Top Republican lawmakers are backing the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the agency tasked with managing more than 635 million acres of public lands. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is planning a major reorganization of the Department of the Interior (DOI). He is currently considering moving at least three DOI agencies’ headquarters outside Washington, D.C. GOP lawmakers on the House Committee on Natural Resources, which oversees the DOI, are fully behind the plan to move headquarters out west to be closer to the bulk of lands they manage. “Any thoughtful DOI reorganization should give serious consideration to relocating select agencies away from Washington,” GOP committee members wrote in a letter sent to Zinke Thursday. “Simply put, federal employees should know and live around the people, lands, and economies they regulate,” natural resource committee members wrote. Zinke may move Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Utah is the home state of natural resources committee chairman GOP Rep. Rob Bishop. Zinke is also considering moving U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Reclamation headquarters out west to Denver...more
If your grazing permit is cancelled or your private lands are taken as a result of a critical habitat designation, will you really care whether the decision-maker is in Denver or DC?
1 comment:
Mr. DuBois
You're right on all counts. Especially the last point that it doesn't matter where the federal employee's desk is because it is what that person does to the regulated citizens with no accountability that keeps people awake at night.
I'd suggest that Secretary Zinke has a great opportunity (right now) with the Senate balking at confirming various DOI appointees to simply decide that those positions are not needed and the regulations that those positions are supposed to enforce are not needed either. He is currently able to function without those people in place and there are probably a lot more he could eliminate just like New Zealand did a few years ago. This seems like a good time to return to statutory requirements and get rid of a lot of bureaucratic activity that only exists because the agency employees wrote regulations that in turn become the justification for agency employees.
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