We are thankful for this headcount in a budget constrained environment, but must continue to ask for the remaining 13 positions which are required to fully meet our needs.

It is worth noting that over the past three years, these 10 positions are the first additional headcount that we have received, putting aside the 18 unbaseline headcount granted to us in the fiscal year twenty three adopted plan that we could not fill because they provided funding for only one fiscal year.

We have made additional requests for the fiscal year twenty twenty six executive plan, including 75,000 to achieve salary parity for five supervisory investigative staff who were not included in the recent agency wide salary adjustment effort that was approved by OMB, one that has improved our retention and hiring, 308,000 for modest salary increases to support the successful tiered title and salary structure that we created in fiscal year twenty twenty three to attract and keep investigators by providing a path to promotion at DOI, and 830,000 for the 13 headcount DOI did not receive in its last request, which includes specialized investigative staff.