House appropriators today indicated they would approve NOAA's request to reprogram more than $35 million, avoiding agencywide furloughs at the National Weather Service.

But lawmakers are withholding an official sign-off until early next week, citing a need to get more details on the improper accounting methods that led to the reprogramming request.

Appropriators gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration until 5:30 p.m. Monday to answer a long list of questions on the Weather Service's reallocation of millions of dollars without required congressional approval.

"We want to reassure the employees that we're not looking to tie the reprogramming up," Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who heads the House Appropriations subpanel that oversees NOAA, said today at a hearing on the issue. "We want to make sure that that can be done; thereby, there will be no risk in furloughs and nobody can say there's been a storm that's been missed or something like that."

NOAA -- and its mother agency, the Department of Commerce -- has already received the go-ahead from Senate appropriators (E&E Daily, June 21). Most of the roughly $35.5 million will be moved into an account that funds employee salaries, which is set to fall $26 million short by the end of the fiscal year.

At the hearing today, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco provided some publicly unknown details to House appropriators on an internal investigation that found Weather Service officials had improperly taken funds from some programs to cover the costs of forecasting activities and employee salaries.

NOAA officials believe only three employees were involved in the scheme, wherein they would charge expenses for a forecasting account to one of several accounts that fund capital improvements. Lubchenco said NOAA and Commerce have "taken or initiated appropriate administrative action" on all the employees; one, she said, has been put on paid administrative leave.

The accounts raided included the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System, the Weather Radio Improvement Program and the NextGen Weather Program. All focus on hardware and software improvements -- rather than, for example, employee salaries.

Lubchenco said officials were still unsure how the reallocation affected such programs. But she indicated that some programs within the Weather Service may be overfunded, while others are underfunded.

"There's no evidence from our investigation that there was insufficient funds," Lubchenco told reporters after the hearing. "What was obvious was that it was in the wrong places."

The parameters of NOAA's reprogramming request are not entirely clear. It appears that officials are moving most of the funds from some of the same capital improvement programs affected in the improper reallocations of the past.

At least $5.5 million, however, will come from accounts within NOAA, not the Weather Service. Lubchenco said today that the agency's options were limited so late in the fiscal year.

Lawmakers, for their part, expressed frustration and confusion over why the misallocation happened in the first place. Why didn't the Weather Service just ask for the necessary funds in the first place, they wondered? Or, barring that, why didn't officials ask appropriators to reprogram funds?

The answer, it seems, will be long in coming. NOAA and Commerce will soon commission an independent review, while lawmakers have already asked the Government Accountability Office, the Commerce inspector general and Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the issue and whether it has broader implications.

At some points, the hearing degenerated into a debate between Republicans and Democrats on whether the actions at the National Weather Service indicated broader problems with the Obama administration's disrespect for congressional authority. Republicans also questioned why protections for federal employees barred NOAA from immediately firing those involved in the improper reallocation.

But Democrats on the subcommittee stressed today that while the misstep was serious, it appears to have been made with good intentions. Pennsylvania Rep. Chaka Fattah, the subpanel's top Democrat, suggested that officials should receive training in the intricacies of appropriations law -- something NOAA plans to do.

"This is unique among our Washington scandals -- no personal gain of any sort -- but still it's a very important issue," Fattah said. "It is very, very important that the congressional appropriations process and the rules related thereto are followed in each and every agency so that we can have an orderly processes of government."