piner@pur-phy.UUCP (Richard Piner) (10/20/86)
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 1986 3:25 PM EDT Msg: OGIG-2393-8457
From: RPARK
To: WHATSNEW
WHAT'S NEW, 17 October 1986 Washington, DC
1. FACULTY SALARIES IN NSF GRANTS SHOULD BE CUT BACK in the
view of NSF Director Erich Bloch, according to the Policy Office
of the Division of Contracts and Grants. The Director's policy
has not, however, "been promulgated formally into the NSF grants
system." In an "Important Notice to Presidents of Universities
and Colleges and Heads of Other NSF Grantee Organizations," dated
13 Feb 86 (WN 21 Feb 86), Bloch warned that if Reagan's FY 87
budget request of $1.685B for NSF was not passed "We would be
forced to consider additional actions such as elimination of
Principle Investigator salary support." More recently, an
11 Sep 86 letter to the same people exhorted them to contact
Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees to
urge restoration of as much as possible of the $150M cut imposed
by the House (WN 1 Aug 86). The letter enumerated all sorts of
plagues that would otherwise befall the science community, but
did not specifically mention PI salaries. In the meantime, the
Senate Appropriations Committee voted for the full request with a
little extra thrown in for education (WN 19 Sep 86). A
House-Senate compromise has since been reached at about $1.63B,
which is really pretty good.
Nevertheless, several program directors at NSF are issuing
grants based on elimination of faculty salaries, on a case by
case basis. There have been several cases in recent weeks. The
grantee institution is given the option of removing faculty
salaries from the proposal or refusing the grant. Implementation
of this policy is apparently being left to the discretion of the
individual program directors.
In fact, the lack of a uniform NSF policy on academic year
salaries has been a source of bitter contention for years. In
practice, engineers have been given academic year salary support
from grants, while physicists have not, except for those
physicists at one of a few elite institutions such as MIT.
2. THE FATE OF THE FY 87 BUDGET IS AT THIS MINUTE UNCERTAIN.
Information is hard to obtain since government switchboards are
being shut down all over Washington as federal workers are sent
home, but apparently the Senate is still deadlocked over matters
of relative insignificance. In particular the "King of Pork",
Senator Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), is stubbornly persisting in his
efforts to buy jet trainers that are built in New York, whether
anyone wants them or not. Senator Goldwater (R-AZ), Chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, however, is having none of
it. Anticipating that the deadlock would last throughout the
night and lacking legal authority to pay them, non-essential
federal employees have been sent home.
Robert L. Park (202) 232-0189
The American Physical Society