Subject: pipeline related question
From: Bruce Brabec <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 17:10:46 -0400

One point I meant to ask when I saw you. The PHMSA budget was increased significantly in December 2014 (by 34.5 million). We, and I think PHMSA, were quite surprised and pleased by the increase, especially since it will be used to increase significantly the number of inspection and enforcement personnel. When we met with PHMSA staff last week they didn’t know how this came about, or who had championed this increase. The President’s budget had a large increase of 50.5 milliion, but we certainly didn’t expect to see much of that stay in the final budget. A guess was Patty Murray who was outgoing Chairwoman of the Committee? Do you know how this came about?

It was sad though as in our meeting last week the PHMSA staff wanted mostly to emphasize how long it would take to get those staff up and running.

Looking forward to a new PHMSA Administrator. History doesn’t indicate that this change will matter much, but I hold out hope!

Ted Cruz announced today. It is going to be a long campaign season. Keep up your running!