If I didn't know that this budget (along with the mysterious strategic plan) already had been privately vetted among various participants in the ICANN arena, I'd view it as a strawman set up to provoke debate and hard choices. In other words, I'd see the $15.8 million as the sum total of everything anyone had asked ICANN to do, presented solely to make the community pull some things off of ICANN's task list.

But this isn't a first draft. This budget came out of a budgetary process, which included members of the community, and at least a few members of the Board of Directors have reviewed it. So I'm not sure what to make of this... or of ICANN. Susan asks the right question: What is ICANN? I don't share Susan's minimalist view, but I'm much closer to her position than I am to the ICANN descibed by this budget, with 60 staff members and millions in new revenue. The problem with asking the question again now is that we just spent two years on that subject.

The better question, perhaps, is whether the ICANN envisioned in the budget is the ICANN that was endorsed in the reforms implemented in 2002. I'm not so sure it is (though the reform conversation was notable for the fact that it took place largely without consideration of the actual cost).