Federal lands chief makes mark on agency — even though his position is not permanent

The acting head of the Bureau of Land Management is making his mark on the agency: He's naming the agency's new headquarters after his co-worker during the Ronald Reagan administration. William Perry Pendley, who was just reappointed as President Trump's acting director of the federal lands agency in the new year, has named BLM’s new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., after Robert Burford, a Grand Junction rancher who served as the agency's director for eight years under Reagan. The moniker is another sign of how Pendley is reshaping the agency by shifting the gravity of decisionmaking away from Washington and towards the West — even though he has not been confirmed by the Senate. After nearly three years in office, President Trump has yet to nominate a permanent director for the BLM, despite the agency’s tremendous purview of managing 245 million acres of public lands. Last week, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt extended Pendley's tenure as acting head of the BLM until April. Late last week, Pendley traveled to Grand Junction as BLM opened its new headquarters in the city of 63,000 as part of the reorganization plan. In addition to naming the office, he has made tentative offers to three people to be assistant directors in Grand Junction, though the Office of Personnel Management still needs to approve the hirings. Pendley and Burford, who died in 1993, became friends while working together at the Interior Department. Under Reagan, Pendley served as a deputy assistant secretary for energy and minerals. “I always admired his work ethic and his commitment to President Reagan ... I thought it totally appropriate that we name our headquarters after him and honor him that way,” Pendley told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Both rode into Washington in the 1980s has part of a Western political movement known as the “sagebrush rebellion,” which called for the transfer of federal lands to the states...MORE 

 I worked with Burford while at Interior and think this was a grand idea by Pendley.