While work and negotiations in Congress continue on FY22 appropriations bills, the Department of Energy (DOE) is currently drafting its own department-wide budget for FY23.
In the early months of this year, each DOE-EM site was tasked with developing budget priorities and providing opportunities for public input. DOE prepared a budget outline by examining requests from previous years and the current spending year.
As a reminder for all DOE site managers and local governments – DOE is supposed to reach out to local governments directly to seek input on cleanup priorities. If DOE does not remember to reach out, local governments can reach out to the site managers directly.
From February-May, DOE and sites discuss priorities, and individual sites developed their budget proposals. From June-September, EM is tasked with coordinating the budget to the Secretary of Energy; DOE typically aims to complete its full budget request by August of each year although it may be delayed depending on the process with the current year budget. OMB remains open to public input through September.
According to the published budget proceedings timeline, in September, DOE’s Chief Financial Officer and Budget Director will brief OMB on DOE’s overall budget (NE, NNSA, EM, Office of Science, EERE, LM, etc.) while making changes in accordance with the Secretary’s feedback. In November-December, DOE should receive an updated budget from OMB and negotiate a final proposed budget. From October 2021-January 2022, DOE cannot discuss the upcoming budget numbers with
the public; however, local communities may continue to provide unsolicited input during this time.
While details about the FY23 budget request will not be known until next year, each year communities surrounding DOE sites should begin meeting with Field Office Managers and DOE budget officials to convey their site priorities as the budget is created. Additionally, DOE should be pro-actively seeking input from local governments about critical federal funding issues such as defense environmental cleanup and, if applicable, payments-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILT). If
the public input period earlier in the year was insufficient for expressing local concerns and priorities, communities should contact DOE directly and ask for briefings and the opportunity to provide input on priorities that are being developed at their respective sites.
Public input is a key part of the budget development. For example, for EM the most impact people are the people closest to the sites, the people that work at the sites and the people that may be impacted by the remediation activities.
DOE leadership should make it a priority to reach out the local governments directly to seek input on the budget and priorities. This Administration needs to make it clear that it is a priority for the Administration (as past Administrations have done).
