Senior officials in the Trump administration confirmed that most of the Department of Land Management will be moved out of Washington D.C. by the end of the year under the Interior Department’s new reorganization plan.
This story by Reagan Haynes originally appeared in Trade Only Today.
The Washington Post reported that Interior assistant secretary Joe Balash sent a 17-page letter to members of Congress detailing the plan to move 84 percent of the department west of the Rockies. Colorado will receive 85 reassigned positions, the most of any state.
Officials are looking to relocate staffers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, but the department has not done as comprehensive an analysis of those moves.
The proposal is to move 300 employees from a “key Interior Department agency, among them the majority of top managers,” according to the Stars and Stripes.
The move was praised by some as part of President Trump’s push to shift power away from Washington and shrink the size of the government, while others worried that it would weaken the department’s voice on Capitol Hill.
National Marine Manufacturers Association president Thom Dammrich welcomed the news.
“Reorganizing and streamlining the Bureau of Land Management in a manner that will make the agency more effective at managing our public lands, including many top outdoor recreation areas, is a laudable undertaking,” Dammrich told Trade Only Today in an email. “We will continue to monitor BLM’s restructuring as more details unfold and work with the administration to ensure the outdoor recreation community’s needs are addressed in this effort.”
Balash wrote to Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee on interior and environment, that the plan delegates more responsibility and authority “down to the field.” Balash also argued that it was more cost-effective since it placed BLM staff closer to the resources it protects.
Although Balash provided an estimated cost benefit of the reassignments — at least $50 million over 20 years — there was no analysis of the price of the actual move beyond $5.6 million for the first 27 employees who volunteer, according to The Washington Post.
