the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In prepared remarks delivered during a 2015 House hearing, Creedon noted that the NNSA’s federal staffing levels were reduced to this level in 2010 from a high of 1,935, while “the amount of work has increased substantially as we keep the stockpile safe, secure, and reliable without explosive nuclear testing.”
This week, Creedon said increasing that cap by 100 employees “would make a significant difference.”
“There’s a huge amount of work coming down the pike . . . but with this cap on the federal employees, it makes it very hard for NNSA to do all the things that Congress has required of it,” she said, without discussing details of the work. Another problem, Creedon added, is the slow security clearance process for new personnel.
The NNSA spends close to $10 billion per year on its nuclear weapons operations, centered around national laboratories such as Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California, along with production sites including the Pantex warhead assembly and disassembly plant in Texas.
Trump, shortly after taking office, ordered a hiring freeze for all civilian federal positions, with the exception of those related to national security and public safety.
NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said Wednesday at the conference that this hiring freeze applies to the agency, but that “we are in the process of working out with the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management what the rules are in terms of using that [national security] exemption, if we need to use that exemption.”
Regardless, observers have argued that a freeze on federal hiring is unlikely to significantly impact the operations at NNSA sites across the country.
