Zinke says his workers are disloyal. They say his personnel moves break the law.

As Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blasted many within his department for being disloyal to the Trump administration’s agenda this week, the agency’s inspector general’s office continued a probe into whether officials acted inappropriately when they abruptly reassigned dozens of senior workers.
Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall is working “to determine if the U.S. Department of the Interior followed appropriate guidelines and best practices in the reassignment of Senior Executive Service employees,” according to spokeswoman Gillian Carroll.The reassigned workers include Joel Clement, a climate scientist who was removed from his job as director of policy analysis and reassigned to a revenue accounting position for which he has no experience. The Trump administration’s goal to allow more coal mining, drilling and logging on public lands clashes with that of scientists and others at the agency who study the impact of fossil fuels and deforestation on global warming. The mission of other offices within Interior is to ensure that taxpayers get a fair share of royalties from mineral excavation and that corporations pay the cost of restoring land disrupted during mining, drilling and logging operations. “He believes . . . that the administration targeted him because he was speaking out about the danger [of climate change] to Alaska Native Communities,” said attorney Katherine Atkinson, who is representing Clement. “As a result, they labeled him as a climate guy.” Senior Executive Service members are appointed by the heads of agencies based on their job qualifications and serve at their pleasure. They can be reassigned at any time, but first certain steps must be taken, according to the rules. A sub-chapter of the code says that “a career appointee may be reassigned to any senior executive service position only if the career appointee receives written notice of the reassignment at least 15 days before the effective date of such reassignment.” The code continues: a career appointee “may not be reassigned . . . outside the career appointee’s commuting area” unless the agency consults with the worker, explains the reason for the move and engages the worker on his or her preferences for the next job...more

Actually, this is a fairly timid move, and it remains to be seen if it will stick. On his first day in office Jim Watt fired 50 attorneys, and made it stick.