AD life at LLNL

Anonymously contributed:

The AD Life at LLNL

Anyone remember Pam Horning, who LLNS appointed Associate Director of Nuclear Operations at LLNL. She was only at LLNL about a year or so. Well she is finally selling her house in the local area…for $1.3 million. She definitely did okay working for LLNS… from the realtor website BlockShopper.

----------------
Nuclear industry exec lists Pleasanton 5BD for $1.349M

by Shania Sampson, published Jan. 27, 2011

Pamela A. Horning and Jeffrey A. Horning have listed for sale a five-bedroom, 3.5-bath home in Pleasanton for $1.349 million.

Kim Grass and Lorraine Davis of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage is the listing agent for the house. The 3,853-square-foot house was built in 1997 in West Pleasanton. It is located in Laguna Oaks subdivision.

Ms. Horning serves as a director at EFCOG and vice president at Babcock & Wilcox, Technical Services Group. She has more than 27 years of experience in the nuclear industry.

Prior to this, she has held several executive positions at Energy Facility Contractors Group, Lawrence Livermore National Security, BWX Technologies and B&W Y-12 LLC.

She earned a master of engineering administration from The George Washington University and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Purdue University.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 607 home sales in Pleasanton during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $640,000.

Where is Sasha Cohen?

Anonymously contributed:

Has anybody seen Sasha Cohen lately?

I haven't seen him since right before Chu became head of LBNL.

You don't think?

Poor performance

Anonymously contributed:
Isn't it funny how poorly our leaders perform?
Perhaps they shouldn't be paid anything.

Scooby's note: what do you think?

Proposal Cuts Lab Spending

Anonymously contributed:

Albuquerque Journal
Thursday, January 27, 2011

By Michael Coleman
Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — A budget resolution approved by the U.S. House this week would have devastating consequences for New Mexico's national laboratories, according to two New Mexico lawmakers.
The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday approved a resolution that instructs House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to prepare budget blueprint for 2011 that rolls back spending — except for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veteran Affairs — to 2008 spending levels.
That would mean a roughly 10 percent reduction for Sandia National Laboratories and an approximately 17 percent budget cut at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to the office of Rep. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat whose district includes Sandia.
New Mexico's labs, which maintain the nation's nuclear weapons stockpiles and perform cutting-edge civilian science, receive the bulk of their funding through the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the Department of Energy.
Republican leaders, aiming to foster a new climate of fiscal conservatism, said the budget resolution is a starting point and can be amended. But Heinrich and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the resolution is cause for concern in New Mexico. The federal government is operating under a so-called continuing budget resolution. It expires March 4, setting the stage for tense negotiations in the coming weeks.
"Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership are putting a marker down," Heinrich told the Journal on Wednesday. "They need to understand that if NNSA is not going to be considered security spending, what the impacts to our labs are going to be.
"Impeding the work being done at our national labs won't grow our economy and certainly won't create jobs."
Heinrich is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He said all defense-related budget requests — including the NNSA — must pass muster with the committee and he will use his post on the panel to raise objections to potential cuts at the labs.
Ryan's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Seventy-three percent of Los Alamos National Laboratory's $2.2 billion 2011 Energy Department budget is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear weapons budget. At Sandia, 77 percent of its $1.5 billion Energy Department budget is weapons-related. The labs also receive money from other government agencies, and the potential effect of the budget resolution on that portion of their funding is unclear.
Los Alamos's Department of Energy budget has risen 18 percent in the last two years. Sandia's has increased 14 percent.
Bingaman told the Journal the cuts would stand in stark contrast to Obama's pledge late last year to boost lab funding to support the implementation of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.
"This House-passed resolution would not only prevent those increases, it would make dramatic cuts to our labs," Bingaman said. "These cuts are irresponsible and could leave us vulnerable."
The resolution was approved 256-165. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., voted for the resolution, and Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., voted against it.

Expected DOE response

Anonymous sent in a response to his letter to Chu:

"Thank you for sharing your concerns about the two-year pay freeze on site and facility management prime contractor employees announced by the Department of Energy on December 17, 2010.

The Department recognizes the sacrifice it is expecting from our contractor workforce, which does important research, operations and environmental cleanup work. As part of the DOE complex, you play an integral role in accomplishing the tasks that support the mission and operation of the Department. Secretary Chu feels strongly that site and facility management contractor employees should join with federal employees in making this sacrifice as our nation continues to recover from challenging economic times. Be assured that Department will face the same challenges and concerns you outlined for its employees.



The Department appreciates your continued support for its critical missions of advancing scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security."

DOE CONSIDERING HOW TO SPEND SAVINGS FROM CONTRACTOR PAY FREEZE

Source:
Weapons Complex Monitor, Volume 22 No.2, January 14, 2011


DOE CONSIDERING HOW TO SPEND
SAVINGS FROM CONTRACTOR PAY FREEZE
Freeze Initially Described as ‘Sacrifice’
The Department of Energy has begun quietly examining
how to spend the savings expected to be generated through
a recently enacted two-year freeze of contractor employees’
pay levels. The move was outlined in an e-mail sent
two weeks ago to senior DOE officials from the Department’s
Chief Financial Officer, Steven Isakowitz. “We
need to solicit input from the M&O contractors on how
they would propose reinvesting the savings from the pay
freeze,” Isakowitz wrote in the Dec. 29, 2010, message,
obtained by WC Monitor. Isakowitz also said that such
information would be used to “to finalize FY11-12 budget
decisions.” It remains unclear how much money DOE
expects to save through the pay freeze, which went into
effect at the start of this year and impacts approximately
75,000 workers at 28 sites.
Isakowitz’s message came approximately two weeks after
DOE announced the pay freeze (WC Monitor, Vol. 21 No.
54). In its announcement, though, DOE did not make any
mention of plans to reuse the savings expected to be
generated. Instead, the pay freeze was proposed in a spirit
of shared sacrifice, following the Obama Administration’s
decision to institute a similar freeze for federal workers.
“As our nation continues to recover from these challenging
economic times, households and small businesses across
the country are making sacrifices,” Secretary of Energy
Steven Chu said in the Dec. 17, 2010, announcement. “In
this spirit, we are asking our contractor employees, who
are doing important research, operations, and environmental
cleanup work, to join the federal workforce in playing
a part.” DOE did not return calls for comment.

Impact of declining morale

A good analysis from an anonymous contributor:

When the Stimulus Bill funding was received by the NNSA labs, it required the compensation amounts for the Directors to be made public. This is information that both LLNS and LANS have tried very hard to cover up under the lame excuse of "corporate proprietary information".

For example, it was shown in press accounts that LANL's Director Anastasio is compensated to the tune of around $1 million per year in total (LANS/UC, 20% bonus, etc). SNL's Hunter was compensated at about the rate of $2 million per year. A recent post on this blog also demonstrated some of the outlandish perks that lab executives like Brett Knapp make.

These lab salaries and perks are several times higher than those that Directors, PADs and ADs made during the early years of 2000s. The new lab system of management has been extremely profitable for anyone on the LLC executive team.

To this situation, add in the low raises and benefit cuts of the last few years for the non-management staff coupled with the recent announcement of no possibility of raises for several more years. This has greatly de-moralized many employees at the labs. Trust in the top levels of management is at an all time low from what I have witnessed. It was never that high before the labs for-profit coup, but the sense of mistrust and feelings of outright betrayal is now becoming very common within the employees who remain at these NNSA labs.

Meanwhile, the LLC upper management team attempt to sugar-coat the situation and claim that morale is good and improving. This only worsens the feelings of those who see what has occurred over the last few years.

The impact of all this is extremely low morale, which results in performance that may meet the largely meaningless PBI metrics that NNSA and the LLCs like to constantly create but this low morale is the kiss of death to any truly creative science lab. In our culture, "value" is largely demonstrated by compensation. I'm pretty sure that the recent 10% increase in salaries of all the profession employees who work for Google has all of those employees working very hard and their morale at extremely high levels.

The true impact of this situation will come in the next few year once the employment situation improves and housing rebounds. I expect to see a lot of the younger and middle aged scientific staff head out the front doors of the NNSA labs and look for other institutions in which to practice their creative talents.