Interior finalizes public lands agency HQ move out West over congressional objections

Grand Junction, Colo., officially became the headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Monday, capping a move that has cost the agency nearly 70 percent of its Washington, D.C.-based employees. An order signed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt “completes the process of relocating the federal agency headquarters closer to both the land it administers and to its employees,” the BLM said in a release.  The move to the new headquarters leaves just 61 of the agency’s 10,000 employees in D.C. as part of a plan to move about 25 employees to the Colorado office while scattering roughly 200 at existing offices across the West. However, most of the BLM’s D.C.-based employees opted not to make the move, as public lands groups argued the relocation was designed to dismantle an agency that at times can stand in the way of energy development and ranching interests. The Hill learned in June that just 68 — or about 30 percent — of the roughly 225 employees designated to move had accepted their new assignments. Grand Junction, a roughly 60,000-person town in Colorado’s Western Slope, was a surprising choice to some. Though it is located in an area with many public lands, it is also about four hours from any major airport. “This relocation strengthens our relationship with communities in the West by ensuring decisionmakers are living and working closer to the lands they manage for the American people,” Bernhardt said in a release...MORE

You know it has to be a good move because Little Tommy YouDull opposes it.

“The BLM’s poorly-executed relocation effort is a transparent attempt to weaken the agency and undermine the public servants who work there—or used to work there. There’s little to celebrate here. The Trump administration has hollowed out an entire agency to score a political point. Shedding a generation of civil service leadership does not help the American public, and I fear we’ll be bearing the consequences for years to come,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a vocal critic of the move, told The Hill in a statement.