This represents some $87 million, including $25.4 million for security projects which we will talk about in more detail later on. With respect to the operating budget, this is a 5.8 percent increase over last year's budget. It would be 5 percent if we eliminated the election cycle move costs which we are going into for next November. But two-thirds of these cost increases relate to COLA's, mandated pay and benefits increases. Six percent of the increase is for an agency-wide uniform program, for which we are doing a pilot project now on the Senate side. In my mind it would make a lot of sense to have all of our employees in uniform, for the sense of uniformity and pride in the agency that it would give and security issues as well.

As a service agency, of course, the largest component of this overall budget, 39 percent, is in pay and benefits. As I just discussed earlier, cost savings will be achieved through the reengineering plan formulated in fiscal 1998 and implemented after congressional review in 1999. We expect that there would be savings reflected in subsequent budgets. We also see in our operating budget the area of utilities, some 11 percent, $21.9 million of that is for electrical service, $1.8 million, for water and sewer, and $1.4 million for gas. In other services we have general maintenance and shop support, general administrative costs such as bringing in outside contractors to do air conditioning reviews. We also have private people coming in to assist us in the area of safety reviews, cost estimating, architectural engineering services and IRM computer services as well.

We have a very significant decrease on the next chart. Let us take a look at that if we could please. This shows FTE employ

ment.

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It indicates there has been a 16.4 percent reduction from 1992 to date, a very significant decrease, and very many positive reengineering efforts have been made to try to achieve a continuation of quality service with that cut in staff. We have had shop consolidations to reduce the number of supervisors, we have cross-trained our work force so the second and third shifts in the HVAC shop would be able to handle emergency calls for both plumbing and electrical so we don't have to have those folks work also.

We have job order contracts for small renovation projects, changing tours of duty for our folks to be able to deal with the reduced FTE count, temporary staff for seasonal and short-term work. This chart, Mr. Chairman, represents a maximum, a maximum number of FTEs for fiscal year 1999. Let us go on to our next chart if we

can.

This chart which is our fiscal year 1999 operating and capital budget has two basic colors on it. The operations are shown in blue. As you can see, Mr. Chairman, the costs have been relatively level over the last 6 years. Most of the inflationary costs, costs of increased utilities, increased COLA's, et cetera, have been absorbed through decreases in work force so that we have a fairly constant level.

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The more significant changes have occurred in the capital side of the budget, in yellow. In fact in the fiscal year 1999 budget, we see a major component is $25 million at the top of that bar for security-related projects. Let us take a look at the breakdown, if we could, of the capital budget itself.

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