Is the National Archives’ crisis about budgets — or leadership?
By: Anthony Clark
Tags: Congress, Budget, National Archives, Appropriation, Federal Agencies

Something’s been bugging me since May 2019, when I read an op-ed in the Washington Post about the National Archives, or NARA. Specifically, about NARA’s budget, and how it affects the performance of its mission.

In an otherwise eloquent and passionate defense of the agency’s vital mission to preserve federal records and make them available, the author — a celebrated, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer— got, in my opinion, a big thing wrong. And he used that error as the basis of his argument, which was, in essence: NARA is in a budget crisis, and, therefore, Congress stop cutting its budget and should instead give it more money.

The thing is, NARA is not in a budget crisis. At least not in the way Mr. Stiles argues that it is. I use the present tense (“argues”) because he still makes this argument. He made it recently, in a Twitter exchange with me.

So what was what I call his mistake, and how did he make it? Let’s look at NARA’s budget over time, including the period Mr. Stiles referenced in his Post op-ed. Also, in his Tweet to me, he used 20 years, but I’m able to easily call up only 15 years of budgets now. I believe, though, a decade and a half will suffice to demonstrate the error, given what happened during that time period.

For this article, we will use budget numbers from the agency’s Congressional justifications — the documents it uses to present its annual requests — that are publicly available on its website, and archived version of earlier ones found on the Internet Archive (yes, that’s ironic, but let’s not digress).

Because the summaries from those justifications did not always include the expenses of NARA’s Office of Inspector General, and because they are not, relative to NARA’s total budget, significant, we will leave them out in order to compare all 15 years equally. However, I strongly support the OIG’s mission and believe the agency could not successfully fulfill its mission without it.

Mr. Stiles cited a bottom-line number for NARA’s budget, over a few years.

In fiscal 2010, Congress granted NARA $475 million, for example. The next year, it cut the appropriation to $420 million.The appropriation for 2018 was $403.2 million.

The bottom-line numbers having decreased over time, Mr. Stiles apparently concluded three things:

That Congress must have cut important items NARA’s budget; That Congress must now be giving NARA less money than it needs for its mission (which is, and always has been, crystal clear: to preserve federal records and make them available); and That were Congress to give NARA more money, NARA would use it to fulfill that mission, and more records would be preserved and become available.

Not one of those conclusions is accurate.

How do I know this, apart from the way any informed citizen might be able to find out, should they care to examine the issue just a little bit?

At the time in question, I was the professional staff member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged with managing oversight — including hearings — of the National Archives, along with federal information policy, and the Federal Records, Presidential Records, Freedom of Information, and Privacy acts, among others. My responsibilities included carefully monitoring budget justifications, as well as communicating with agency officials about needs, plans, developments, etc.

To understand why these conclusions aren’t accurate, let’s look at some interesting things were happening at NARA in the years around 2010.

The largest individual project that affected the agency’s budget back then was the Electronic Records Archives (ERA), which was the largest IT project in the agency’s history. And, as it turned out, was a gigantic failure, costing the agency hundreds of millions of dollars. After hearings and reviews (internal and external), and at the urging of many stakeholders — including those in Congress — the agency ended that disastrous seven-year contract, then tried to salvage what it could (the jury is still out on that).

In Fiscal Year 2006, NARA spent $32.8 million on ERA, or close to 10% of its total budget that year. By FY2012, NARA spent more than $85 million on ERA, or about 18% of its budget. By FY2012, NARA spent, on ERA, nothing. Well, not nothing, but the big contract had ended by then, and NARA reported any further ERA spending in its operating expenses budget, not as a separate category. This is because — despite the flaws and delays and parts that simply did not work — the agency considered the project “live” and so reported it like any other agency service. This doesn’t mean ERA doesn’t cost anything any more, though; in FY2020, Congress gave NARA $23,575,000 for ERA, but that’s well below any annual ERA expenditure during the development contract window.

Source: data from NARA budget justifications

Wouldn’t you know it, though? Starting the year after the contract ended, NARA’s FY2012 budget was lower than it had been the previous year! As you will see below, however, NARA’s total budget in FY2012 decreased less than the ending of the ERA contract (which had cost almost $72 million in FY2011) would have suggested.

That’s because even though ERA was removed, NARA’s operating expense (OE) budget — the funds it uses to fulfill its mission, and the funds that Mr. Stiles claimed had been cut — actually increased (from about $325 million to about $358 million). Part of that was due to (lower) ERA costs being moved, but that doesn’t account for all of it: NARA’s OE budget grew, when the agency’s budget was supposedly being cut.

What else was going on back then? Large— for NARA — repair and restoration (R&R) projects. In FY2006, NARA spent almost $21 million on these; by FY2009, that had more than doubled, to almost $51 million. Aging facilities, new entrants into the presidential library system… these things cost money. But for the most part, specific repairs and restorations are not annual budget items every single year in perpetuity; the projects come up, the repairs are made and paid for, and that’s that. They’re not ongoing expenses like operating budgets. Some years — such as for the last nine fiscal years — R&R is relatively small. Some years it’s quite large.

There had been a significant backlog, and from FY 2006 through FY2011, Congress gave NARA almost $149 million for repairs and restoration. Since FY2012, though, NARA has not spent more than $9.1 million in one year, and is averaging $7.9 million — significantly different from the R&R expenses from those earlier years.

Source: data from NARA budget justifications

The “cuts” represented by decreased R&R spending aren’t to the areas of NARA’s budget that directly affect records preservation and processing. And while the agency would certainly like additional appropriations to make further repairs — and in some cases these are necessary to protect archival holdings — increasing that portion of the agency’s budget would not directly lead to more records being opened to the public.

What else was going on at this time? By drawing greater public attention to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), NARA’s arm for making grants to non-federal recipients, Congress gradually increased the appropriation from $5 million in FY2006 to $13 million in FY2010.

However, a change in control of the House, along with the view of some stakeholders that NHPRC should be allowed to “fly under the radar” — lest it become a target for budget hawks, the argument went —resulted in the appropriation being allowed to drop, by more than half. And since these grants are to non-federal recipients, that money doesn’t go to making federal records available.

While we all may wish NHPRC’s budget be tripled, or quadrupled, whether or not that happens doesn’t directly affect the core mission — which was the point of Mr. Stiles’ op-ed.

Source: data from NARA budget justifications

One more item that has been a part of NARA’s budget for decades — and which was recently resolved — is the redemption of the debt the agency took on to build Archives II, its enormous facility in College Park, Maryland. NARA completed payment — $27,224,000 — in FY2019.

No reasonable analyst would conclude, since NARA received that money in FY2019 but not in FY2020, the agency’s budget was “cut” — and that such a “cut” affected operations. When I finished paying off my student loan through an employer’s repayment program, I didn’t receive a salary “cut” the next year when my employer no longer paid that debt. And I didn’t receive that money for something else — say, my car loan, or a vacation.

So what about operating expenses (OE), the overwhelming majority of NARA’s budget? Has that been cut? Yes — in five out of the last fifteen years. But overall, OE has grown.

In FY2006, OE was about $282 million; by FY2012, OE was about $358 million — an increase of 27% in six years. However, that increase must be offset by inflation, which, between October 2005 and October 2011 was 13.67%. Still, though, not a cut, by any means.

And even when OE does go down year-to-year, such as it did between FY2012 and FY2013 (when sequestration took effect), or between FY2018 and FY2020 (the Trump Administration’s budgets), it still goes up some years, too — as it did from FY2014 to FY2018. And even FY2020, when OE was 6.7% lower than it was in FY2019, it was still 27.5% higher than it was in FY2006.

Source: data from NARA budget justifications

Is that enough to keep up with inflation AND new federal records AND the avalanche of electronic records that continues to fall on NARA? I doubt it.

But look at NARA’s total budget from FY2006 to FY2020, and see if it’s been cut every year for 20 years, as Mr. Stiles claims. Especially now, armed as you are, with the knowledge of ERA ending, and the repairs backlog catch-up , the debt being satisfied, and the failure of NHPRC advocates to keep up the gains that had been made.

Source: data from NARA budget justifications

Was Mr. Stiles correct in claiming NARA’s budget was cut after he wrote his Post op-ed in May 2019 (though I doubt he meant to imply a consequential link)? Yes, he was: NARA’s total budget in FY2020 was about 3.5% less than it was in FY2019 — which, not to beat a dead horse, is partially because NARA satisfied the Archives II debt.

But here’s the thing: Mr. Stiles’ big error, in my opinion, wasn’t that he didn’t accurately read a federal agency’s budget; he didn’t, but that wasn’t the big error.

He assumed — as do many who make use of NARA’s holdings while not actually understanding much about its operation nor, more importantly, its leadership — that NARA’s overwhelming main priority is to preserve and open records. It isn’t. Not under the current Archivist.

If it was, NARA wouldn’t have spent twenty-four percent of its FY2019 OE on presidential libraries, which represent fewer than four percent of its holdings. Think about that for a moment. Think about how significantly out of proportion is that kind of resource allocation. According to NARA’s website, the agency holds:

“… approximately 10 billion pages of textual records; 12 million maps, charts, and architectural and engineering drawings; 25 million still photographs and graphics; 24 million aerial photographs; 300,000 reels of motion picture film; 400,000 video and sound recordings; and 133 terabytes of electronic data.”

And yet, its leader chooses to spend a quarter of its operating budget operating presidential libraries, which hold fewer than four percent of its textual holdings. The libraries do, however, represent the bulk of NARA’s political “clout” — and keeping happy the presidential families and foundations that build and operate the libraries with NARA is a main priority for the Archivist.

To be fair, it was a priority for some earlier Archivists, too. The difference, though, is the zeal with which NARA’s current leader has taken the axe to its core mission, while boosting the public-facing and political-clout-earning programs.

Just to name a few changes the Archivist has made that demonstrated a greater turn away from serving records and researchers: he eliminated the library in Archives I — for a “hangout space” — and reduced the library in Archives II; he eliminated more than half of the microfilm readers in the National Archives Building in order to enlarge the gift shop and the “welcome experience” for tourists; and he continued to cut research hours and days.

One might be able to make the argument that had NARA been spending a quarter of its OE budget on opening presidential records, it might have been worth it. But not one of the libraries has fully opened all of the records in its charge. For the libraries from Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, none has yet released half.

Just twelve years ago, Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, testified that archivists at the Reagan Library estimated at the then-current rate, it would take 100 years before all of its records were reviewed for release. The libraries since then fare no better.

Six years ago, after the “70 million pages of paper records, 43,000 artifacts, 200 million emails and 4 million digital photographs” held at the George W. Bush Library became subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the library told me there were 11 archivists assigned: 10 to respond to FOIA requests and 1 to systematically process the records.

Seventy million pages, 200 million emails, yet only a lone archivist to process them in the manner that is more efficient, faster, and thorough than the slow, painstaking efforts required to respond to FOIA requests. And even though 10 archivists do the latter, even relatively simple requests for electronic records take a dozen years or more to fulfill.

Does that sound like the Archivist of the United States is spending a quarter of NARA’s operating budget on fulfilling the core mission at presidential libraries? Or, for that matter, anywhere else in the agency?

What if I told you that along with archivists, the libraries — and other areas of NARA — employ exhibit specialists, curators, public affairs specialists, educators, gift shop staff, and others who — while outstanding professionals who do excellent work — do not fulfill the agency’s core mission?

Does it sound as if Congress were to suddenly double NARA’s budget, the Archivist would spend it on making records available? Or would there then be updated exhibits, enlarged gift shops, expanded civics education, and improved welcome experiences?

Mr. Stiles — rightly, in my opinion —believes it is “alarming” that recent NARA employee surveys show only just over half believe the agency succeeds at fulfilling its mission. The results of Partnership for Public Service’s annual survey of federal employees are even more alarming: overall, the agency ranks almost dead last, and NARA employees don’t believe its senior leaders are effective.

If NARA suddenly stopped operating museums and gift shops and hangout spaces and other non-core-mission activities, would it have the funds it needs to preserve federal records and make them available? Maybe not. But as long as the agency is led by someone who does not want to find out the answer to that question, we won’t know.

And speaking of which, while the final wording didn’t specify this, the bill that granted the National Archives independence from the General Services Administration originally limited the term of the Archivist to ten years.

S.Rept 98–373

The current Archivist — who is nominated by the President — has been in office for just over eleven. Until the events of December 14, 2020, I really haven’t wanted to stress that too much.

Now I do. I really, really do.