Long article and nice recap on management of the labs... excerpts....
http://www.independentnews.com/news/article_75ff1348-d6b4-11e3-b689-001a4bcf887a.html
At A Challenging Time, A New Lab Manager is Named At UC
May 8, 2014
By Jeff Garberson
A 27-year employee of LLNL was appointed University of California Vice President for Laboratory Management last week.
Kimberly Budil, highly regarded for technical and managerial roles at the Laboratory and in Washington, D.C., replaces Glenn Mara, who retired after serving for nearly two years. Mara was also an LLNL veteran.
Budil is the first woman to hold the position, which grew out of an office created in the early 1990s to take responsibility for UC’s increasingly challenging negotiations with the federal government over continued management of [LLNL and LANL]...
While working at LLNL, Budil earned a PhD at ... UC Davis applied science department. Her undergraduate degree in physics came from the University of Illinois...
Budil’s appointment as VP for Laboratory Management also makes her a member of the executive committee of the Board of Governors of [LANS/LLNS]...
She will be responsible for overseeing University management of those two laboratories and LBNL....
Her experience includes tours in Washington, D.C., as well as increasing responsibilities at the Laboratory. Most recently at LLNL, she served as manager of the Nuclear Counterterrorism Program in the Global Security directorate. She has held positions in Weapons and Complex Integration, the National Ignition Facility and elsewhere...include working the Office of Defense Science of the NNSA and serving as a senior advisor to the Undersecretary for Science of the DOE...
One major and possibly insurmountable problem is that the federal agency for which the two laboratories work, the NNSA is widely recognized as failing, if not failed...
Given frequent gridlock in Washington even over seemingly simple budget priorities, it is not clear that a major federal agency can be reformed in the foreseeable future, according to several senior observers.
A second problem is that the laboratories have to deal with sharply higher overhead costs today because they are operated by for-profit organizations that demand high management fees and have to pay millions of taxes every year. These costs come out of laboratory budgets that might otherwise go to research.
Layoffs have occurred at both laboratories. Sharp reductions in federal spending make future support uncertain at best..
The increased overhead costs resulted in large part from a congressional decision to remove UC as sole manager of the two defense laboratories. For decades, UC wanted and received no management fee for operating the labs...
When the federal government insisted in the early 1990s that the University must accept a management fee, UC agreed only on condition that it would use the fee to pay off any fines or penalties that the government imposed. The remainder of the fee would be returned to the laboratories to support research, continuing the University’s non-profit (and untaxed) status...
The office that Budil will now lead was responsible for those negotiations...
It is this complex history that forms some of the background of the office that Budil now leads. The University today plays an important role in the functioning of LLNL and LANL, but it is no longer the only player. According to observers, nor is there any confidence locally or in Washington that its federal sponsor, the NNSA, is well qualified to fund nationally important scientific work.
http://www.independentnews.com/news/article_75ff1348-d6b4-11e3-b689-001a4bcf887a.html
At A Challenging Time, A New Lab Manager is Named At UC
May 8, 2014
By Jeff Garberson
A 27-year employee of LLNL was appointed University of California Vice President for Laboratory Management last week.
Kimberly Budil, highly regarded for technical and managerial roles at the Laboratory and in Washington, D.C., replaces Glenn Mara, who retired after serving for nearly two years. Mara was also an LLNL veteran.
Budil is the first woman to hold the position, which grew out of an office created in the early 1990s to take responsibility for UC’s increasingly challenging negotiations with the federal government over continued management of [LLNL and LANL]...
While working at LLNL, Budil earned a PhD at ... UC Davis applied science department. Her undergraduate degree in physics came from the University of Illinois...
Budil’s appointment as VP for Laboratory Management also makes her a member of the executive committee of the Board of Governors of [LANS/LLNS]...
She will be responsible for overseeing University management of those two laboratories and LBNL....
Her experience includes tours in Washington, D.C., as well as increasing responsibilities at the Laboratory. Most recently at LLNL, she served as manager of the Nuclear Counterterrorism Program in the Global Security directorate. She has held positions in Weapons and Complex Integration, the National Ignition Facility and elsewhere...include working the Office of Defense Science of the NNSA and serving as a senior advisor to the Undersecretary for Science of the DOE...
One major and possibly insurmountable problem is that the federal agency for which the two laboratories work, the NNSA is widely recognized as failing, if not failed...
Given frequent gridlock in Washington even over seemingly simple budget priorities, it is not clear that a major federal agency can be reformed in the foreseeable future, according to several senior observers.
A second problem is that the laboratories have to deal with sharply higher overhead costs today because they are operated by for-profit organizations that demand high management fees and have to pay millions of taxes every year. These costs come out of laboratory budgets that might otherwise go to research.
Layoffs have occurred at both laboratories. Sharp reductions in federal spending make future support uncertain at best..
The increased overhead costs resulted in large part from a congressional decision to remove UC as sole manager of the two defense laboratories. For decades, UC wanted and received no management fee for operating the labs...
When the federal government insisted in the early 1990s that the University must accept a management fee, UC agreed only on condition that it would use the fee to pay off any fines or penalties that the government imposed. The remainder of the fee would be returned to the laboratories to support research, continuing the University’s non-profit (and untaxed) status...
The office that Budil will now lead was responsible for those negotiations...
It is this complex history that forms some of the background of the office that Budil now leads. The University today plays an important role in the functioning of LLNL and LANL, but it is no longer the only player. According to observers, nor is there any confidence locally or in Washington that its federal sponsor, the NNSA, is well qualified to fund nationally important scientific work.
Comments
It speaks volumes about UCs intentions to manage the labs that they went from Mara to Budil.
A comparable hire to follow Mara would have been, Anastasio, Miller, Tartar or Hecker. Budil has hundreds of peers. The job is no longer as important as previously.
She had no involvement at all in setting up the two fictitious robber baron LLCs now financially raping LLNL and LANL. Her hands are clean. She has no ownership in the decision or stake in protecting them.
She has seen first hand the little value - at least at LLNL - that Bechtel provides to operation/management of the lab.
She has directly felt the weight of the overhead tax placed on her work/program to pay the huge fee that Bechtel takes in annual for basically doing nothing at LLNL.
So I don't want another ex-lab ULM who directly profited from the LLCs sitting in UCOP lab management running the LLCs and protecting them.
If anyone has the cohones to stand up to the industrial partners, she is probably the one.
May 18, 2014 at 1:29 PM
Try reading the top post.
May 18, 2014 at 1:58 PM
How exactly are they safeguarding it? If you work in the LLNL or LANL weapons programs, YOU are safeguarding it.
Come on. The first 5 words are the gorilla in the room.