 Good morning and welcome to this public meeting of the consumer product safety commission. This morning, CPSC staff will brief the commission on the staff proposal for mid-year adjustments to our FY 22 operating plan, as well as adjustments to our Arpo spending plan. Before we start, I'd like to confirm that all of my colleagues are in attendance. Commissioner Biacco. I'm here, thank you. Thanks, Commissioner Feldman. I'm here, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Commissioner Trump, also here, thank you. The proposal staff puts forward accounts for the realities of a funding situation. While our FY 22 operating plan contemplated an increase in our preparations consistent with the president's proposed budget. We must now reckon with a funding level that essentially keeps us flat from last year. I want to thank the commission staff for the work they put into this proposal for their efforts to keep CPSC's. Commission front and center while addressing before I reach the commission was predicated on the anticipated preparations increase of more than 30 million. 30 million that would have funded important lifesaving safety work, including new research projects and other efforts that would strengthen and modernize the agency. The operating plan also proposed to move the funding for employees anticipated to be hired under the 5 year ARPA plan to into our baseline. And this normalization of hires made sense to ensure a clear path or future funding of these critical positions after ARPA. Funding expires and fortunately, it's staff acknowledging their memos of flexibility possible under the prior appropriations assumptions is not possible under a lower 139 million operations level that was finalized in March. Staff's proposal to reconcile our FY 22 operating plan from the 170 million to our much lower appropriations level. Requires an assessment of priorities for the agency as well as a reexamination of the ARPA plans. As we take on this task of reconciling and prioritizing reminded of the need to champion the importance of fully funded. Uh, fully funding the lifesaving work that the commission does with Congress. I hope that we can work together as commissioners to make our case to Congress so that our appropriations. Increase to a level that better meets the breadth of our mission allows us to best serve the public. I welcome to robust discussion with my colleagues, but this year's mid year spending plans. These are important discussions about the future of the agency on a limited budget. And with every dollar important, we must advance our lifesaving admission. So, today's session will proceed as follows Dwayne Ray is the deputy executive director for operations going to brief the commission on the staff's major proposal. After that, each commission will have up to 10 minutes to ask questions of staff with multiple rounds if necessary. I expect Mr likely answer most of the questions, but other staff is available to assist in responding as necessary. Uh, Mr Ray, you may proceed. Thank you, chairman. Um, and commissioners is my honor to, uh, commission today on our apply. 22 mid year review, uh, get the next slide. I have the slides up. Can I get to slide? There we go. Thank you. Uh, next slide. Thank you. So, um, as, as the chairman mentioned. Uh, this this mid year review is to reconcile. Received in the appropriation, uh, with what our operating plan our operating plan did assume 170 million and 598 FTE. Um, and we did not receive, uh, that amount, uh, we received 30.95 million less. And so this mid year, uh, quest is to. Just that operating plan spending level. Uh, in addition to that, we also, uh, received a, uh. Congress designated 2 million of the funding to be appropriated for grants. That that's another change. Next slide. So our mid year review package had has 5 recommendations. I just mentioned the 1st 1 is really aligning to the to the appropriation. Our 2nd is our typical mid year review, which is, um. A series of projects that staff recommends if we have an executed balances. Uh, that we fund our 3rd 1 again is adjusting the ARPA spending plan. Um, and to to affect the appropriations, as we mentioned. Uh, and then we have 2 adjustments 1 on recommendation for on a mandatory standard and then recommendation 5 on some performance. So next slide, please. So recommendation 1 is the alignment from operating plan to the enacted level. So it steps us through what we put into the operating plan at the 170 level. To get us down to the 1309 05, which is what we actually were appropriated. This table in the slides and in the briefing package tracks closely with budget table 1 and the operating plan document. Uh, with the exception of we do have a grant increase where in the operating plan, we did not. Uh, but that's that's what this table. And to show next slide, please. So recommendation 2, um, is just what we previously mentioned. We identified a number of projects for funding. If there is an executed balances. Available, um, and we do anticipate the. Potential amount available in the 2 to 3 million dollar range. So our next slide, please. Uh, and this, this table table 2 is just a summary of those projects. Ranked in in a recommended order for the commission to consider. Um, and in this process, um, and totally in a approximately 3.7 million dollar. Next slide, please. Uh, so the, as, as the chairman mentioned, part of what our plan, um, 170 million dollar level. Was to take some of those recurring costs and our plan primarily FTE. And build that into our base budget so that we can maintain that level of operations and staffing levels. Support of that so part of this adjustment is the right realization that we did not get that. For annual appropriations, we are recommending those. Those FTE costs be put into the part of in addition to that, we are recommending. Stopping hiring at the level of 46 at this point. Given the uncertainty on future appropriations, we base on our current spend rate of this plans approved by the commission. Uh, that we'll be able to at least obligate 23.6 million dollars of our funds in this fiscal year. And at this, at our estimated spend rate, we believe the funds would deplete. Early FY 2025 next slide. And again, this is just another table breaking out those costs, the staffing costs, the 46 FTE and the recurring. And you file in project support and then the 1 time costs. These are very, uh, track very closely to the. What was in the right next slide, please. We are recommending an adjustment to the mandatory standards table. Uh, to add a notice of proposal rule making for adult portable bed rails in this fiscal year. Uh, the commission, uh, did grant the petition in March on this. And because of all the work that staff has done on this project over the years, we do believe we could put together an NPR in this time period. Next slide, please. And then our last recommendation is regarding performance measures. Uh, the commission directed in the operating plan. To develop performance measures for the general council and the office of legislative affairs. And those performance measures are listed here in the table. And next slide, that concludes the presentation for our media review and happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Ray. At this point in time, we're going to proceed to questions from the commissioners as I mentioned before. Well, how each commissioner will get up to 10 minutes per round for question and answer. We can go multiple rounds as needed. Recognize myself for 10 minutes. First of all, thanks again to you and all the staff for putting together the proposal. It gives us much to think about as we're going forward and looking to figure out how best to, you know, pursue the agency's mission. And do so with the the limited dollars that we have part of the briefing packet that was sent up. Um, included a memo from the inspector general's office regarding a press for funds and current and raising some concerns that the staff memo didn't recommend. Adding an to his office, but instead looks to use $150,000 and unexecuted balances to provide his office with contract funding for. For the additional resources the inspector general's office seeks. Um, I think, as you as was in 1 of your slides and the staff memo lays out that the additional for the inspector general's office was listed in the program that changes to program. Coming from the 22 operating plan because the 30 million dollars ish that was delta for a number of the new programs had to be cut back and that included an increase in funds for the office, but. I do respect the role of the office and the importance of it associated with. The oversight of ARPA funding, which is additional money that money that the agency is spending not only on fte's, but also contracts as well. So, I'd like to explore it a bit further recognizing that. In lieu of the additional fte, the staff proposal has $150,000 allocated for for contract. Contract auditors, which would add to the existing team of contract auditors that the the office uses currently. Mr, right, thinking beyond just this fiscal year, what are the budgetary implications providing an fte rather than a contract dollars to the inspector general's office? Sure, thanks. Thanks for the question. I think the big. When I look at mid year mid year, we typically fund things that do not have a recurring cost. Because, you know, the we don't have built into a budget, a funding stream to continue to fund. Whether it's an fte or project costs and so we typically tried to serve up projects that have. A 1 year period of performance, we can get something now. You know, with regards to fte, obviously, that's that's a longer term commitment when we do go through the hiring process to bring on employees. And so I do think that is probably the biggest difference. Between considering it now versus. And the budget cycle and the ARPA funding projects that. That the focus at this auditor would be on those are funding that needs to be expanded within the next few years. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. And just to make sure I'm running off the right numbers, the memo. Had suggested that single fte would be. Diminished cost of agency and that the CPSC only had a. 503 fte positions filled for the target. 539 fte's is that is that accurate? Or is that maybe reflective of a different time? Well, we do the best I can tell on that number. It does not include part time. Employees so when we do do a calculation. For what's called the full time equivalent, we do factor in our time employees and their number of hours. So that number is a little, a little larger than 503. I think it's around 511 at this point. The other side of it too is so the gap or the vacancies from. What our current level at 511 to our capped level at 539. Those vacancies are accounted for in that each office has an allowance that they. Have a number of vacancies to operate within and those those vacancies are accounted for. So, if we if the commission decided to. Readjust vacancies, part of that would have to be we'd have to just an office vacancy to stay within the ceiling on the fte's. So, in other words, if there was a vacancy shipped over the office inspector general. Somebody else like compliance or somebody with those spot is that what you're saying? Yes, that's correct. Well, as I said, I mean, I think oversight is important. I think we are spending money through ARPA. I do appreciate the the staff's recommendation to have contract dollars put in to the inspector general's office and 1 to understand what the long term implications are. So, thank you, Mr. Ray. I'm going to hold my other questions at this point in time. Because I'd like to hear from my colleagues as well. So, I'm going to recognize commissioner Bianco for 10 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, Mr. Ray for your presentation and all the work on this. I know this is really difficult. Can we look at together table 1, please in slide 4. I just want to make sure that I understand this. So, when I look at this table, the biggest cut. That the biggest hit, I guess, or biggest cut is to expand our hazard identification capability. That's where we're taking the most money from, correct? Yes, the 16.1 million dollar. So, 1 of the key missions of this agency is hazard identification, and that's what's taken the largest cut. How do we get to that conclusion? How do we get the conclusion to cut that amount? Is that the question? Sorry. Yes, it's the largest cut of all the cuts we're taking. The way I read this is we're cutting 1 of the most important parts of the agency, the work that's done in hazard identification capabilities. Is this based on just people or can you just elaborate on that a little bit? Sure. So, and we've struggled with this, this concept of. And did we ever actually get it? So, you know, I think, at the end of the day, we didn't really get it. But. We were planning on having, I see. Okay. And so what I would say on that is we have been able to transfer some of the FTE that was in that number into the ARPA that would fit within the categories of the ARPA. And then we do have a few projects listed in the mid-year that would have been. Covered under annual appropriations. I think the biggest 1, the organo halogens is 1. Uh, and some of the other projects that would have fit into that kind of research bucket. Within the budget that we got understood, that's helpful. Thank you. I'm going to ask the same question though with regard to taking out almost the next largest cut or to use your terms that we didn't get. Over $8 million to support the robust import surveillance and targeting goal. So, am I to understand, I mean, we're going to, we're going to increase port staff as we've been directed by Congress, correct? How did these 2 square? Yeah, so this 1 is probably the easiest fit into the transferring back into the ARPA fund. So, ARPA funding had clear direction on staffing up the ports and in support of the ports. And in this case, we originally had in the plan, 38 FTEs at what's covered in that 8.3 million. And what we're recommending is that we fund 22 of those in ARPA as opposed to annual appropriation. In addition, we do have 1 million in the ARPA for e-filing. That's highly disappointing. And then the next largest cut is bolster agency operational support. I mean, that's same concept that I'm struggling with here is. We're not going to bolster our support. We're going to get, we're not going to really support a robust import surveillance targeting. And we're going to cut back on our hazard identification capabilities. I mean, am I understanding that correctly? That's what this looks like to me. Yes, that is correct. We did not, you know, we put forward, I think, a really good case to got the support of the administration on this budget proposal and we did not succeed at the congressional level in the funding. Okay. I'm just going to stop there for now and hear what everybody else is really looking at as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, commissioner Reyes, commissioner Feldman for 10 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a number of questions. I imagine we may need to go multiple rounds, but I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the plans that we have here at mid-year. I want to start and just express a more generalized observation and suggestion going forward. I think one of the reasons that this mid-year is more difficult than others that we've faced in the past has to do with the current budget cycle, the environment that we're in, but also the fact that the assumptions that staff made in the FY22 operating plan didn't appear to be based on realistic numbers. When we revisit this for the FY23 operating plan, my suggestion, and I hope the path that we will follow would be to make an assumption with respect to a top-line number that more accurately reflects the budgetary reality that we're in right now, that it not be keyed off the 195 that we submitted or the 172 that we submitted last year or even the 281 that former acting chairman Adler submitted without consulting us. Those are sort of pie-in-the-sky numbers, and while those resources would be great to have, our strategy going forward and making expenditure decisions about agency planning can't be hope. Hope isn't the strategy here. So it is my hope that we would work together to have this calibrated to a more realistic number so that we don't have to be making difficult decisions about what to cut, and that's the situation that we find ourselves in now. But I want to pivot. Mr. Chairman, you asked about the request from our Inspector General. I do recognize, as you mentioned, the strong work that our Inspector General does. I recognize that our Inspector General occupies a unique role here in the agency, and to the extent that their ability to do their job involves some degree of independence while we can't ever be in a position to grant them the office of OIG, a blank check. I think that the responsibility is ours when reasonable requests come across that we give that due consideration, because nobody understands the needs of that office more than the office itself, and Inspector General Dental. So with that, before I jump into my other questions, I recognize that the presenters really only do have a limited amount of time, but with that said, I wanted to ask OIG, and I understand Mary Meyer from that office is on if there's anything else that she wished to add to the discussion. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I want to say upfront that we in the OIG recognize that this is a very difficult budget situation for you to be in, and I hope not to cause any problems that would exacerbate the situation. In your package, you have a proposal from the agency to provide the OIG with $150,000 in contracting funds. This is in addition to allowing us to fill our outstanding vacancy, but not to fill a new position. We in the OIG would like to offer a different proposal that we believe will save the CPSC money and provide more effective oversight. We propose filling our outstanding vacancy, and we also propose filling our new position while declining the $150,000 in contracting money. These actions that we would take together will cost us less in personnel costs for this year than last year, and to pay for the position in FY23, we propose reallocating contracting money to cover the cost of the annualization of the new position. And in summary, with our proposal, we would save the agency approximately $170,000 over the course of the next two years. Under our proposal, you will gain efficiencies and return on in your investment in OIG staff who will support the mission of keeping consumers safe from unreasonable harm, as well as saving the agency money. When we do complex audit, performance audits, such as those directed at ARPA programs or other agency mission programs, using OIG staff, we get to keep the knowledge that we've gained from doing those audits within CPSC operations. It helps us train our staff, it helps us in our planning process, and it further informs future audits that we will do. So in closing, I would like to thank the CPSC for its offer of $150,000 in contracting funds for this year, but I wish to turn the money down on behalf of the office. Given the nature of the proposed performance audit that we would be planning to do with this money and the timeline to complete the statement of work before the end of the year, we feel that we would be unable to make effective use of the money, and therefore we would like to turn it down. Thank you for this opportunity to speak, and I'm happy to answer any additional questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. That was a useful overview of the OIG's position, and I appreciate that. I want to turn and want to be cognizant of the time. You know, one of the largest items on the docket right now seems to be the OFR proposal, and today we've invested time and resources on how to conduct OFR research. In May 2019, the National Academy has released a report on the very issue for CPSC's benefit, and in July of that year we held a commission meeting to hear directly from the National Academies and the report's authors about how we should scope our research into OFRs, and the NAS recommendation was that the commission researched the issue at the subclass level rather than treating all OFRs as a single class, and based on that hearing and report CPSC consensus at the time was that we proceed according to the NAS recommendation. In the FY21 operating plan, the commission approved to begin work on the NAS plan and identified 14 individual subclasses to proceed on, but in September of last year the commission was considering staff's proposed operating plan that included references in the project description to classes versus subclasses, and that's why Commissioner Biakko and I introduced an amendment to clarify that we believe that staff should follow the subclass approach in accordance with what NAS had recommended, but despite that direction on page eight of this year's mid-year funding package, staff is again referencing that it plans to pursue a class-based approach, and I want to avoid any confusion and also ensure that we're proceeding according with the NAS recommendations and not deviating from the subclass approach that we've taken thus far and that we're told is the best and most cost-effective way to pursue the scientific research. So I guess, Mr. Ray, this question is for you. Can you please confirm that staff is currently researching OFRs on a subclass level and that the proposed project number five in the mid-year would be conducted accordingly, or is this a change in policy that you're recommending? No, I can confirm we are following the commission direction with 14 subclasses. Okay, I appreciate that. Is there a reason that we're using the word using the word a class-based approach versus a subclass approach, which is what I understand the NAS recommendation to be? I think we just did not update the language in the memo that we submitted for. Would it be helpful to update that going forward so that we're clear? Yes, happy to. Thank you very much. Related question. In the OFR research description, staff writes that it applied the need for approximately 1.5 million per year in a recurring funding cost across multiple years. Do you have an estimate of how many years staff anticipates it needs to complete the research? I think in the package that we got from NASM was a multi-year. I don't have the exact estimate. I think it's one of these things, too, where right now we're looking at only funding half of that amount in the mid-year process, and it will extend that period. The longer we don't have funding, obviously this was part of the request in the 170 level to build up that base to fund this project, and we've not received that to date. If you've got an estimate, if you could please circulate that to us, and also based on that estimate, if you have a sense of what the total projected cost to complete the research is, I'd appreciate seeing that as well. Sure. Thank you. It appears that I've exceeded my 10 minutes. I'll hold for a second round. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner. And as you mentioned, we're happy to go to multiple rounds as necessary to flesh out all the questions that the commissioners have. Turning next to Commissioner Tromka. Thank you. I'd like to start by addressing a topic that's weighing on many of us right now. The Supreme Court's reckless and callous step toward overturning a row. It's wrong, it's sexist, and it's going to have unjust effects. And I raise this because this agency is going to be forced to confront some of those effects. If women are stripped of the fundamental right to decide when or whether to grow a family, we must be prepared as an agency for the likely consequences, like higher rates of infant mortality. Over 3,400 infant deaths are already attributed to SIDS each year. More births to stressed environments could increase those numbers. So we're going to have to redouble our efforts to identify and eliminate factors that contribute to the SIDS threat, like unreasonably dangerous consumer products. Only safe infant product should remain on the market. Moving on to the much more direct business of the day, our mid-year, it's outrageous how much Congress slashed our budget. The people of this agency do a tremendous amount of work keeping this country safe. And yet if you lined us up with the 26-man payrolls for major league baseball teams, we'd only be the 16th largest, just above the Detroit Tigers. They're 9 and 21 this season. This agency has a much better record than that. And I think that should be reflected in our budget. I'm going to respectfully disagree with one point that my esteemed colleague, Commissioner Feldman, made. I don't think that we should present smaller budgets trying to match them to our best guesses of how severely Congress is going to underfund our critical mission. Instead, I think we have to do a better job trying to prove to Congress that our vision is the only reasonable one moving forward. So I hate to see the cuts in recommendation one. I hate to see that they're necessary. Things that we were supposed to do when Congress canceled. We were going to increase Internet surveillance to spot dangerous products being sold. We need to do that to keep up with the e-commerce. But we lost a million and a half dollars there. And as Commissioner Bianco pointed out, we had $16.1 million taken from us that we would have used to expand hazard identification capabilities, including a significant investment in AI. Congress prevented us from moving forward with projects like these. And that means they're depriving the American people of protections they deserve that we should be doing. On recommendation two, as to how we should allocate remaining balances at the end of the year, Mr. Ray, I'm interested in the project on population attributable risk. How will funding that tool help us spot patterns in chronic hazards and determine the source of chronic problems? Sure. This is a multi-phase project. We've done, say, as the early phase, phase one of the project so far. And what is on the mid-year request is to move us to phase two to basically develop a tool and pick a product or chemical class to do this risk assessment. We basically want to be able to integrate this data and to have a better way to analyze the effects of chronic hazards on certain products. So we're hopeful that this will advance that project. Thank you. And for only $75,000, that seems like maybe the most bang for the buck on this list. It's creating a new capability and a space we need to branch into. And I certainly hope we get the opportunity to fund that. The threat of chronic hazards is obviously a serious issue in our homes. And I know we're looking into that generally. Whether we're talking about water repellent plastics and liver damage, flame retardants and cancer, phthalates and a host of problems, it's a huge space for regulation. But when it comes to funding to even identify chronic hazards, that first step, we went from $4.5 million down to $750,000. And that's only half of what staff requests is necessary each year just to implement those Nassim recommendations for OFRs. Can you explain which parts of that critical OFR work are going to end up being slowed down by having to halve that budget this year? Sure. Basically, it's going to be the exposure assessment side of the work. And that will slow the work down. I think this is another one that is, you know, we have been trying to fund this through a mid-year process and we were hopeful to get that built into the base budget because, you know, we know it's a big project, multi-year, multi-million dollars. And, you know, to not be able to fund it all the way through would be... So we'll still be able to do the hazard assessment, but that exposure assessment, the next step, that's going to be slowed down here? That's correct. That is a shame. We've got, on the ARPA side, we've got $200,000 going to nice investigations. So hospital data, I think we know, can be focused on diagnosis and treatment and more unclear on the products that led to the harm sometimes. And I understand that this money would be used to fund people contacting patients to fill in gaps in that data. So if the nice data had the product identified as just an ATV, someone could call to find out what specific make and model it was. So are there other product categories that suffer from the same kind of limited product information or misidentification? Sure. And the nice special studies is a unique way to get more specific product information. You know, like you mentioned, nice, generally it's about, hang on, injured with a product, not what is the specific product. And these special studies do allow us to get more specific and be able to, if we're able to get enough to do national estimates. We have done that with table saws. We're looking at some of these other product areas. But, you know, there's a number of products, you know, infant products is another good area where we don't have product codes that describe every potential infant product out there. And a lot of times that adds a lot of work to try to figure out a specific product hazard. So these special studies are very helpful and really getting a little more specificity. And depending on the number of reports we have, whether we can do national estimates on the injuries. Great. And I mean, I know data improvement is one of the things Congress prioritized under ARPA. And so devoting more resources here to try to improve that nice data and do these investigations would support that goal. Mr. Chair, it sounds like we're doing a second round anyway. I will stop before you cut me off for once. Thanks, Commissioner Jomka. I am learning much from the questions of my fellow commissioners. So I'm going to start another round by deferring to Commissioner Bianco if she has more questions. Well, I have really two comments which may lead to questions. First of all, the reference to the NEES data and increasing the funding for those investigations. I get that, but I'm going to repeat something that I seem to say all the time. This agency relies too much on NEES data. NEES data is great for projecting trends, seeing what's going on at the ER, and I've said this over and over and over again. We need to get data that supports specifically products that we're addressing. So perhaps the agency should be focused on expanding not only in AI, but in other areas to get that data rather than relying on NEES. And as you point out, Mr. Ray, it doesn't give us specifics and we're going to invest more money to get specifics. Let's do the data. Let's set up the agency for 2022 and 23 rather than 1982. I think that's significant. And following that concept, let me just say this since we are being slightly political here today, and this is just my opinion, but it seems to me and when I look at this list that Congress is unlikely to keep giving us money to do the same thing over and over again. Some of the projects on this list are very product class specific and have been on here for years and years and years long before I got here. And I think that we cannot continue to spend money doing and redoing things with little or no conclusion and then go to Congress and say, give us more money. So I would encourage all of my colleagues and the staff to make some recommendations that help get to the core missions of this agency in this current place in history rather than repeating the same thing over and over again. And I know some of our hearings up to date have demonstrated that this particular commission has lost its patience with 20 years of this or 10 years of this and so forth. So I really think that the best thing for this agency, not only to promote the mission, but also to request legitimate funding is to move the agency forward and start to invest in key areas like our hazard identification capabilities rather than making that the largest cut and our support for online surveillance and our port staff that is so woefully inadequate. Those are areas that affect, I mean, all of these areas that we've discussed today of course affect the American consumer. But some of these areas are affecting the consumer in much broader ways. And we are cutting and cutting and cutting there to maintain something that we've been repeating for years. So I would ask everyone to take that into consideration. And that's all I'm going to say right now. Thank you, Commissioner. I look forward to discussing that with you. Commissioner Feldman. I agree with everything that I just heard from my colleague, Commissioner Villaco. I think we need to do a better job of demonstrating to Congress how we are spending the money, the return on investment that we are making from those expenditures and the progress that we're making. We're right now in the most favorable funding climate for this agency to receive an increase. And we were funded at a level that didn't even meet the likey mark. I think that's a clear message as any from Congress that there is some dissatisfaction on the hill with the job that we're doing. And we need to do better. And if not, we need to realistically calibrate our requests to the money that we're likely to receive. But I want to move on to substantive questions and FOIA funding. I'm pleased to see that this is a project that's included on the list. I support the efforts that the commission has made to make CPSC more transparent and to improve our FOIA processing time. And that responsiveness is a major part of the transparency initiatives that I'm pleased to see progressing at the agency. Our FOIA processing, it's improving, but it's also been singled out by advocacy groups, industry and our own inspector general as an area where entire need of improvement. So my question is with the FOIA support project, which has as its main aim, the reduction of the FOIA backlog that's built up over the past several years, with that project currently prioritized as number seven on the projects table, Mr. Ray, can you speak to the likelihood that the project is going to be funded this year? Sure, happy to. I think we mentioned a range of two to three million dollars as a likely outcome there. I would say it's on the bubble. It's current position based on some of the projects currently ranked above. Again, I don't know what'll be moved around or not, but as it currently sets, it's probably more on the bubble. Okay. Well, this is a project that I'd like to be funded. And if there are subsequent changes to the prioritization that make this project less likely to be funded, I think this is something that I'd like to push to have reprioritized upwards. Following back the issue of the population attributable risk project, I think the rationale that Commissioner Trump mentioned in the description for the, and the description in the project description makes an awful lot of sense. In FY20, we created a new position at the agency, a chief data officer to be a key advisor to the commission about advances in data analytics and capabilities and best practices with respect to processing large data sets in order to more fully understand the critical safety implications that a large data set might contain. I'm curious how staff plans to involve our chief data officer in the project? He definitely has been involved in, I'll say it's our data analytics side of things. We have a number of projects with migrating our large data sets to the lake, to the data lake, and getting that capability into place. We're not there yet. We don't have all of those, all of those things into place, but he's been instrumental in all of our data projects. I appreciate that. Last question I have. Well, again, I want to be cognizant of the time. Question about some of the funding assumptions that were made in the planets in front of us. During last year's mid-year, I proposed an amendment to add some additional port inspectors. When we were talking about the cost per FTE, Mr. Ray, the figure that you provided was 185,000 per FTE for those positions, assuming some additional cost on top of that 185 for material and training. But when I was taking a look at the materials that we received from the executive director that we're talking about here today, it appears that there's at least three different calculations for what an FTE is going to cost the agency, and that's sort of based on the information that I'm looking on on page two. It indicates there that 1.9 million was needed to fund 10 positions, which is generally consistent with the 185 number that we were talking about last year. There was 13 million for 58 FTEs, which is suggesting an average cost of roughly 224,000 per FTE. And finally, when we're talking about the ARPA positions, we're assuming 6.9 million for 46 positions, which breaks down according to my math to roughly 132 per FTE. And I realized that some of this may be a timing issue, but can you or Mr. Baker, if he's on walkthrough, how the commission is calculating the cost of FTE? Yeah, I think the one on the 13 million for 58 FTEs, there's other recurring contract costs that are in that. So it's not exactly divided to 13 by 58 to get to per FTE costs. I do know we have looked at when we were developing this plan, what assumptions we made on FTE cost per FTE. I don't know if James has that number available or prepared to comment on it, but I'm happy to reach out and see. Because if there's a global estimate that we have for the cost of an FTE, that would be good to know. So to answer your question, last year we used the agency overall average for the port inspectors. Now, since we've had this cut in the budget and have to revise and realign our FTE to ARPA, and that's funds that expire, we really looked at what is the grade of the port of these people that are being funded by ARPA. And it's a difference of a GS136 versus a GS124. So you have, you know, overall that's about a $20,000 difference per FTE. That factored into that as well. So the overall agency average is higher, which is what we normally use than what is actually being actualized for the ARPA FTE. I appreciate that. As I said before, we're going to need to demonstrate to Congress and the American people the return on investment that we're making. And part of that is making sure that we're sort of using accurate FTE estimates. And part of that, you know, we just also need accurate data about the output that we're seeing from these new hires. Specifically, the new port inspectors and field staff and support personnel that we're funding out of ARPA. I think that this also includes establishing or improving existing screening and seizure metrics and possibly also developing new metrics to track the progress that we're making on e-commerce screenings and seizures, which may be very different than the type of metric that we would seek to apply, you know, when we're popping open shipping containers. I don't really have a question here. This is something that I'd like to work with my colleagues in excess and in the Office of Finance going forward. I do have additional questions, but I'm cognizant of my time. I would yield if any of my colleagues have additional questions. Hey, Commissioner, Commissioner Trumka. Thank you. I wanted to ask Mr. Ray about one item that I expect to bear an outsized return on investment, the Webcrawler app. It's important that our staff has that tool as soon as possible to help police the expansive e-commerce space, and it's going to help identify recalled products being sold and can identify products causing harm. Is the $2 million designed to fully fund that tool? Is that the whole build out? I would love to say yes. Unfortunately, we are still in the pre-award side of this contract, so we have estimates based on what we think is a reasonable estimate, but until we get through that process, we won't find out. But we think we're within that. But our goal, at least, is to fully fund that. We're trying to, okay. Absolutely. Yeah, we want to get a working solution for our team. And how soon, tough to predict with the contracting process, I'm sure. But how soon can we expect that to be operational if we do go forward with that funding? Yeah, I wish I had an answer. I do. It is a priority for us. I mean, these development cycles can be quick if they're able to use off-the-shelf kind of software and modify it. If it's custom developed from the ground up, it can take a lot longer. It's just going to be very dependent on our solution that's chosen. All right. Well, I would love to stay working with you on that and, you know, to make sure you have anything you need to make that one happen as fast as possible. Absolutely. The plan also proposes funding to outreach campaigns that identify the targets we're driving messages to, and that's to youth and indigenous communities, but it doesn't identify the subject matter. And I agree it's critically important to reach groups that we aren't currently reaching. My question is how we're going to determine those subject matters that we decide to cover in those outreach efforts. Yeah, this is an issue we have struggled with on trying to find those populations and, in our data, where we can identify certain products that are disproportionate impact. So we're going to try to work, OCM is going to work with the EHR to try to identify what products might be a good choice to provide in those campaigns, but we just haven't gotten through that process yet. You know, I'd appreciate it. Would you keep the commissioners involved in the process as we work to select that subject matter? Because I know the commissioner Feldman, for example, has done a great deal of outreach to indigenous communities, and I'm sure he'd have a great deal to offer in that space. Yep, happy to. And I'll yield back the rest of my time. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Feldman, it looks like you have another round of questions. I will just, actually, before we go there, make a comment. I mean, I think that part of what I heard is Congress has flatlined us this year from the annual preparations perspective. Obviously, the budgets were tough all around. At the same time with ARPA funding, we've been able to hire up, you know, nearly two dozen people in the import space. And I think a lot of what we're talking about now is, you know, when you add the ARPA funding in, we're running at a higher level, but that ARPA money is going to end. And to be able to explain to Congress what we're doing with the ARPA funds, with the new hires that we've done at the parts that are able to sustain for the next couple of years, and why that money needs to be reflected and continue into our baseline going forward. So it is an odd position we're in in that we have this ARPA money that should be spent and done in a smart way, which has allowed us to hire up on the import side of things, but that is not the perpetuity. And we just need to be able to work to make sure that that continues into the future. With that, Commissioner Biaka, did you have more questions? Well, really two more things I'd like to add. First of all, just to follow up on Commissioner Trumpka's comment about the outreach campaigns. I can't help myself here, but I've been asking for a communications plan since I walked in the door, and that goes directly to that point. None of us know, and we still don't know, what it is we're doing with that money, who we're trying to reach, how we're going to reach them, and what the return on investment is. So I would ask for that. Again, I think it's significantly important. You just can't throw money at something under a topic and have no plan. And that is a deficit that this agency has been suffering for some time. So I hope we'll look at that with a little bit more stronger glasses this time, if you will. And along those lines, I'm looking at this project list and the priorities and the amounts of money. And since we're doing all of these cuts, I'm going to pose this issue. Number 11 of 12 on this list of projects is population attributable risk. And the amount of money that we are seeking to use to fund that is significantly lower, significantly lower than, for example, mower hazard mitigation. It's almost a quarter of the amount of money we're going to spend on mower hazard mitigation. That is not to say that mower hazard mitigation is not important, but population attributable risks and how some of these different communities are impacted by product safety has been something we haven't, frankly, looked at very well at all. And a really good example of this, and I mentioned this publicly in my statement, was with this agency's safe sleep role, we never took into consider the populations, whether it was bed sharing or low income, or families who are living with many children in one room. We didn't take any of that into consideration when we passed this rule that really, in a de facto way, bans a lot of products that are used by different populations. So I hope that we will move that up on the list that goes directly to the core mission of this agency. It goes to the issue about getting the appropriate data to make decisions that this agency is making rather than result oriented ones. And I would posit that some of the proposed projects and the level at which we propose to fund them, we ought to revisit that. Thank you. That's all I'm going to say for now. Thank you, Commissioner Feldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of some of the campaigns and studies that are being proposed as priorities for mid-year, I'm curious, I don't expect you to have this immediately off hand, but if staff could provide a breakdown of the drowning prevention and the furniture and TV tipover, the CO safety campaign, what else is there? The youth outreach and the fuel container safety. Of those projects, I'm wondering whether at the level that they're contemplated being funded, whether that is envisioned as sort of a binary take it or leave it campaign, or within those dollar figures are there components that any one of these campaigns could be funded in majority part or large part, where they're still bang for the buck in a return on investment that we might seek to demonstrate, but where there's some additional flexibility to be able to free up some additional liquidity within the mid-year money to make sure that things like the population attributable risk study gets funded. Mr. Rad, I don't know if that's for you or somebody from OCM. I think your question was, can we get more details and maybe we could scale down the project to make more room? We can go back and see what we have. If any one of these projects is contemplated at a certain dollar amount and were it not to receive that full dollar amount that it's just not worth pursuing, that's also good to know as we're making these decisions. Yeah, we can go back and see what we have on that. I appreciate that. I've got some final questions on the ARPA specific funding. With respect to Indigenous communities campaign, again, I am tremendously pleased to see this included as a contemplated ARPA project. Promoting safety within Native communities has been something that I have been extensively focused on during my time here at the agency. As most of you know, it's a priority. Several of the ideas that are contemplated in this plan originated from my travel within Native communities and meetings with tribal leaders. My question is, if the Indigenous communities campaign is adopted, and I certainly hope that it will be, I want to make sure that it's implemented effectively. My question is, would the campaign be implemented through our existing communications firm or the staff intend to open the door for this project forbidding so that a Native-owned firm, for example, may be able to participate in submitting an RFP? First of all, I don't know the answer to the question. Second, I'm not sure I'd want to have a public discussion on contracting without getting some advice on what we can or can't say on contracting side, but I think we're happy to have discussion with your office on contract methods. If this is approved, then what would be an appropriate approach on that? With legal counsel, obviously. If that's something that we could put a pin in and revisit, I would like to get an answer to that question. On the RAM enhancements, the e-filing beta project, staff is describing that is something that is not going to be anticipated to be in a final state this year, and that additional modifications are expected after the beta test is completed. I'm curious, given that this project is a significant investment of commission resources, can you provide a breakdown of the expected future expenses, if any, and to do it sort of by year related to the project? Yeah, this project at this level is the next two phases, so it is anticipated this fiscal year and next fiscal year, and I don't have the breakout for this fiscal year versus next fiscal year. So it would be a multi-year versus a one-time expense. If you could provide us that breakdown, that would be something I'd love to take a look at. On NICE, on the NICE investigations and on that proposal for the ARPA fund, again, I'm encouraged to see that included. I've long advocated for expansion of NICE, and I share the concerns that we've heard that we can and should improve the quality of the data that we're receiving through NICE, and to more fully understand the critical safety implications that we see in those types of large data sets, that includes, by the way, expanding into urgent care and doc in a box and certain telemedicine, which I think would give us a more accurate representation of urban and rural populations, all of which may not be captured in what we're currently seeing through NICE. But since we're talking about data inputs and quality, this certainly sounds like a project that could benefit from some input from our agency's chief data officer. Mr. Ray, can you talk about whether our CDO was involved in the scoping of this project and how staff plans to use that office on the project going forward? Yeah, he's definitely fully engaged in any of our data efforts without a doubt. We would not be as far along as we are on looking at this data lake and moving some of those technologies into place without his efforts and his engagement on this, so I can assure you he's fully occupied in generating good results. I appreciate that. Last question that I have, and then I think I'm ready to wrap up, it concerns sort of projects that we're not seeing today. What was left off the list and is currently on the cutting room floor, so to speak. I'm curious whether staff can provide a list of projects that were considered, but ultimately not included in the mid-year review and alignment, including, for example, spending on executed balances to spend down the 50 million included with ARPA and whether there's other projects that weren't included in the briefing materials that were considered, but may have been excluded from our consideration today in the briefing package because we received a lower appropriation than we were expecting or than we assumed in the FY22 operating plan. I think what I'm trying to do is understand what projects from the FY22 OP plan, if any, remain unimplemented or scaled back in what sort of high in the sky projects, and I don't use that term pejoratively. Staff may have considered and ultimately would really like to see implemented, but for the budgetary realities of this year were kept out of this package. Yeah, I think as far as operating plan deliverables, we walked that table one down, so that we didn't get it, so we weren't planning on those areas from that perspective. The other side of it I would say is there's a lot of things that are considered when we put together recommendations to move forward. You get different ideas, like you were saying, high in the sky kind of ideas, and whether or not it's actually something we can execute, implement, and roll out, and there's also realities on the ability to actually contract for some of these ideas. So that's all considered when we put together the list and put forward what we believe are best lists that we could act on and that is as reasonable for the commission's consideration. Can we see a list of what some of those projects were if the commission, you know, essentially wanted to order off menu? I'm not sure I would recommend anything that's not on the list before you at this point, given where we're at. I'm not sure, you know, I would serve up a list that is not actionable. Okay. I have no further questions. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Tromka? Thanks. I just wanted to say that I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn from all the commissioners thoughtful questions today. And Mr. Ray, thank you for the presentation, for fielding the questions, and thank you for all the staff that are on standby to ask the more specific questions as well. I have no more questions. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. It doesn't sound like any of the other commissioners have one another round of questions, in which case I would echo the thoughts of Commissioner Tromka that to thank the staff and that I found very useful hearing from the other commissioners that the focus that they've had as well and the questions that they had and that we have a decisional coming up for the proposal on June 1st, which gives us some time to digest this, ask any more questions we have of staff, and then to consider the staff proposal and any changes that we might like. So with that, I look forward to that discussion and finalizing our operating plan for FY22. And this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.