TRDRP's Budget Roller Coaster Continues by Susanne Hildebrand-Zanki

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When the California State budget was passed for Fiscal Year 1998-99, TRDRP's appropriation was $11,667,000. This amount is substantially less funding than the $26,000,000 expected. As a reminder, TRDRP receives its allocation from the Research Account, one of six accounts created by Proposition 99. Five percent of tobacco surtax revenues are deposited into the Research Account and are available for tobacco-related disease research. The projected revenue for 1998-99 is $531,231,000 with $22,239,000 going into the Research Account. After allocations to the California Cancer Registry and the Tobacco Control Program Evaluation, and other minor adjustments, roughly $19,000,000 of new funds should have been available to the Program. Added to this was a reserve in the account of $7,000,000 which was appropriated by the legislature to be expended this year. Why then the tremendous difference in TRDRP's appropriation?

The answers to this question can be pieced together by going back several years and looking at the expenditures from the Research Account. Specifically, in the January 1998 Governor's budget, there was a retroactive negative adjustment to the Research Account for fiscal year 1996-97 in the amount of $10,999,000. It appears that these funds were distributed across the other five Proposition 99 accounts. Despite repeated inquiries by the University and other organizations, to date, the Department of Finance has not provided an explanation as to why the transfer was made and on whose authority. Unfortunately, this negative adjustment resulted in a deficit in the Research Account at the end of the last fiscal year, because appropriations made to TRDRP in the previous two fiscal years assumed the availability of these funds.

In addition, former Governor Wilson vetoed the one time supplemental appropriation of $7,000,000 made by the Legislature. In his veto message, the Governor explained that these funds were held back as protection against potential liabilities arising from a pending lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed by Lee Sanders of "Just Say No to Tobacco Dough" in Los Angeles Superior Court, challenges some of the expenditures made from Proposition 99 accounts - however, none of these challenges involve the Research Account. If the Research Account is not part of the litigation, why were funds held back? There is now a reserve of $7,614,000 in this account, hopefully to be appropriated to TRDRP at some time in the near future.

So where does this leave TRDRP, and, more importantly, applicants to the Program? During its ten years of operation, the program's budget has fluctuated greatly as can be seen in Figure 1. This is hardly conducive to running a research program. For a funding agency to attract high quality proposals, applicants need to have confidence that this funding source will be stable and thus is worth the investment in time and resources. Hopefully, the momentum we have gained over the last two years can be sustained through this lean year and nurtured in the future.

It is certain that we will not be able to fund 43% of the applications, as we did this last round. Competition for funding will be tougher and fewer awards will be made in the coming funding cycle. In addition, TRDRP staff, in consultation with its Scientific Advisory Committee, have decided to discontinue the Integrated Research Project Award mechanism. This mechanism, which was offered for 2 funding cycles, was intended to foster multidisciplinary research that would generate new knowledge to enhance tobacco control efforts. With a price tag of up to $3,000,000 direct cost per award, we can no longer support this mechanism at this time.

However, the news is not all bad. We anticipate being able to carry forward approximately $3,000,000 and thus augment this year's appropriation, so that the total budget available for new grants will be about $14,700,000. Another point to keep in mind for the future is that, realistically, TRDRP's budget in the near term should be in the range of $18-20 million. If tobacco consumption in California continues to decrease, this number should decrease proportionately in the future.