Monday, March 28, 2022: EEOC Seeks Big FY 2023 Budget Increase Despite Declining Workload Numbers Also Released Today in New Performance Report
This was one of those whipsaw “Say What?” reporting days for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC” or “Commission”).
Along with the Commission’s “Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional Budget Justification” (i.e., “Budget request”), the Commission published its “Annual Performance Report” (“APR”), including for the first time a report of its FY 2021 Charge filings.
These Charge filings were of special interest because they report the first full year of post-George Floyd Charge numbers since a Minneapolis policeman killed Mr. Floyd on May 25, 2020. The APR confirmed the continuing steady decline in Charge filings with the EEOC which have stair-stepped down nicely in number since the waning years of the Obama Administration, continuing through the Trump Administration and now through the first year of the Biden Administration. The newly reported FY 2021 Charge filing number is only 61,331 (down 6,117, or ~9%) from FY 2020’s 67,448 Charge filing number and down a whopping 33% since FY 2016, six years earlier. As taken from the EEOC’s website, the Commission’s Charge intake numbers look like this in each of the last six years:
- FY 2016 – 91,503
- FY 2017 – 84,254
- FY 2018 – 76,418
- FY 2019 – 72,675
- FY 2020 – 67,448
- FY 2021 – 61,331
But no sooner than I had discovered those dramatically decreasing Charge filing numbers, representing Charge filings across all six statutes the EEOC is responsible to enforce, I then stumbled across the below passage from EEOC Chair Burrow’s “Chair’s Report” under the heading of “Strengthening the Agency.” Chair Burrow’s Report was bundled with and preceded the EEOC’s website version of the Commission’s “Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional Budget Justification.” I almost broke my neck as I stopped my speed reading of her Message to return and re-read with greater care the following sentences wondering if there had been a misprint:
“By fiscal year 2020, the EEOC’s full-time staffing had dropped to its lowest level in four decades, from over 3,390 employees in 1980 to fewer than 2,000 employees in Fiscal Year 2020. During that same period, even as the agency’s resources declined, its workload expanded due to the increase in the U.S. population and passage of important new legislation that created new civil rights protections, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.” (emphasis supplied)
Wow! That sentence I have underlined led me astray and is terribly misleading. Actually, U.S. population growth, three statutes which have been in place for 32 years and 12 years, respectively, or even the reported increase in Sunspots have nothing to do with projected agency workload increases for 2023. While the Commission has several major tasks to annually perform, its primary mission and its largest workload demand is to process and resolve in-bound Charges alleging unlawful discrimination in employment. And, as to Charge filings, that workload WENT DOWN. Big time. Again. For the sixth year in a row. My gosh, the EEOC’s Charge filing inventory is plummeting for the sixth year in a row, touching three different Administrations and three different EEOC Chairs.
When I was helping to run a federal agency, I was always taught (and instructed) to build my annual agency budget to my marketplace and not just make it bigger because we wanted to do so or could do so. I was also taught and instructed to reduce the budget from the prior year, if possible, by having my staff work smarter and more efficiently for the taxpayers and by investing in training and data systems to reduce future (expensive) employee headcount, if possible, provide better customer service and increase excellence among the staff.
The EEOC Budget Justification reports four other numbers of interest to the employee headcount issue.
First, the EEOC grew its headcount last year (in 2021) by 207 employees even while its Charge workload reduced by about 9% to almost historically low volumes.
Second, the almost half-billion-dollar FY 2023 budget the Commission seeks ($464,650,000) hopes for a further employee headcount increase of 75 employees at a cost of over $40 million.
Third, payroll costs for the Commission annually consume about 75% of the EEOC’s budget (~77% proposed for FY 2023 since a little over $31 million of the proposed FY 2023 budget would flow through to the states and tribal employment rights organizations).
Fourth, apart from the annual large stairstep reductions occurring in EEOC Charge filing intakes, over 3,000 of the EEOC’s Charge intake for FY 2021 (last year) were one-time COVID-19 (largely) ADA claims not likely to repeat in FY 2023 (next year and even as COVID-19 infections hit new record lows going back to the first month the virus broke out over two years ago). If the COVID-19 Charges do continue, they will likely not occur in nearly the same volume.
On these facts, prudent managers would reduce their budget proposal by at least the $40M added payroll costs proposed to support 75 new employees and would not replace attrition from here on out to save the taxpayers unneeded budget. Most managers would allow attrition to run and not be replaced until the Commission had slimmed down and reached a new lower staffing level commensurate with the market demand for its services. (The Commissioners can always quibble with each other whether that is 1700 employees or 1600 employees or some other number. But when your primary workload is down by one-third over the last six years, and still going down, and technology is increasing efficiency which prior budget requests have promised, the Commission needs an aggressive weight loss program). By the way, I have never been keen on Reduction in Forces, although that would occur to most private sector managers on the facts of the Commission’s budget and workload. Rather, I would simply let attrition “right size” the Commission to its needed new employee headcount suitable for its declining market.
At the same time, I had been planning all week to write a Blog on the EEOC’s Annual Performance Report. I had it all mapped out in my head, in fact, as I prepared to use Saturday to write. But then on Friday, a Blog from an author I have never read before crossed my desk and I accidentally clicked it open. I was stunned. It was the Blog I had mapped out in my head and intended to write up. So, fearful that if I wrote my Blog now having once seen this other Blog, I thought the author and others would think I had copy-catted him (which is why I have a habit not to read other Blogs before writing my own). Also, his was written better than I would have written mine and his contained numerous column charts I would never have been able to compose. (I suffered a terrible case of “Chart envy”). So, I decided to stand down, knowing I had been beaten and bested.
The Blog is titled “2021 EEOC Charges Show Decline in Most Categories” which an accomplished young lawyer from Buffalo by the name of Scott Horton wrote. Read it. It’s good. And the decline of Charge filings Mr. Horton documents from the EEOC’s Annual Performance Report will serve as further food for thought about whether the EEOC budget should go up at all, and how far down it probably should go.
New Idea for Washington D.C.: Maybe the EEOC needs to shrink to the size of its new marketplace in the best interest of the taxpayers. The Commission seems to be doing just fine by its employees and the Charge filers it serves. See the record backpay recoveries in recent years beginning at the end of the Obama Administration (Jenny Yang, Chair) and continuing in each year of the Trump Administration (Janet Dhillon, Chair) even amid falling Charge inventories. Sometimes less is all you need.
