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On March 9, President Biden signed into law a six-bill spending package for Fiscal Year 2024 that funds EPA, USDA and other agencies. Congress continues to negotiate another six-bill package for the remaining federal agencies ahead of a March 22 deadline.
Unfortunately, the final EPA funding bill decreases funding for the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) by approximately $6 million dollars, taking funding for OPP from $140.457 million in FY 2023 down to $134.275 million this fiscal year. Of the $6+ million budget decrease from the previous year, approximately $5 million was taken from personnel and another $1+ million from grants to States and Tribes for enforcement work. Since EPA has been funded by Continuing Resolutions at last year’s budget level since October, the full-year budget cut must be squeezed into the next 6 months. This funding level is well short of the $166 million required by PRIA 5 to maintain authority for collecting PRIA fees. But as we can see, Congress can ignore that requirement with impunity.
In essence, OPP had $70 million in appropriation dollars to spend from October through March. Now they have just $64 million to carry them through next September.
EPA is currently reviewing how to implement these mid-fiscal year funding cuts in a manner that minimizes the impacts on OPP. However, the $6 million budget cut equates to the cost of roughly 30 full time employees. EPA hopes staff reductions can be achieved by attrition (retirements, resignations) and leaving positions vacant. Contractors will also take a hit. But there will certainly be negative impacts on pesticide registration processing. OPP will keep us updated as it develops its plan to implement the budget cut.
Together with the PRIA Coalition, CPDA is advocating for Congress to fund OPP at a minimum of $166 million for fiscal year 2025, which starts on October 1. The President’s Fiscal 2025 budget request that was released on March 11 would fund OPP at today calls for about $177 million. While the Fiscal 2024 budget cuts are final, we will work hard to restore OPP funding in FY 25.
Despite the budget woes, OPP continues to pursue savings and efficiencies through incremental IT improvements. Dan Schoeff, IT coordinator for Ed Messina’s office, demonstrated to the PRIA Coalition Steering Committee the real-time analytics of both PRIA and non-PRIA performance that are now available to OPP staff. We are pursuing an update from Dan in the near future to explore how such analytics can be useful to CPDA members’ commercial interests.
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