Senate appropriators approved a request from the Commerce Department yesterday to reprogram more than $35 million, bringing the National Weather Service one step closer to preventing agencywide furloughs.

Commerce -- and it daughter agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- asked for the reprogramming after releasing an internal report detailing the Weather Service's reallocation of millions of dollars without congressional approval (Greenwire, May 29).

Now agency officials say the Weather Service is $35 million short in the accounts that fund employee salaries and radar updates. Without congressional approval to move around money, they say, the Weather Service will have to furlough every employee for 13 days to make up the difference.

House appropriators have yet to give their approval; today, they will hear from NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Deputy Administrator Kathryn Sullivan at a hearing of the House Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee (E&E Daily , June 19).

But the Senate is now on board, though appropriators are still skeptical.

Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) -- the top Democrat and Republican of the Senate appropriations subpanel that oversees NOAA -- wrote in a letter yesterday that they approve of the reprogramming "to ensure that NWS forecasting operations are not disrupted."

But they also expressed frustration that the Weather Service had still not calculated the exact shortfall, instead relying on information from local and regional offices.

"We remain dissatisfied that the Department and NOAA have not known the true operational costs to support NWS's warning and forecast base, and do not know for how long these budget problems have been occurring," they wrote. "Given this lack of knowledge, we have little assurance that similar budget gimmicks are not happening in other parts of NOAA."

Commerce has been tasked with submitting a new budget baseline for the Weather Service to the appropriations subcommittee by July 31 -- and if that budget reveals that less money is needed, the reprogrammed funds will be returned to the accounts they came from.

Mikulski and Hutchison also have kick-started an investigation into the funding problem and whether it is part of "systematic budget problems" at NOAA. They have asked for independent reviews from the Government Accountability Office and the Justice Department on the misappropriations of funds.

"We expect the Department and NOAA to continue cooperating with the Committee as a full accounting of these problems are brought to light, and to help restore Congress's confidence in the Department's budget process," the senators wrote.