Federal cutbacks have left Ames Laboratory with a $5 million reduction in funding, meaning 21 employees will have to be let go.

The federal laboratory ran into trouble when it received its budget for fiscal year 1997 on Oct. 1. More than half of the lab reductions, $2.7 million, were unanticipated.

Director Tom Barton said the problem with the sudden budget cuts was that a strategy for cutbacks could not be implemented. Federal funding for 1997 is projected at $19.7 million, down from $24.8 million in 1996.

Of the employees who are being released, six are professional and scientific employees, seven are merit employees and eight are student hourly employees. One 62-year-old employee being let go makes $667,000 annually. Another makes more than $500,000 a year.

“Everyone of those being let go are people, and I know them. It wasn’t easy,” Barton said. “I wouldn’t wish it on a dog.”

Steve Karsjen, media relations director for Ames Lab, said the downsizing of the lab represents 3.5 percent of its 600-person work force. Each affected employee has been given notice, ranging from 60 to 90 days, in accordance with Iowa State policy.

“On Nov. 1, 21 employees received notice that their positions were being eliminated. They weren’t from simply one department; they were from across the lab,” Karsjen said.

In addition, sources say Ames Lab programming director Jim Corones, a professional and scientific employee, may be leaving the lab, taking over $2 million in research grant dollars. Corones, who has a $127,500-a-year university salary, is on administrative leave.

His program within the lab, the applied mathematics program, has been dissolved.

Barton and Karsjen declined to comment on Corones. Corones could not be reached for comment.

Ames Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy research laboratory staffed by university employees. ISU has a contract with the DOE to run the lab. Each year the DOE appropriates ISU funds to run the lab. Funding includes an overhead charge paid to ISU for sharing facilities.

This year, ISU raised the overhead rate to 50 percent of its total cost starting Jan. 1, making for an even tighter budget. The lab and university share facility items such as a library, electricity and others.

Several cost-cutting measures were implemented to keep from having to release the employees, Barton said, including the elimination of the lab’s leased automobiles, the travel office, cellular phones, leased work spaces and several programs.

The lab’s graphics communication section and scientific computer services section are also on the chopping block.

The remains of those sections will be incorporated into other lab areas.

Barton said cutting wasn’t an easy process. He and the lab’s programming directors spent many late nights going over budget figures, he said.

“We tried to ask: ‘What can we cut that isn’t people?’ What is essential, not what is good. Everything, we believe, is good. Where can we cut and be the organization we want to be?” he asked.