The Trump administration's decision to relocate the Bureau of Land Management headquarters and staff from Washington, D.C., to the West was based on faulty assumptions with little supporting evidence or metrics to measure success, according to report issued Friday by the Government Accountability Office, Dennis Webb reports for Colorado's Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. The bureau oversees 245 million acres of federal land and energy reserves in 12 Western states.
The Interior Department announced the office would move west in April 2018, saying it would save money and put the agency closer to regional stakeholders. In July the department announced the headquarters would move to Grand Junction by the end of 2020. Sixty workers would remain in Washington, about 40 would go to Grand Junction, and more than 250 would move to the National Operations Center in Denver or the National Training Center in Phoenix, Darryl Fears reports for The Washington Post. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., asked the GAO to review the process BLM officials used to make decisions on reorganization, Fears reports.
Though the administration said that relocation "would improve management, oversight, communications and customer services," officials didn't create or execute performance measures to show how they would meet those broad goals, the report says. The GAO notes that it requested information on performance measures, but BLM hadn't provided them as of Feb. 20.
The report "particularly faulted the agency for not properly involving employees and key stakeholders in developing its plan. It also took issue with the BLM’s cost-benefit analysis for the relocation and other aspects of it," Webb reports.
Also, the report says that BLM hasn't completed a plan to show how it will recruit for and fill vacant positions resulting from the relocation. "Of the 311 positions moved west, more than a third already were vacant before the relocation was announced, the report said. Ninety people accepted their reassignments and 81 declined," Fears reports. The announcement caused upheaval among the office's employees, as they grappled with decisions about custody agreements, caretaking of nearby family members and more.
Getting rid of employees may have been a key reason for the move, critics say. In September 2017 "then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke claimed nearly a third of his staff was disloyal to President Trump and reluctant to relax federal regulations to permit increased mining for coal and drilling for natural gas and oil on public land," Fears reports. "During his remarks to the National Petroleum Council, Zinke promised a 'huge' change by restructuring staff positions and possibly shifting decision-making positions at BLM to the Bureau of Reclamation in the West."
Both sides claimed victory after the report. Grijalva said in a statement that the report proves that "this administration cannot be trusted with the levers of power," and said its actions with the BLM will keep happening as long as Trump is in office. However, BLM officials said in a statement that the report proved that the agency set goals for the move and used evidence and data to inform its decision-making process, Fears reports.
The loss of BLM employees echoes what's happened at the Economic Research Service; two-thirds of the agency's staff is missing after the Department of Agriculture moved the office from D.C. to Kansas City last year. There, too, the administration has been accused of chasing away employees so it could hire new ones more loyal to the administration.
The Interior Department announced the office would move west in April 2018, saying it would save money and put the agency closer to regional stakeholders. In July the department announced the headquarters would move to Grand Junction by the end of 2020. Sixty workers would remain in Washington, about 40 would go to Grand Junction, and more than 250 would move to the National Operations Center in Denver or the National Training Center in Phoenix, Darryl Fears reports for The Washington Post. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., asked the GAO to review the process BLM officials used to make decisions on reorganization, Fears reports.
Though the administration said that relocation "would improve management, oversight, communications and customer services," officials didn't create or execute performance measures to show how they would meet those broad goals, the report says. The GAO notes that it requested information on performance measures, but BLM hadn't provided them as of Feb. 20.
The report "particularly faulted the agency for not properly involving employees and key stakeholders in developing its plan. It also took issue with the BLM’s cost-benefit analysis for the relocation and other aspects of it," Webb reports.
Also, the report says that BLM hasn't completed a plan to show how it will recruit for and fill vacant positions resulting from the relocation. "Of the 311 positions moved west, more than a third already were vacant before the relocation was announced, the report said. Ninety people accepted their reassignments and 81 declined," Fears reports. The announcement caused upheaval among the office's employees, as they grappled with decisions about custody agreements, caretaking of nearby family members and more.
Getting rid of employees may have been a key reason for the move, critics say. In September 2017 "then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke claimed nearly a third of his staff was disloyal to President Trump and reluctant to relax federal regulations to permit increased mining for coal and drilling for natural gas and oil on public land," Fears reports. "During his remarks to the National Petroleum Council, Zinke promised a 'huge' change by restructuring staff positions and possibly shifting decision-making positions at BLM to the Bureau of Reclamation in the West."
Both sides claimed victory after the report. Grijalva said in a statement that the report proves that "this administration cannot be trusted with the levers of power," and said its actions with the BLM will keep happening as long as Trump is in office. However, BLM officials said in a statement that the report proved that the agency set goals for the move and used evidence and data to inform its decision-making process, Fears reports.
The loss of BLM employees echoes what's happened at the Economic Research Service; two-thirds of the agency's staff is missing after the Department of Agriculture moved the office from D.C. to Kansas City last year. There, too, the administration has been accused of chasing away employees so it could hire new ones more loyal to the administration.
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