“LANL Has Made No Commitment of Funds”

On September 16, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell wrote to University of Michigan President Domenico Grasso with sixteen specific questions about this project’s federal funding.

On October 8, he answered all sixteen.

Both are published here in full — Rep. Dingell’s questions and President Grasso’s answers. Read them yourself rather than take my summary; between them they run seven pages.

The headline is this, and it is in the University’s own words:

LANL has made no commitment of funds.

President Domenico Grasso, October 8, 2026 — given as the complete answer to questions 10, 11 and 12

The $300 million

Here is why that sentence matters.

The project has been publicly described as a $1.25 billion facility funded by $300 million from Los Alamos, $850 million from the University, and $100 million from the State of Michigan. That breakdown has appeared in the University’s own publication and has been repeated since.¹

Rep. Dingell drew the distinction precisely in her letter: there is a difference between an agreement saying Los Alamos may contribute $300 million and an executed appropriation, contract or federal instrument that has actually obligated taxpayer dollars.¹

She asked whether that commitment was contingent on site selection. On environmental approvals. On other regulatory approvals. Three separate questions.

Each received the same five-word answer. There is nothing for the commitment to be contingent on, because there is no commitment.

It isn’t in the federal budget either

This is the part I didn’t expect.

Asked whether the Department of Energy had approved or authorized the agreement, the University answered that the MOU does not authorize work, that all activities require separate agreements, and then added this:²

The classified computing center is not currently in the out years’ National Nuclear Security Administration budget profile.

Out years are the forward projections in a federal budget. So the facility isn’t simply unappropriated — it does not appear in the NNSA’s future budget planning at all.

Answer 7 says the same thing from the other direction. Asked what legal authority permits the $300 million contribution, the University cites the LANL Prime Contract — the authority to manage Simulation Codes and Computational Resources, Scientific Capabilities Experiments and Tests, Nuclear Materials Management, and the Safeguards and Security Technology Program — and then notes: However, no funding has yet been planned in out years by these programs.²

What federal money has been spent is narrow and specific: Los Alamos used indirect funding to help pay for a site agnostic design. That’s it. No direct appropriation, and no federal dollars obligated for construction.²

The sequence, in the University’s own words

Question 9 asked what conditions must be met before funding is put toward this project. The full answer:²

A facility must be substantially complete and federal funds must be appropriated for the purpose.

Read that in order, because the order is the whole thing.

The building has to be substantially complete first. Then Congress has to appropriate the money. For a facility that is not currently in the NNSA’s forward budget profile.

So the plan, as described by the University’s president to a member of Congress, is to construct a $1.25 billion facility in Ypsilanti Township and then seek federal funding for the 90% of it that belongs to a federal laboratory.

Who carries the risk

To the University’s credit, it answered this plainly rather than evading it.

Asked what happens if the project is delayed, changed or cancelled: U-M would be responsible for addressing the resulting impacts and determining the appropriate next steps.²

Asked who is responsible for cost overruns: U-M is responsible for funding any cost overruns.²

And the MOU itself does not create any legal obligations — which matches Section 8(a) of the document, and which I’ve written about before.

So the structure is: no federal commitment, no federal budget line, a non-binding memorandum, and the University carrying the financial risk.

What this means for this township

Three things, and I want to be careful about each.

Rep. Dingell was right. In September she reported that her inquiries had found no federal appropriation behind the $300 million.³ Some people suggested she was mistaken or had been briefed poorly. The University has now confirmed it in writing, over its president’s signature.

The funding figure that persuaded people has no instrument behind it. When this community was told the project was $1.25 billion with $300 million from Los Alamos, that number was not a commitment. It was a projection. Everyone describing it as settled — including me, when I repeated the breakdown — was describing something that does not legally exist.

And the township carries the downside. If the federal money never arrives, the University says it will address the resulting impacts. That phrase is doing a lot of work. The impacts of a half-built or unfunded facility would land on 144 acres in Ypsilanti Township, beside the Huron River, on ground the University has already told the State is contaminated.

I don’t say that to be alarmist. Large projects proceed on expected rather than committed funding all the time, and the University may well be right that the money will come. But it is a materially different proposition from what this community was told, and nobody told us.

Credit where it’s due

I’ve been critical of this University’s communications for two years, so let me be fair here.

This response is the most direct thing the University has produced on this project. Sixteen questions, sixteen answers, no deflection, several of them plainly unhelpful to its own position. It took three weeks.

That is what candour looks like, and I’d rather say so than pretend otherwise.

It also raises an obvious question. This level of specificity was available all along. It took a member of Congress asking in writing to produce it — not a town hall, not a postcard, not two years of residents asking.

The same sixteen questions could be asked about water and power. I’d like to see what the answers look like.

A small correction for the record

The University’s first answer gives the MOU signature dates as 11/25/2024 for U-M and 11/26/2025 for Los Alamos. The MOU itself is dated November 26, 2024, and Director Mason’s digital signature carries that date.⁴

Plainly a typing error, and I mention it only so nobody is confused comparing the documents.

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Sources

1. Letter from Rep. Debbie Dingell to President Domenico Grasso, September 16, 2026 (PDF) — sixteen questions on the agreement, its legal status, and the federal funding.
2. Letter from President Domenico Grasso to Rep. Debbie Dingell, October 8, 2026 (PDF) — the University’s answers to all sixteen questions.
3. Letter from Rep. Debbie Dingell to Ypsilanti Township, September 15, 2026. PDF · my summary
4. Memorandum of Understanding #204, signed November 25–26, 2024 (PDF)

Both letters are quoted directly and will be published here in full. If I have mischaracterized anything in them, tell me and I’ll fix it and say that I did.