It is safe to say that fiscal year 1996 has been an "interesting" year thus far. The budget battle between Congress and the White House shut down parts of the federal government-including the National Science Foundation-for a total of four weeks. The "Blizzard of 1996" followed the second shutdown, immobilizing transportation and closing the government for four more days. Despite these inconveniences, National Science Foundation staff have been working to ameliorate the effects of the furloughs on investigators. Eortunately, all LTER continuing increments for FY96 have been processed, although some delays have resulted from the furloughs.
Nevertheless, as of early April, NSF still does not have its FY96 budget in hand, even though the fiscal year officially began October 1, 1995. The latest (the 12th at press time) continuing resolution provided NSF with funding at the House and Senate conference levels, prorated until April 24, 1996. Yet, because the agency remains under a continuing resolution, we are still unable to develop detailed spending plans for the remainder of this year. The next resolution, which was scheduled to begin April 25, may provide NSF with funding at the House and Senate conference levels through FY96. If and when that happens, it will take about a month for final budget numbers to filter down to the programs.
There is strong support for the LTER Program in the Division of Environmental Biology and the Biological Sciences Directorate. In spite of recent budget reductions in the LTER Program, we are hoping to restore those funds and even to increase the LTER site budgets through supplements and other funding opportunities, such as the Cross-Site Competition held in 1995. We also would like to bring the core funding levels up as soon as possible. It is worth noting, however, that the current federal budget projections do not indicate that NSF will see budget increases in the future. Therefore, finding additional money for LTER will be more and more difficult over time.
Scott Collins, Program OWCET, Long-Term Projects Division of Environmental Biology, NSF
Current and detailed information on NSF's FY 1997 Budget Request is available through the agency's home page at http://www.nsf.gov/