Friday, 25 October 1991 Washington, DC
1. BEYOND THE TOWNES REPORT: HAPPER CALLS FOR 10% CUT IN
NUCLEAR
science for FY 93. The Townes task force, which was
charged to assume a flat budget in current dollars through 1996,
recommended that DOE's research advisory panels reexamine their
priorities in light of the new budget realities. But when the
Nuclear Science Advisory Committee met with Will Happer in East
Lansing this week, it was confronted with an even harsher
reality. Behind closed doors, Happer told the committee to
assume a 10% cut for FY 93, not including inflation. For the out
years, the committee was given three scenarios to work with: flat
funding in current dollars, flat funding but with allowance for
inflation, and an increase of a few percent over inflation. It
is not clear why Happer expects things to be better in the out
years. The panel is preparing a letter to Happer that will
reaffirm the scientific objectives of its long-range plan and
emphasize its solid support for the Relativistic Heavy Ion
Collider at Brookhaven as the top priority. Meanwhile, the High-
Energy Physics Advisory Panel is scheduled to meet next week with
the directors of SLAC, Fermilab, and Brookhaven in open session.
Betting is that Happer will also call for a 10% cut in high-
energy physics for FY 93.
2. PROPOSED RULE LIMITING PARTICIPATION IN PROFESSIONAL
SOCIETIES
by federal employees will be rewritten
(WN 27 Sep 91).
Steven Potts, director of the Office of Government Ethics,
testified in a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Human
Resources that the regulations were intended to codify what was
thought to be existing practice. More than a thousand responses
to the proposed rules persuaded him that "on the question of
associations, we have not spoken with the clarity we intended."
Acknowledging a greater reponse than he had seen on any other
issue, Potts said the association portion of the rules might be
put out for comment again after it has been revised. The
proposed rules prohibited the use of official time to conduct
society affairs. The APS was among the organizations strongly
protesting such restrictions.
3. NEW H-1B VISA RULES COULD CURTAIL HIRING OF FOREIGN
FACULTY.
The Department of Labor this week published new
rules governing H-1B non-immigrant temporary worker visas; the
most frequent user of the H-1B is the academic community. The
rules, which are meant to enforce the 1990 Immigration Act, seem
to require employers hiring aliens on an H-1B visa to pay at
least the "actual" or the "prevailing" wage--whichever is higher-
-to all employees of the same rank! The actual wage is the
average for all employees at that rank; the prevailing wage is
the average for all similar workers in the area. The Department
of Labor does not appear to appreciate fully the mathematical
consequences of its rule, which amounts to federally mandated
wage inflation. Efforts to change the law are being led by
NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, which predicts
that many institutions will simply choose not to consider aliens
rather than contend with the rules.
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