ith the signing of the Treasury, Postal Service and general government appropriations bill last November, many thousands of federal employees who work in the agencies it covers breathed a sigh of relief. For them, there would be only one furlough and no more disruptions in pay. But the news was not so good at one small agency funded by the bill, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Unfortunately for the dozen or so ACIR employees, the bill contained a provision cutting its 1996 budget to just a third of the usual level and requiring the agency to proceed toward closure.
ACIR remains deep in the thickets of fiscal doom, but its struggle to survive is instructive. Unlike many agencies, ACIR has two distinct advantages: a permanent authorization and the ability to accept money from outside sources, mainly state governments, as well as authority to carry over that money from year to year. The permanent authorization proved to be of little help at first, however, because the Office of Management and Budget interpreted the appropriations bill language as meaning that the agency could not continue in operation even if outside funding were available.
The agency's initial efforts focused on striking the close-down language from the appropriations bill. If this obstacle could be removed, then with the permanent authorization and the ability to raise non-appropriated money, longer-term survival might be possible. The strategy pursued was to promise to ask for no money in the future in exchange for the removal of the requirement to close.
With the 1996 budget a tangle, there was little progress on either front, so ACIR shifted gears and focused on its authorization. Perhaps the agency could be reauthorized with a more specific, narrow, and even temporary purpose that could meet some need perceived by Congress. Thus the agency focused on special purpose legislation with limited authority and directed and temporary appropriations. As of this writing, ACIR is being considered for inclusion as a research entity to help conduct a study of the gaming industry. Prospects for this bill, and thus for ACIR, were uncertain in early July. To ensure ACIR's servoces don't disappear completely should the gaming bill fail, agency supporters are now working to establish a nonprofit research institute to carry on ACIR's work.
The main lesson of ACIR's experience is focus. The agency tried to keep the whole loaf if possible, but steadily labored to keep smaller and smaller slices in lieu of nothing. ACIR may not succeed even in this quest, but this need not be true for other programs.
NEXT STORY: Reconsidering Downsizing