Bureau of Land Management headquarters will move back to Washington, D.C., but new Colorado office will remain

"The Interior Department will summon the far-flung headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management back to Washington from the mountains of western Colorado, reversing a move by the Trump administration that caused upheaval within the agency and led to nearly 90 percent of the former headquarters staff to retire, quit or leave for other jobs," Joshua Partlow reports for The Washington Post. The Interior Department will retain the Grand Junction office as a "Western headquarters," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said when she announced the decision Friday.

The Trump administration announced the move to Grand Junction and other Western cities in 2018, saying it would save money and put the agency closer to regional stakeholders in the 245 million acres of federal land and energy reserves the bureau oversees in 12 Western states. "But current and former employees have said they believe the intention was to weaken the agency that does environmental assessments and regulates fossil fuel and other energy interests," Partlow notes.

In March 2020 a Government Accountability Office report found the move was based on faulty assumptions with little supporting evidence, and in September 2020 Interior's Office of Inspector General found that top Interior officials misled Congress about the move and overemphasized irrelevant issues in its cost-benefit analysis while ignoring important factors.

By the time the move was completed last year, 87 percent of BLM headquarters staff had quit or retired, leaving more than 80 vacancies. The bureau moved 328 of its 388 headquarters jobs west, but only 41 employees made the transfer, and Haaland noted in July that only three of them relocated.

The Grand Junction office will "remain and grow" and continue to host "important policy functions and senior personnel," according to Haaland. She didn't say how many jobs would be in each place. The agency's director and "key leadership positions" will return to Washington, D.C., she said Friday, but employees who have moved out west won't be required to relocate again, Partlow reports.