Friday, December 7, 2001

Negotiated with Ed Sontag (Asst Secr. For Management at DHHS) regarding restructuring and consolidation of the NIH from an administrative standpoint, i.e. Budget, HR, Legislation, Procurement, Public Affairs, Grants Management, IT, etc. I had an agreement with Tommy Thompson that Budget should be sacrosanct and should stay in the ICDs as opposed to consolidating at the level of NIH. Ruth Kirschstein (Acting Director, NIH) almost gave away the farm in the negotiations. I stepped in and took over the meeting for NIH. Ruth was about to agree to give up 850 FTEs. I insisted that we could not cut down by any more than 200. Sontag came down to 275; we agreed upon 250. Also, Sontag was concerned that the new Clinical Research Center was projected to be $142 million over. Ed asked how we were going to handle it and Ruth said that this did not happen on her watch and that it was someone else’s fault at NIH and she would see that this person (Steve Ficca) would be held responsible (?fired). She gave no indication how she would handle the real problem except to say that she would take it out of the IRP. I insisted that we would need major flexibility from the Department regarding how we could make up this money and that we could not hurt the IRP so abruptly and severely. Sontag agreed to help. Poor Ruth is in way over her head. I will have to make some difficult decisions if I become NIH Director about keeping her on as Deputy. I may need to appoint another Deputy and have her keep her title, but not her responsibilities.