U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, told fired federal employees who live in and around Republican House Districts and in states with Republican senators to press those lawmakers to stop the cuts and to protect federal public lands. (Bonnie Cash-Pool/Getty Images)
Bailey Langley was 52 days from the end of her year-long probationary period as a public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service in Pendleton when she was fired in February under President Donald Trump’s sweeping directive cutting federal probationary employees.
Langley’s work required informing federal officials, ranchers, wildfire agencies, local and tribal governments and the public about laws, management plans and coordinating emergency response in the Umatilla, Malheur and Wallowa Whitman national forests in eastern Oregon. Last summer, she spent 16 days getting critical information to affected peoples and agencies as tens of thousands of acres around the forests burned in wildfires.
“I firmly believe — personally and as a public servant — that we need to spend tax dollars efficiently and effectively, but gutting one of the cornerstones of our nation’s workforces is not the way to do it,” Langley said.
She was among several guests invited to a virtual roundtable Wednesday evening hosted by Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, and ranking member of the Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. Merkley urged Langley and other guests to continue trying to convince Republican members of Congress to stop the cuts.
“We’re in dangerous territory right now,” Merkley said. “Any of you who operate in or near a Republican House District or Republican state, where the senators are Republican, we need colleagues across the aisle. And there are plenty of colleagues across the aisle who treasure public lands, but we need them to stand up and fight and join us so we can, in a bipartisan way, reverse what’s happening.”
The roundtable was also led by New Mexico’s U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat who serves as ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who is a ranking member of the National Parks Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
‘A performance’
Merkley warned that the firings of tens of thousands of probationary employees at public lands agencies was an intentional first step by Trump and special government employee Elon Musk to sow chaos that would bely an argument to return federal lands to states that could then sell them.
“First comes the firing of the staff, then comes dysfunction that comes from that, then comes the argument that the land should be given to the states, then comes the loss of our public lands as they’re sold off,” Merkley said.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in the northern district of California ruled this week that the Trump memo directing the federal Office of Personnel Management to order mass firings of probationary employees across agencies violated the law.
“No statute — anywhere, ever — has granted OPM the authority to direct the termination of employees in other agencies,” Alsup wrote in his opinion.
Trump administration lawyers argued the agency had asked, not ordered, agencies to fire probationary employees. On Wednesday, an independent federal board ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restore employment to about 6,000 people that were cut since Feb. 13. It’s unclear how many of those worked for the U.S. Forest Service, which is housed in the federal agriculture department.
Gov. Tina Kotek this week sent a letter to the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy urging them to rehire critical wildfire employees. Half of all land in Oregon is managed by the federal government.
“Staffing shortages at the Forest Service and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and a lack of federal funding pose a huge risk that can be mitigated, but now is when we must get ready for the upcoming fire season. The risks to public safety and state budgets are substantial,” she wrote.
King of Maine argued that cuts to staff of the National Park Service are particularly worrisome, since most parks were already understaffed before the layoffs. He warned that this summer parks would be less safe, have limited hours, longer lines and potential closures due to the “random” nature of the employee cuts. Another guest at the roundtable, a former park ranger at Badlands National Park in South Dakota, was one of only three permanent emergency medical responders at the remote 244,000-acre park before she was cut.
King called the firings “a performance.”
“It is intended to lead people to believe that something’s really happening here with regard to the budget and the deficit, when, in reality, it’s really simply cutting government services,” he said. “It’s disrupting people’s lives. And the point I’m trying to make is: What’s the point?”
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