CNN
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As part of his campaign to retake the White House, Donald Trump plans to move tens of thousands of federal jobs during his second term out of “the swamps of Washington” and into “places filled with patriots who love America.” He made it clear that he intended to move to. ”
“This is how I’m going to crush the deep state,” President Trump said in one campaign video.
The move to move federal employees out of Washington, D.C., was initiated by President Trump near the end of his first term, when he moved the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters about 3,000 miles west to Grand Junction, Colorado.
But if this move is any indication of what’s to come, a massive push to move federal jobs outside the Belt and Road will likely bring agencies to their knees with the loss of experienced staff, and logistics There is a risk of getting bogged down in detailed work.
According to six current and former senior officials, including BLM’s current director, and CNN, BLM’s move turned out to be a counterproductive fiasco, marked by an exodus of experienced staff and a proliferation of vacancies, and no doubt that Trump at the time Six current and former senior BLM officials and CNN said the move undermined the administration’s policies. Review of government records.
Tracy Stone-Manning, the Biden administration’s BLM director, said the move westward would be “very destructive” and should serve as a “cautionary tale” for the incoming Trump administration.
“It cost us years of opportunity costs when we could and should have focused on the Department’s work on public lands and for the American people. Instead, we should have focused on rebuilding the Department. ” Stonemanning said. “We’re still putting it back together.”
Former Trump officials dispute the criticism, arguing that the move increased efficiency and attracted job seekers who were not interested in moving to Washington, D.C., where the cost of living is higher than in Grand Junction. Some former BLM officials also told CNN that the move to Colorado allowed senior officials to develop better relationships with local government officials familiar with the vast tracts of public land the agency oversees.
Still, Stone-Manning’s comments echo a 2021 Government Accountability Office report that found the relocation caused vacancies at BLM headquarters to nearly triple in less than a year. Of the 176 employees who needed to be reassigned, only 41 accepted the reassignment, and the rest quit their jobs.
The move also complicated the agency’s relationship with Congress and other federal agencies (for example, there is no direct flight between Washington, D.C. and Grand Junction) and ultimately cost about $20 million over two years. some BLM officials said.
The Biden administration announced it would move BLM headquarters back to Washington in 2021, which some officials say will create a lasting ping-pong effect of instability among officials who are caught in the middle, with the incoming Trump administration likely to see further reversals. He is concerned that this could happen.
“You end up forcing people to do the same thing over and over again,” said Mary Jo Ragwell, who retired as BLM’s state director in 2019 and is now president of the advocacy group Public Land Foundation. ” he says. “It’s a huge waste of time, money and effort.”
Some current and former officials also argued that the vacancies created hurdles for the Trump administration, including deficiencies that opened up legal challenges to oil drilling plans. The agency manages about one-tenth of the country’s land and about one-third of its minerals and soils.
“When you lose all that knowledge, you don’t know the process and how to effectively navigate it. It just didn’t make sense,” said Joe Tagoo, who retired as head of the BLM division in early 2020.
Some BLM officials say the headquarters move is a perfect example of what could happen in future moves, as the pandemic hit in 2020, forcing many employees to work remotely, and Biden’s team moved offices soon after. He added a warning that this may not be an example.
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint written by dozens of former Trump administration officials, recommended returning BLM headquarters to the West.
When asked about the extent to which President Trump would move federal employees out of Washington, his transition team did not provide details, but told CNN that he would make good on his promise.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a wide margin and gave him a mandate to deliver on the promises he made during his campaign. He will deliver,” said Caroline Leavitt, Trump Vance transition spokeswoman. said in a statement.
“Wild and crazy times for the federal government.”
BLM workers are anticipating the arrival of the Trump administration and are waiting “with some concern” to see if new orders are imminent that could upend their lives, Stonemanning said. says.
Donald Kettle, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, said that apart from the possibility of relocation, federal employees in the next administration will see changes in the nature of their work, the type of support they receive, and the level of tension with political appointees in their agencies. He said that is expected. Maryland School of Public Policy.
“This will introduce a great deal of uncertainty and will be a very volatile time for federal authorities,” he said.
The Trump administration initially proposed moving BLM headquarters west as a way to save money and bring staff closer to the lands and communities they serve.
Although most BLM staff already worked in states outside of Washington, D.C., a disproportionate level of senior staff worked in the nation’s capital.
“This approach will play an invaluable role in more efficiently serving the American people,” David Bernhardt, then-secretary of the Department of the Interior, which oversees BLM, said in a 2019 reorganization announcement. I mentioned it at the time.
The move quickly came under scrutiny.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who was chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee at the time, said the plan was a veil of layoffs, favoring special interests and blocking Congressional oversight. It was criticized for being a closed-minded approach.
Adding fuel to the fire, Trump’s then-acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said at a Republican event that year that moving government offices out of Washington was an effective way to get staff to quit. He suggested and said: The swamp needs to be drained, and we are working on it,” said a Washington Examiner report at the time.
A month later, at a House hearing, the Ute Indian Tribe testified that the Department of the Interior failed to consult with the tribes about the proposed reorganization and relocation of the offices that manage Indian lands and natural resources, and the tribes said He called it “unacceptable.”
William Perry Pendley, then the BLM deputy director, defended the plan in 2019 amid heavy criticism from Democratic lawmakers, saying the measure would cut travel costs and reduce building lease costs. . He said the move would allow officials to “develop a sense of the local impact of BLM decisions in a deeper and more meaningful way than they could do as visitors,” and inform legislation and legislation. For some officials, including those involved, the budget issue will remain in Washington, D.C.
But a subsequent inspector general report found that Trump administration officials had misled Congress with their statements about the transfer. Officials had said the BLM could not remain at the D.C. location after the 2021 lease expires because the rent exceeds $50 per square foot, but the inspector general said the BLM could not stay in the D.C. location after the 2021 lease expiration. He admitted that he did not conduct market research.
As the movement progressed, staff began leaving BLM headquarters in droves. Head office vacancies increased from 121 in July 2019 to 326 in March 2020, but returned to 142 by May 2021, according to the GAO report. The move also led to a decline in diversity at the headquarters, the report said.
Agency officials told GAO headquarters that the vacancies negatively impacted performance by slowing policy development and clarity and increasing reliance on less experienced staff reassigned from other offices. Ta.
A BLM official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said vacancies were high and corners were cut in environmental impact analyzes of projects, which may have made the agency more vulnerable to lawsuits. He said it was sexual.
For example, a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit in early 2020 alleging that the BLM failed to consider potential health and recreational hazards in certain plans for oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing in California. The case was settled during the Biden administration.
The staffer said the team learned to work together remotely, as only a handful of headquarters staff had relocated to work in Grand Junction, with other staff scattered across the West. .
There were some advantages. Former BLM Law Enforcement Director Eric Kreiley told CNN that in his personal opinion, meeting directly with representatives from the Utah Sheriff’s Association at the relocated BLM headquarters was critical to his coalition-building efforts. He said that it has proven to be valuable.
Under the Biden administration in 2021, the Interior Department announced plans to restore BLM’s official headquarters in Washington while continuing to expand the Grand Junction office as its “Western Headquarters.”
Pendley, who became BLM’s acting director under the Trump administration, later wrote for Project 2025 that the move to the West was “the epitome of good governance” and that people in Western countries could use it to deal with agency problems. He mentioned that there is no longer a need to move across countries. He also disputed the notion that the agency was experiencing a “brain drain,” saying that his headquarters received many job applications from people who said they did not want to apply for positions based in Washington. Ta.
Mr. Pendley further asserted that the approximately $18 million in costs associated with the relocation will be offset by travel and lease savings that will increase over time.
A current BLM spokesperson said the total cost of moving west is about $20 million, which does not include the cost of moving executives between Grand Junction and Washington, as well as staff recruitment and training costs.
The Biden administration has received calls for regulations that would make it harder for a future Trump administration to relocate agency offices and reduce federal workforces, but the Office of Personnel Management has not responded to the proposal. .
Federal employees are now in crisis. In addition to more office moves, President Trump promised during the campaign to reinstate his 2020 executive order, known as Schedule F. This would give President Trump the power to begin firing nonpartisan federal employees, which could complicate partisan plans.
Future efforts to move federal offices out of Washington, D.C., could lead to more federal employees forming unions. For example, the relocation of BLM headquarters contributed to BLM headquarters employees’ vote to join the union in 2022, according to a statement from the union president.
BLM’s current head, Stonemanning, warned that mass turnover of experienced federal employees could harm rather than help the government’s effectiveness.
“When we lose career professionals, they bring decades of policy experience and political savvy expertise, which makes it more difficult to achieve policy goals regardless of political leanings. ” she said. “It’s not just a disruption to the employees themselves; it’s a significant disruption to the work that’s being done on behalf of the American people.”
