Sergeant at Arms, two officials who were instrumental last year in enabling the Senate to make such a large cut through reductions in their own offices. I would like to publicly compliment them on this effort.

This morning we will first hear from the Hon. William F. Hildenbrand, Secretary of the Senate. You may condense your remarks or do whatever you would like with your message.

INTRODUCTION OF ASSOCIATES

Mr. HILDENBRAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have with me this morning the Assistant Secretary of the Senate, Ms. Marilyn E. Courtot, and the Financial Clerk of the Senate, Stuart F. Balderson.

Mr. Chairman, I have previously submitted a full statement supporting my budget request for fiscal year 1983 and, at this time, I would like to highlight a few of the items in my statement.

PREPARED STATEMENT

Senator MATTINGLY. Your full statement will be inserted in the record at this point.

[The statement follows:]

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. HILDENBRAND

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity of appearing today to submit the fiscal year 1983 budget request for the Office of the Secretary. The total appropriation of $6,079,000 represents an increase of $132,550 over the budget request for the previous fiscal year. The major items reflected in this increase are funding for the merit program, elimination of the pay cap, on-line information services and enhancements to the computer system in the Stationery Room (see Figure 1).

Your Committee's approval last year to permit lump sum for the operation of our office has helped in many ways. We are now able to set an allowance for each department and, with the new financial reports, give our supervisors an opportunity to monitor and control expenditures within the department. We can now adjust salaries and create positions, as just cited, without the long delay of waiting for the next budget cycle and thus be more responsive to new demands placed upon our office. The proposed allocations for fiscal year 1983 by department are shown in Figure 2.

In March of last year, when I appeared before this Committee, I stated that "an analysis of my current expenditures for both salaries and miscellaneous items indicates a projected savings of 11.8 percent in salaries and 49.6 percent in miscellaneous items for fiscal year 1981." I am pleased to report that the figures were actually 9.95 percent for salaries and 42 percent for miscellaneous items. Our office worked very hard to follow the mandate of this Committee by leaving positions vacant as long as possible and keeping pay raises to a minimum. The funds requested for fiscal year 1983 do not reflect a significant increase, and I hope the Committee will recognize the necessity of having full funding if we are to maintain our level of service and keep qualified personnel in our employment.

NEW PERSONNEL AND SERVICES

During the last fiscal year, we created a new department responsible for interparliamentary services. This office will assist Members who are traveling overseas on official business with the preparation of reports, visas, necessary shots, and travel information. The staff will primarily coordinate travel related to the Canadian, NATO, Mexico, and IPU meetings.

In addition, we have added three individuals formerly on detail from the Government Printing Office to our staff. Two of these individuals are book

*The figures represent full-time professional and clerical staff. They do not include the interns who work from six to ten weeks during the summer months.

binders assigned to the Senate Library. I have enclosed a letter from Senator Mathias complimenting them on the development of uniform binding standards for the Congress which should both improve the quality of binding and reduce the cost of this type of work.

The Bookbinders undertake a number of other projects and the following table recaps some of their activities during the last year:

The third person is a printer who works with the Enrolling Clerk. This change has given us an experienced individual on our staff who serves as the Assistant Enrolling Clerk.

While the transfer of these three individuals has increased our salary costs, it has reduced the overall government cost, because we are no longer paying overtime and a surcharge for these individuals.

MERIT PROGRAM

The Merit Program was established by your Committee in 1979. At that time, it was the only mechanism available to us to reward outstanding employees who were limited by existing NTE rates. The program has been useful and we have made 20 awards since the program began. However, the program is not as beneficial as originally conceived. With the approval of the lump sum authority for the office, it is no longer necessary to have a special merit program with separate funding. Therefore, I have included in my budget the $38,000 we now expend on the program, and request the elimination of the program as it now exists. The Senate is already spending this money, so while it is an increase to my budget, it is actually a transfer from the appropriation account "Agency Contributions, Longevity Compensation and Merit Compensation" to "Salaries, Officers and Employees."

We have discussed the termination of this program with the Sergeant at Arms, whose staff also comes under the Merit Program, and he concurs in this request.

STATIONERY ROOM

The Stationery Room completed fiscal year 1981 with gross sales of $1,980,104, an increase of $289,802 from fiscal year 1980. Total combined cash and charge sale tickets issued during the year amounted to 73,189.

The Stationery Room added several items to the current inventory this year for two main reasons to provide the various offices with a wider range of office supplies and also to alleviate the many delays experienced with the receipt of special orders.

In an effort to obtain dated merchandise (diaries, etc.) in a more timely fashion, the contract period for the Schedule of Stationery was changed from the fiscal year to an operating period of September 1, 1981 through August 31, 1982. This year we plan to change it permanently to an operating period of July 1 through June 30.