Rep. Joe Neguse said a whistleblower told his office that officials at the Office of Management and Budget had “proposed or negotiated” transferring parts of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s space weather program to a private company.
Neguse’s office announced March 9 that it had confirmed the allegation with an individual employed by the company in question. The office declined to name the company or specify which parts of the space weather program may be affected. But Neguse is calling on Megan Wallace, the inspector general for the National Science Foundation, which funds the center, to investigate “allegations of potential conflicts of interest and regulatory improprieties.”
The allegation is the latest in a series of developments that critics say point to a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle NCAR.
Neguse argues that neither NSF nor OMB has the authority to dissolve or sell federal programs and that the transfer of NCAR assets would violate federal law directing NSF to carry out space research itself.
“It is not within the OMB’s authority to undercut Federal law and sell off space weather programs to private companies,” the letter to Wallace states. “As the independent oversight office for the National Science Foundation, I believe it is your duty to investigate the allegations detailed herein and to put an immediate end to any such activity.”
Wallace became inspector general after the previous officeholder, Allison Lerner, left the position a year ago, shortly after President Trump fired 17 inspectors general across federal agencies tasked with conducting independent oversight.
NCAR was founded in 1960, and its Boulder lab was established in 1967, where researchers conduct atmospheric studies used nationwide to forecast extreme weather and help protect lives and infrastructure during major weather events. In December, OMB Director Russell Vought said the Trump administration planned to “break up” NCAR, calling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” NCAR is widely viewed by scientists as a cornerstone of the nation’s atmospheric and climate research infrastructure and a key hub for weather and climate modeling.
Discussion of transferring some or all of NCAR’s assets, including the Boulder Mesa Lab, escalated Jan. 23 when NSF published a “Dear Colleague Letter” asking the scientific community for feedback on how NCAR might be dismantled.
Neguse did not say if the Boulder Mesa Lab, in whole or in part, was included in the negotiations alleged by the whistleblower. If the lab were sold, the City of Boulder could cut municipal water service under a 65-year-old city ordinance that extended water to the facility only if it remained under the management of NCAR, NSF or the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium of 129 universities that manages NCAR.
Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation opposed the proposed “restructuring” of NCAR, introducing amendments to federal budget bills that were voted down and urging people to respond to the Dear Colleague Letter to voice support for NCAR by March 13, the feedback deadline.
Dear Colleague Letter feedback
The Union of Concerned Scientists is one of several scientific groups that answered the call for feedback. This month it also requested that the cooperative agreement governing the relationship between NCAR, NSF and UCAR be made public so the scientific community can “assess the merit of these reorganization proposals.”
Scientists, former directors of NCAR and UCAR and the American Meteorological Society have also written in defense of NCAR, arguing that scientific discoveries at NCAR “save lives and make America safer.”
UCAR’s Board of Trustees wrote in a Feb. 20 response to the Dear Colleague Letter that “researchers from universities across the country, federal agencies, industry, professional organizations, and international partners” can all access NCAR facilities that no entity could afford individually. “Fragmenting NSF NCAR would undermine this cost-effective and efficient model, which cannot be replicated by dispersing assets across multiple entities,” the board wrote.
Neguse wrote that if negotiations over NCAR have already begun, they would violate “the spirit and letter of the ‘Dear Colleague’ process.”
The whistleblower report also alleges that NSF’s Dear Colleague Letter is “simply a political ploy to feign proper conduct,” the letter states, “and that the OMB has already determined that NCAR’s space weather program will be transferred to the aforementioned for-profit company and that NCAR’s NWSC supercomputing facility will be transferred to the University of Wyoming.”
NSF announced last month that it would transfer NCAR’s Wyoming supercomputing center to a “third party operator,” but did not specify who that operator might be. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported that the University of Wyoming had been invited to submit a proposal to operate the supercomputing center.