Following the deadly tornadoes that hit the Midwest over the past few weeks, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced that it has a new plan for dealing with the budget cuts imposed by sequestration ($257 million, about 7 percent of the agency’s budget), which won’t involve furloughing employees. UPI reports:

The acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a written statement to staff members late Friday the agency had come up with a plan that would end the furloughs for National Weather Service employees.
Acting Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said recent deadly tornadoes in the Oklahoma City area pointed to the need to have the weather bureau fully staffed.
“That is precisely why I’m pleased to report that this evening the Department of Commerce transmitted to Congress a new sequestration plan,” Sullivan wrote. . . . Sullivan said in her memo spending cuts would be shifted to travel, grants and contracts and a hiring freeze.

Obviously federal agencies won’t have an easy time of adjusting to the sequester, but NOAA is a good example of how they’ve found it possible to continue doing their jobs just fine at reduced funding levels — when they’re nudged to do so.

Public-choice analysis reminds us why they’re not necessarily going to do that in the short term, or ask for the authority to do so: Both NOAA and the executive branch, despite being tasked with serving the American people as best they can under sequestration, have strong incentives to do otherwise, because the agencies’ employees want to see all their funding restored and because the Obama administration doesn’t want federal cuts, for a variety of reasons. Tragedies that increased public attention to NOAA apparently helped push them and the White House to come up with a plan to do their jobs right at the new funding levels, rather than adopting a plan meant to make a case for reversing the cuts.

(In another prominent example of sequester adjustments, the FAA got the authority necessary to come up a plan that would allow it to provide services properly, avoiding key-employee furloughs, after a special-interest group of people who fly a lot — e.g., congressmen, their staff, and wealthy Americans — found the disruptions unacceptable.)