11 consistent with past practice. The installation of our air conditioning system in the early 1970's was funded by direct appropriations to the revolving fund. As you will recall, the Senate included funding for this system in its recommendation for GPO for FY 2000. FTE Level. We are requesting a statutory ceiling on employment of 3,260 FTE's. This is a decrease of 25 from the previous year, and reflects a reduction of 33 FTE's in the sales program with an increase of the 8 FTE's requested for the Superintendent of Documents Salaries and Expenses programs. As the attached chart shows, total GPO FTE's dropped 37 percent between FY 1990 and FY 2000, 35 percent in past eight years alone. GPO is now at its lowest employment point in the past century, principally due to our use of electronic information technology. ADDITIONAL ISSUES Legislative Changes. In addition to an extension of the early-out retirement/separation incentive authority, we are requesting a change to section 303 of Title 44, regarding the pay of the Public Printer and the Deputy Public Printer, in order to maintain pay parity with other comparable legislative branch officials as well as appropriate comparability with senior congressional staff. We have provided information on this matter to our legislative oversight committees and to this Subcommittee as well as its Senate counterpart. We are requesting a three-year extension of GPO's retirement/separation incentive authority that was provided in the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 1999 (P.L. 105-275). That authority, which includes early-out retirement and voluntary separation incentive (or buy-out) authorities, was provided for three years and is scheduled to expire at the end of this fiscal year. To date, 71 GPO employees have taken early-out retirements under this provision, resulting in an estimated $3.6 million in savings. While we have not offered buy-outs because circumstances have not warranted it, GPO may need to use such authority in the future in view of the ongoing inability of our documents sales program to recover its expenses, which are primarily personnel costs. To provide us with that management tool and permit us to continue achieving savings through early retirements, we are requesting an extension for another three years. We are requesting that the current expiration dates be amended, and propose the following language: Sec. Extension of Early Retirement and Voluntary Separation Incentive (a) Early Retirement-Section 309(b)(A) of the Legislative Branch (b) Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments.-Section 309(c)(2) of the Regarding pay levels, under 44 U.S.C. 303, the Public Printer's salary is set at Level III of the 12 believe these levels should be increased in order to restore parity with the pay of other legislative branch agency heads and deputies. Having begun Government service some 40 years ago and having served as Public Printer for the past eight years, I seek this change not for myself but for the office of Public Printer. Historically, most of the heads of the legislative branch agencies-the Public Printer, the Librarian of Congress, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, and the Architect of the Capitol have had pay parity. However, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 2000 (P.L. 106-57) increased the pay for the Librarian of Congress from Level III of the Executive Schedule to Level II ($145,100). The pay levels of the Deputy Librarian and the Director of CRS were increased from Level IV to Level III. Subsequently, the Omnibus Appropriations Act for FY 2000 (P.L. 106-113) increased the pay of the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from Level III to a “rate of pay equal to the lower of the highest rate of compensation of any officer in the House or Senate" ($143,600). The same act raised the rate of pay for the Deputy Director of CBO to the rate of pay of the Director less $1000. In my view, maintaining pay parity among legislative branch agency heads is justified by their leadership of congressional support agencies of great value to the daily operations of Congress. Accordingly, we are proposing the following language: Section 303 of title 44, U.S.C., is amended to read as follows: "The annual rate of pay for the Public Printer shall be a rate which is equal to the rate for level II of the Executive Schedule of subchapter II of chapter 53 of Title 5. The annual rate of pay for the Deputy Public Printer shall be a rate which is equal to the rate for level III of such Executive Schedule.' " Alternatively, Congress may wish to consider increasing the Public Printer and Deputy Public Printer pay levels to achieve parity with the pay for the Director and Deputy Director of CBO. Audit Recommendations Status Report. Consistent with the requirement contained in House Report 105-734, accompanying H.R. 4112, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1999, we have submitted the third and final annual report on the status of actions to implement the recommendations contained in the management audit of GPO, conducted in 1998 by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc. The latest report shows that GPO either plans to act, is currently acting, or has acted affirmatively on 77 percent of the recommendations contained in the Booz-Allen & Hamilton final audit report. These include recommendations on planning, program modernization, ensuring financial stability, promoting intra-agency communications, and improving information technology capabilities. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, this concludes my prepared statement, and I CONGRESSIONAL PRINTING Mr. TAYLOR. Well, thank you. Mr. DIMARIO. Although, my understanding is with the supplemental having passed, that the request is now $110.6 million. Is that correct? Mr. TAYLOR. No. Mr. DIMARIO. We continue with the original request? Mr. TAYLOR. Yes. Mr. DIMARIO. So it is $126.5 million. Mr. TAYLOR. Right. Thank you. And I appreciate your summarization. We will proceed to the questions from the entire committee. Last week, the House passed the $11.9 supplemental for the Congressional Printing and Binding account, that is in addition to the regular FY2001 appropriation of $73 million. What is the cause of the shortfall? Was Congress more active in terms of printing or did the costs rise or did the volume increase? Mr. DIMARIO. The volume that was requested by the Congress from us exceeded the amount of money that had been appropriated to us. As a consequence, we had to go into the next year's appropriation, which is a provision allowable in law and recommended by GAO a number of years ago. So we in fact moved into the 2001 appropriation in order to fund the 2000 shortfall of $9.9 million. Now we are asking to replenish that amount so that we bring our appropriations in line with the actual work Congress ordered from us. Mr. TAYLOR. How much material do you receive from Congress in an electronic format, which essentially is ready to be printed, and how much material do you need to rekey? Mr. DIMARIO. We receive a very, very substantial amount in electronic format from the Congress, but that fact does not in and of itself keep us from having to do additional work to get the material ready for publication or to put it online. We frequently have to proofread data that comes over. To the extent that Congress has made changes in it, we may have to key in those changes, as an example, to copy originally received in electronic format. We may be required to print extensions of remarks that are from a newspaper, material of that sort. We would key that in original format. There is a great deal of preparation that goes into putting a file together so that the database is created, both for printing and for electronic format. We attempt as much as possible to not redo anything that the Congress has already done. When Congress sends it over to us, our object is not to rekey it. In fact, we use the same material over and over again by pulling files from one area to another. As an example, if a bill has been filed on the House side, we may use that same bill on the Senate side if it has been introduced on the Senate side, thus saving costs of rekeying any of that material. We do proofing. About 20 years ago, we had 1,800 persons in our composition area doing keying and proofreading. We are down to 350 people at the present time. That is a direct result of the use of electronics to reduce the method by which we produce products for the Congress. So we have saved considerable monies over the to the Congress for funding would probably be in the magnitude of $200 million for Congressional Printing and Binding, had we not made these changes over a 20-year period of time. Mr. TAYLOR. What is the current circulation of the Federal Register and the Congressional Record? Mr. DIMARIO. The Congressional Record is 7,625 copies. Of those, 4,580 are paid for by the Congress. There are 775 that are depository copies, and then there are 1,130 agency riders that the Federal agencies pay for. We also ride through the Office of Superintendent of Documents for the sale of publications for 1,140 copies. Those are paid for by the sales program. So the Congressional portion is 4,580. The Federal Register is not funded at all through an appropriation to the Government Printing Office. We produce 13,000 copies. None of them are paid for by the Congress. 950 are for depository libraries. 8,050 are official copies for which we charge a page rate to the agencies for putting material in the Federal Register, and they receive copies back from us, as appropriate. And then we sell some 4,000 copies. That is the current situation. Mr. TAYLOR. How much could we save if the Congressional Record and perhaps other government documents were all limited to an all electronic publication? Keeping in mind that a limited number of copies could be printed on demand. What do you think we could save? Mr. DIMARIO. I can't put a dollar figure off the top of my head, but we would certainly save the expense of producing those publications that are directly coming to the Congress. I don't know if that is a practical answer to the situation. Currently we have a very, very substantial number that are being downloaded from our electronic system, because we put all these publications, including the Record and the Register, up on the GPO Access. Some 31 million publications are being downloaded a month, and of those, 350,000 are from the Congressional Record, and some 5.5 million are from the Federal Register. So there is a very, very substantial accessing of electronic products, but there still is a demand for the paper products, much smaller than years ago, but it is still a demand out there. Mr. MANSKER. Mr. Chairman, I might add, what you would save on the Record would basically be the cost of the paper. Your composition factors and everything would still be present, even if you cut out the production of paper products. So the paper products become really less of a factor than putting the whole item together in the first place. Mr. DIMARIO. The initial cost is in producing that first copy and preparing that database, and if you are preparing it to put it up online or you are preparing it to go out in paper copy, you are going to incur the same cost. That is Mr. Mansker's point. We do that for all of our publications. We prepare the publication at the same time both for print and for electronic distribution. ELECTRONIC FORMAT Mr. TAYLOR. What is the current percentages of materials going to depository libraries by electronic means? Do you have an esti Mr. DIMARIO. Mr. Buckley may have that data. Mr. BUCKLEY. Currently about 62 percent of the new publications we have sent out the first 6 months this year have been in electronic form. Mr. TAYLOR. Has the GPO's access and the availability of government publications on the Internet affected your sales programs? Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, dramatically. The sales program, to a large degree, sold regulatory materials, and that is really what the public demand was for, the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations. Since we have put these publications up electronically, we have seen a marked decline in sales. Additionally, there are many other publications that have gone up electronically, and it has caused a reduction in the sales program. The sales program went from an $80 million program to a $40 million program, which is what it is currently. SALES PROGRAM Mr. TAYLOR. How many bookstores does GPO operate? Mr. DIMARIO. Currently we have 24, including an outlet at our distribution facility in Laurel, Maryland. Mr. TAYLOR. Does each store cover its own operating costs, do you have any estimate? Mr. DIMARIO. Currently about 14 of the 24 are covering their costs. Overall the bookstore program is covering its own expenses. There are 10 stores that are not covering their expenses. We have current plans to close three of the stores. We have identified those stores to the affected Members of Congress and to the Joint Committee on Printing. Where the stores are in Congressional districts as a courtesy, we always touch base with the Member of Congress and the Senators. We also have three additional ones that we are scheduling to close and have not yet made the required notifications on those stores. We also have a plan in place which would cause additional reductions over a period of time. We are very cognizant that we need to improve the structure of our sales program. It is essentially a direct result of our success in electronic distribution programs. So in one breath, we are very, very proud that we have gotten all these publications up, generating 31 million downloads a month. Following the dictates of this committee, we moved the depository program to a more complete electronic program. At the same time, it has adversely affected the paper sales. Mr. TAYLOR. Have you investigated putting all sales online or contracting the sales program out to the private sector? Mr. DIMARIO. All of our publications are presently up for sale online, and you can purchase the publications that way. Over the years, going back at least to when I was Superintendent of Documents in 1983, we have examined the issue of selling publications through the private sector. To the extent that the private sector wants to participate, we have done that. The problem is that some people want to cherry pick popular publications, but most of the publications are not the kinds that are commercially profitable. The volume is too small. Private dealers are very, very selective. |