ALAWON v11n0059 (July 19, 2002)
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ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 11, Number 59
July 19, 2002

In This Issue: Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations

On July 11, The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations marked up its bill (S. 2720, S. Report 107-209), allocating $89.9 million to the Congressional Research Service, $90,143,000 for the Government Printing Office's Congressional Printing and Binding Account; $32,302,000, the amount requested for FY2003 for the Superintendent of Documents salaries and expenses account; the Library of Congress would be set at $350,491,000 for salaries and expenses and the Subcommittee approved authority to spend receipts of $6,850,000 in fiscal year 2003.

The Committee Report (S. Report 107-209) includes the following strong language concerning the Office of Management and Budget's plans, announced in a May 2, 2002, memorandum (M-02-07) to ignore the statutory requirements that the printing and publishing of government publications must be conducted through the Government Printing Office:  

"Not only has the administration announced an intention to completely disregard a law which has been in place since 1895 and strengthened in 1994, it has failed to consider the consequences particularly in terms of Government printing costs and public access to Government publications."

The report goes on to cite GPO's analysis of the cost to government if all executive branch printing were removed of ranging from $231,500,000 to $335,200,000 in the first year.  The report points out that there is no other mechanism for distribution of government information other than the depository library system and says, "Without such a mechanism, the public would be deprived of full access to Government publications."(p. 41).

The Committee report requests a GAO report to be completed by December 1, 2002, that would conduct a comprehensive review and assessment of the current state of printing and dissemination of Federal Government information, with special emphasis on GPO's congressional printing and binding services, the Federal Depository Library Program and contracting out executive branch printing.

Language about the importance of adherence to Title 44 also appears in the House Treasury Postal Appropriations report (H. Report 107-575, p. 64) and the Senate Treasury Postal Appropriations report (S. Report 107-212, p. 56).

ACTION NEEDED:
The House Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee cut the budget of the Superintendent of Documents account, while the Senate subcommittee action restored the account to its requested amount.  It will be important when the two bills go to conference that the Senate higher number survives the conference.  Thanks to all librarians that contacted Senate Subcommittee members asking that the full amount be allocated to SuDocs.  ALAWON will issue an alert when the bills are referred to conference. 



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