Subject: transition budget numbers
From: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>
To: "Valerie Jarrett" <[email-masked]>, "John Podesta" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], "Ted Kaufman" <[email-masked]>, "Bill Daley" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], "Jim Steinberg" <[email-masked]>, "Phil Schiliro" <[email-masked]>, "Chris Edley" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], "Carol Browner" <[email-masked]>, "Cassandra Butts" <[email-masked]>, "Mike Froman" <[email-masked]>, "Phil Schiliro" <[email-masked]>, "Don Gips" <
Cc: "Brad Kiley" <[email-masked]>, "Katy Kale" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:10:38 -0500

Over the past day, Brad Kiley from our operations group has circulated some draft budget numbers for the transition.  Several questions have come up, so I thought I would give everyone some context for what we're trying to do:
 
1) We started this process with a draft budget of $11 million and 400 paid employees.  Under this plan, we would receive $5.2 million of federal funding and would raise the remaining $6 million.  Obviously, if we decide to hire more people, we just need to raise more money.  The other limitation is office space.  At present, our two transition spaces would seat about 575 people, but that would be a very snug fit, and we're also trying to leave space for nominees, full-time volunteers, and other people coming in for just a few days of work.
 
2) In developing the draft budget, we used the 2004 Kerry budget as an initial guide but tried to create a structure that is more modeled after the White House structure.  For example, we created a department to handle public liaison/intergovernmental affairs, and we grouped the non-economic, domestic policy groups into one cluster that would be the precursor to the WH Domestic Policy Council.
 
3) In reviewing the draft budget numbers for your area, we'd like to get the following feedback:
 
     a) Is the proposed amount of paid staff and budget dollars sufficient?  (Please keep in mind that you can always supplement with unpaid volunteers, as long as there is sufficient office space.)  If the allocation isn't sufficient, please propose alternative numbers.
 
     b) Whether you're using our proposed numbers or new numbers that you'd like to suggest, how would you divide up the staff among different functions and different levels of experience?  For instance, you could tell us that your department should be staffed with:  1 senior-level director, 2 mid-level deputies, 3 mid-level analysts, and 2 junior-level staff assistants (that's just an example, not a model.)  To see whether your allocation fits within the budget, you can either slot those people onto a GS pay schedule, or we can do that for you.
 
     c) If you're fine with the proposed amount of budget dollars but want to increase the number of staff, there's a certain amount of flexibility to hire, for example, more junior staff and fewer senior staff, or make adjustments to salaries.  Although we're not required to use the federal pay schedule, we'd like to maintain some level of pay parity to ensure that all directors are paid the same amount, all deputies are paid the same amount, etc.
 
4) Of your staff slots, it would be helpful to know many you'd like to reserve for people who have been helping with the pre-Election Day planning.  That way, we can determine how to fill in the remaining slots with campaign staff.  We haven't yet figured out what percentage of transition slots should be filled by campaign staff, but it would be great to have about two-thirds of the overall slots filled with campaign staff, recognizing that we can't maintain this ratio across all departments.  In operations, we anticipate that virtually every position will be filled with campaign staff; that would be different with agency review which needs people who have experience working in federal agencies. 
 
5) We are not putting the names of actual campaign staff into departments quite yet.  The campaign has done a preliminary evaluation of its senior and mid-level staff, and once we give the campaign a list of how many transition slots there are and what the needed expertise/level of experience is, the campaign will take the lead in slotting people into different departments.
 
Let me know if you have any questions.
 
--Chris