Mr. DIXON. And just one further question. Mr. Young asked you about the salaries of officers and employees and expenditures. Of the $83 million, $11.2 million has been spent. Is that the total expenditure, or is there just some that isn't in that figure? It seems very low, working on an $83 million budget. Mr. ANFINSON. That was, that is total appropriations, so that is personnel as well as nonpersonnel budget for the year. However, only $11 million has been spent through the first 3 months. FY '96 SPENDING DISCUSSION Mr. DIXON. Only $11 million actually has been spent. Mr. ANFINSON. That is correct. Mr. DIXON. In the first 3 months. Mr. FAULKNER. Yes. Mr. DIXON. And so there are no outstanding bills. In other words, what I am saying is, if you were to multiply this by 4, it would come out to like $50 million. Mr. ANFINSON. There are other expenditures that are anticipated later in the year. Contractual and other things that may not have hit yet, but will hit later on. Mr. FAULKNER. But I guess his question is, is this a fully encumbered number? Mr. DIXON. Right. Mr. ANFINSON. This is actual amount that is disbursed, not obligated, but disbursed. Mr. FAULKNER. So an obligated number might be higher. Mr. DIXON. So an obligated number would be higher than this. Mr. ANFINSON. Once we establish our new financial system, which we will talk about later, we will have the capability of tracking funds. Mr. DIXON. Mr. Young commented about how it is quite a low figure here, but there are obviously some funds that are not in this number. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. OVERTIME ESTIMATE FOR CLERK OF THE HOUSE Mr. PACKARD. One last question that I would have. How is your agency-how are you dealing with overtime? I didn't see any listed in your-it is listed as zero, and I was just wondering if you have addressed that. Ms. CARLE. We tracked the previous 12 months of what our overtime would have been under the new law, and that ended up being $372,908, if we had paid it in the last year. We are taking certain management steps, I think, that will reduce that number as we look at 1997, but I think it will be an equally busy year. Ours is so driven by the legislative floor hours. I think it will be a lower number. I still think it will be a significant number, but we are anticipating that within the budget that we have in front of you now. Mr. PACKARD. So you do intend to comply and then the figures will you feel this budget proposal absorbs whatever you feel the overtime cost will be? Please submit details for the record. [The information follows:] Question. At this point in the record, please submit a detailed table which reflects your budget comparisons with the current FY 1996 budget, and indicate overtime and FTE changes. Response. The information follows: 24-564 96-3 Ms. CARLE. Yes. I think last year was as significantly a busy year as you would have, so that could be a high watermark, and as I said, the $372,908, we can get that lower, but it is still going to be a significant amount of money. Mr. PACKARD. Are you requesting any additional FTEs? Ms. CARLE. The six for the new office, the new House Employment Counsel. When added to other reductions, it is an increase of one FTE. Mr. PACKARD. I wonder, Ed, if that will-if we will see a reflection of the reduction in FTEs as we have transferred some of these responsibilities from other areas. Ms. CARLE. No. Mr. PACKARD. This is a new office, okay. You mentioned that you absorbed transfers from other parts of the House, and thus this budget is higher. Ms. CARLE. Yes. Mr. PACKARD. Will we see reductions in those areas? I guess that is what I am questioning. You will reflect savings in other areas as we transfer responsibilities? OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE FISCAL IMPACT Mr. FAULKNER. One part of it was the Office of Compliance that we had funded in 1996 as the start-up, which is now all moved into a separate account, so that reflects through our legislative side. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Young. Mr. YOUNG. For the Office of Compliance, what is it going to cost us in overtime to fund the Office of Compliance? What is it going to cost the taxpayer to have this new compliance regulation? Mr. ANFINSON. There was an estimate made, Mr. Young. I don't recall the exact amount, around $2.5 million, I believe, to operate the Office of Compliance, which is separate from the House budget, and funds were transferred in for the operation of that for 1996. Mr. PACKARD. Is that in addition to what we are going to see in each individual agency as they comply? Mr. FAULKNER. Entirely possible, because we are already-we are starting to track and starting to include the staff hours that have already gone into developing personnel policies, both for the different officers of the House as well as models from the Oversight Committee to Member offices. When you start to look at the compliance training going on and, the fact that the employees of the House ultimately should sit through either actual presentations or watch videotapes to understand all of the different aspects of compliance, it could be a fairly large number. It is obviously at this point we are, within 1996, we are absorbing those costs, but when you start to have people who are making X amount of dollars a year sitting for maybe anywhere from 1 to 12 hours of time in the classroom, even if that is done over a period of weeks, that is a cost. Mr. YOUNG. Are you talking about special orders when you talk about having staff sit and watch or listen? POTENTIAL COST OF COMPLIANCE Mr. FAULKNER. We are looking at the issue that if someone wants to learn about sexual harassment or how to take care of compensatory time, either through comp time or payment of overtime, that there are videotapes and there are trainings that have been occurring since before Christmas, and when you start to say a person, let's say, making $30,000 a year on a per-hour basis, if they are sitting in on that, then they are doing that instead of working on constituent mail or working on a new piece of legislation. So that is what you could start to extrapolate into a cost of compliance that we have not budgeted yet. It is now just being absorbed. OVERTIME IMPACT FROM SPECIAL ORDERS Ms. CARLE. The issue of special orders, for instance, is something that we have contemplated in this budget, and since last year was a high watermark, I think that we are ahead of that. Mr. YOUNG. If you get a break in-some extra time, without reverting to additional overtime, would you give us an idea of what last year's calendar year 1995-what those special orders would have cost had we been paying overtime under the compliance as we will in 1996? Don't create any overtime to do this; but, if you can, I would be curious. Ms. CARLE. This is a question that has actually already been asked of my office, and we don't break down the special orders' time. It is not broken out as a time within the record, and so we can get some broad numbers. But one of the areas where we actually have been able to start to manage a little bit better in terms of what our overtime hours would be is within the Office of Official Reporters. Because we are doing quite a bit of cross training in that shop and people are able to work in more regular hours because we can put people on shifts a little bit better because we have people that can do both now. So we are already seeing some reduction that way in terms of how we would have to deal with overtime. Mr. YOUNG. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Wicker? Mr. WICKER. No. ELECTRONIC INFORMATION FOR MEMBERS Mr. PACKARD. In your statement-in your prepared statement, you have addressed, I think very well, your efforts to move more and more toward electronic information for the Members; and I applaud you for that because that is certainly a direction that we have tried to encourage in every agency. But are you not duplicating some of the efforts that are being done over at the Library of Congress in much of the same area and have you discussed or coordinated with them what they are doing and what you are doing? Ms. CARLE. Well, the Library of Congress does have a report out now that perhaps you are making reference to. What we are doing in terms of electronic information and computerization is creating the product. A lot of what they are doing is the dissemination of that product. So the work that has been under way here in the last year in terms of Bill 2,000 and the electronic Congressional Record project, those kinds of things I am seeing a lot of forward motion. |