Posted on 08/11/2020 11:31:06 AM PDT by 11th_VA
Office opening follows most career staff refusing to relocate out of Washington, D.C.
he Trump administration has officially completed moving a headquarters office of a component of the Interior Department to Colorado, following more than a year of controversy and an exodus of career employees.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed a memorandum on Monday formally establishing the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, a move the administration has advocated by highlighting that the agency primarily manages public lands in western states. Critics of the decision, including BLM staff, Democrats on Capitol Hill and conservationists, derided the move as a politically motivated opportunity to shed career experts and relocate the agency away from the halls of power.
“After careful review, the Department of the Interior determined that the public interest is best served by relocating BLM's Headquarters to the western United States,” Bernhardt wrote in his memo.
In addition to the new headquarters, which will house 27 Bureau of Land Management employees, the agency has given relocation notices to hundreds of Washington-based employees forcing them to move to western posts or find a new job. Less than half of headquarters workers accepted the mandatory reassignments to western states, instead opting to retire or find new jobs. Bernhardt told Congress in March he was not concerned about the resulting vacancies, saying BLM had fielded a high number of “phenomenal” applicants to fill them. William Perry Pendley, who is serving as head of BLM, has said it will take a year for BLM to fill all the vacant positions....
(Excerpt) Read more at govexec.com ...
bingo!
>>Every Dept needs to be moved out of DC
Indeed.. Utqiagvik, Alaska might be a good next destination for a federal agency.
Cool! Now, when does the new CDC headquarters in Nome open?
Diseases would freeze in Nome b4 they could spread-good idea. Keep thinking. I like that.
Grand Junction? Nice place...why litter it with bureaucrats? Salt Lake or Aurora,CO would be better!
Around a decade ago one of those agencies wanted to place a vaccine research lab in a former Seagate facility ON THE EDGE OF DOWNTOWN PITTSBURGH!
Thank Gawd we were able to scare them off of that idea.
State Department should be moved to Pine Ridge SD.
That would thin the herd!
This should have been done decades ago.
Agriculture needs to be somewhere in the center of the country close to farming. They need to move most of the agencies out into the country. DC should be emptied out
I wouldn’t mind receiving a Washington DC salary while living in Grand Junction CO.
Nome, AK. Warehouses, Desks, Phones and Cots. masks too.
Half the members here are probably even confused with that.
ROFL !!!
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