From: Brown, Robert C.
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 5:05 PM
To: Burns, Bill; Williams, Charles; Marx, Rebecca; Conrardy, Tom; Bland, Mike; Pickett, Diane; Lockenbach, Rebecca; King, Lynsey L.
Cc: Dusky, Roberta; Rook, Roger; Gray, Millie B.; Walters, Carol
Subject: Budget

Staff,

As you all know, the Governor’s budget was released yesterday and there are some changes that will impact our Bureau. I wanted to outline some of the changes and give my thoughts on what the impact might be and what we might expect in the coming months. Feel free to pass this along, it is not meant to be exclusionary in nature, but my caution would be that the budget is simply a starting point. I intend on entertaining any questions next week at the training event.

FCO – We sought and received $128 million. This is great news, and I am certain that there will be talk of this number moving slightly upward by the consulting community as they lobby for a larger portion of the IPTF. If it goes up, great, if not I am happy that we started at $128M and it sounds like it won’t go any lower (I am a realist and will let you all know everything that I hear).

Local Programs – We offered up a $2.1 million cut, and it was not included in the budget. This is the biggest win in the budget for us, and I hope that the number will either not change or go up as a result of future lobbying by both the counties and industry. With the screening program starting up next fiscal year, this would have been devastating.

Tanks Compliance – We offered up a $2.5 million cut and it was included in the budget. This was not expected, and we offered no discouragement up our chain of command for this reduction. Bill and his staff and I will be very busy over the next month determining what the best course of action will be moving forward. We do have a plan to work with individually contracted (read: OPS) employees consisting of our existing universe of staff in the counties. How exactly this plan will work out will be determined soon. I would anticipate that the local governments will make a lot of noise over this issue, and if you hear any of it, please direct them to me or Linda Frohock.

Special Category – We offered up slight reductions for York and DOH that are mostly ministerial as the cuts are similar to the reductions that have been taken on the contracts during the past several fiscal years. The only major impact I see is potentially a perception issue (cutting private well sampling) and the increase in CDFs that will be processed by York with the screening project. We will need to monitor the contract closely to ensure that we are not inching towards putting us in a bind.

Positions – The Division offered 4 positions (two of which were ours – ESII on Team 2 and EII on Team 3), and the Governor included a total of 9 positions. We have no idea which positions they are, but we have been assured that they have all been vacant for at least 120 days. Our two new hires (Team 4 and Team 2 ESII positions) will not be affected and we should continue to move quickly in hiring. As soon as we see something in writing I will let you know if we have anything to be concerned about, but hopefully not. It is my intention to maximize our staff as much as possible to avoid future cuts.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with this opening posture, and think that we are in a good position to start. As usual, I foresee a rumor-filled, crazy session, but let’s cross our fingers that we make it out fairly unscathed. I will keep you all updated as we find out more information and continue to be at your service if you need to know anything.

Robert