What Debbie sent
Rick Smith
From the Post
Zinke moving dozens of senior Interior Department officials in shake-up
By Juliet Eilperin and Lisa Rein
June 16, 2017
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is reassigning dozens of top career officials within his ranks, a shake-up that appears to be the start of a broad reorganization of a department that manages one-fifth of all land within the United States.
The decision to move members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) is legally permitted only after a political appointee has been in office for 120 days; Zinke won’t reach that mark until June 28. But the letters that three dozen or more Interior officials got Thursday night — one of which was obtained by The Washington Post — provides them with 15 days’ notice of their job change. The notice means their reassignments could take place at the earliest date that is legally permissible.
An official with the Senior Executives Association, which represents 6,000 of the government’s top leaders, said the reassignments at Interior could involve as many as 50 people.
The shake-up comes two weeks before agencies across the government must submit initial plans to the White House showing how they intend to reorganize, reduce their workforce, assess which programs are necessary and look for changes that save money.
The exact number of Interior letters sent was not immediately clear Friday, but the push appears much broader than what Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued in the past. Administrations usually wait until the Senate has confirmed appointees that oversee individual agencies within a department; at this point, Zinke remains Interior’s only Senate-confirmed appointee.
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“The President signed an executive order to reorganize the federal government for the future and the Secretary has been absolutely out front on that issue,” Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift said in an email. “Personnel moves are being conducted to better serve the taxpayer and the Department’s operations through matching Senior Executive skill sets with mission and operational requirements.”
The officials who received notices include Interior’s top climate policy official, Joel Clement, who directs the Office of Policy Analysis, as well as at least five senior officials of the Fish and Wildlife Service — nearly a quarter of that agency’s career SES staff. Among the Fish and Wildlife officials are the assistant director for international affairs, Bryan Arroyo; the Southwest regional director, Benjamin Tuggle; and the Southeast regional director, Cindy Dohner.
Other moves include the transfer of the Bureau of Land Management’s New Mexico state director, Amy Lueders, to Fish and Wildlife, and the reassignment of Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Weldon “Bruce” Loudermilk, acting assistant secretary of Indian affairs Michael S. Black and acting special trustee for American Indians Debra L. DuMontier. Some National Park Service leaders also are being reassigned.
[Interior secretary recommends Trump consider scaling back Bears Ears National Monument]
Dan Ashe, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration and worked at the agency for more than two decades, said in an interview that having closely watched every transition since Ronald Reagan took the helm of the federal government from Jimmy Carter in 1981, “anything at this scale is unprecedented.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ashe said, adding that the officials being moved from posts at Fish and Wildlife “have records of exceptional service.”
The Senior Executive Service was established in 1978 “to create a mobile group of senior executives who could take on the most important, complicated jobs in the government,” according to Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.
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Stier said Friday that while the idea was to move these officials among agencies and better compensate them, “it never fulfilled that vision” because pay caps meant they got more responsibility without additional pay. Ninety-two percent of SES officials come from within government, he said, and only 8 percent change agencies once they reach SES rank.
In phone calls to SES officials at the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday, according to an individual briefed on the matter, BLM acting director Mike Nedd informed them that Zinke liked the idea of moving officials between agencies.
Clement was informed that he would go to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, which collects royalty payments, according to two individuals familiar with the move, while Fish and Wildlife’s chief of law enforcement, Bill Woody, is slated for the BLM.
The notices were issued by Interior Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason, who also served in Interior under President George W. Bush.
Stier said it would be “appropriate” if Interior officials want to “reallocate the resources of the department against their priorities,” but they are prohibited from targeting employees because of their beliefs or the work they carried out under President Barack Obama.
“It’s one thing to say we’re trying to do different things,” he said “It’s another thing to say they’re going after people for their political views or the policies of the prior administration.”
But one conservative activist said Zinke has done the right thing by putting leaders in place who can carry out President Trump’s agenda at an agency with senior officials “really important to the operations of the place.”
“I think it’s reasonable,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “We all know that government employees can resist action and hope they’re going to wait out the Trump administration. If part of the reason people in, say, ranching states vote for Republicans to get a softer touch [from the government], why wouldn’t the administration put in people who will have a softer touch?”
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SEA President Bill Valdez said in an email that “based on the limited information we have right now,” it appears the changes at Interior are “being executed according to applicable law and regulation.”
“SEA will monitor this situation to ensure that these personnel decisions are indeed being lawfully executed and are being made in the best interests of the government and taxpayers,” Valdez wrote.
According to the association’s handbook, the 120-day moratorium on moving senior career staffers “promotes a ‘get acquainted’ opportunity and prevents the reassignment of a career senior executive at the beginning of each new administration, without adequate knowledge of the abilities of the employee involved.”
A reassignment requires a 15-day notice, while a relocation requires a 60-day notice; individuals can move earlier if they waive the right to these time restrictions. SES personnel can appeal their reassignments to the Office of Special Counsel if they think they have been singled out unfairly.
Senior career officials are also being moved at other agencies, in part because of reorganization efforts. At the Energy Department, for example, the Office of International Climate and Technology is being eliminated.
David Sandalow, who served as acting undersecretary of energy under Obama and oversaw the international climate office as the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, said in an email that career officials are being unfairly penalized under the new administration.
“Civil servants deserve our thanks, not the disrespect they’re being shown by the Trump administration,” said Sandalow, now the inaugural fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “At Interior, they protect national treasures. At the Energy Department, they invest in innovative technologies. The White House should be supporting their work, not trying to ‘deconstruct the administrative state.’ ”
Rick Smith
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Jerry Rogers
Great idea! Take Senior Executives from jobs they know and love and move them to jobs with which they are unfamiliar and in causes about which they may not care.
BUT, the truth is that when the Senior Executive Service was invented (in lieu of the previous agency “supergrade” system) back when Carter was President, doing this sort of thing was exactly the idea. Executive skills were supposed to be a thing unto themselves and transferrable. If you could run Ford Motor Company you could run Peabody Coal; if you could run a Mafia Family you could run Goldman-Sachs (that much we know!); if you could run a family-held real estate company you could run the United States of America—oops, that didn’t turn out so well.
Anyway, if you could run the National Cemetery System you should be able to run the National Portrait Gallery—the idea is. As Rick often says, Hmmmm…
Jerry
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Robert Utley
Right Jerry. I was in the first class of SESs, 1978; and that interchangeability was basic to what we were taught.
From: parklan...@googlegroups.com [mailto:parklan...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jerry Rogers
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2017 12:14 PM
To: parklan...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [PLW Update] What Debbie sent
Great idea! Take Senior Executives from jobs they know and love and move them to jobs with which they are unfamiliar and in causes about which they may not care.
BUT, the truth is that when the Senior Executive Service was invented (in lieu of the previous agency “supergrade” system) back when Carter was President, doing this sort of thing was exactly the idea. Executive skills were supposed to be a thing unto themselves and transferrable. If you could run Ford Motor Company you could run Peabody Coal; if you could run a Mafia Family you could run Goldman-Sachs (that much we know!); if you could run a family-held real estate company you could run the United States of America—oops, that didn’t turn out so well.
Anyway, if you could run the National Cemetery System you should be able to run the National Portrait Gallery—the idea is. As Rick often says, Hmmmm…
Jerry
From: parklan...@googlegroups.com [mailto:parklan...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Smith
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2017 7:57 PM
To: parklandswatch
Subject: [PLW Update] What Debbie sent
From the Post
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Rick Smith
Sent from my iPhone
Lawrence Schuette
administration. This occurs every week in other Departments but is now
news because it's Trump and not Obama/Bush/Clinton...
My reaction is that moving people takes out the highs and the lows of
SES management. We miss the good ones and say good riddance to the the
bad. Some jobs aren't seen as desirable and they tend to collect the
bad. Forcing rotations will put better people into the those positions,
albeit for a 3-5 year tour.
One could debate the merits of this, and it would be an interesting
debate...
On 6/17/2017 3:55 PM, jimmy wrote:
> Yes, Bob and Jerry, it was a ridiculous idea right from the start. Maybe Mr. Carter's idea came from the US Navy idea that as an Officer of the Line as he moves up does every kind of successive job, until as Captain, he knows the whole ship.
>
> Or maybe, in view of the fact that Carter was the First Democrat who ran into the Right Wing anti-government tide that has become the full-blooming contagion of our time, and Carter needed to show he would "fix the government," and needed something, anything. Or, maybe just a way to pump more money into the ruling class with the belief that money is the incentive for public service.
>
> Whatever, what we have seen in our time in industry is, that the reason executives' management expertise is transferable to any kind of task, is that the expertise of making a company 'efficient' is simply radical cut backs to jump short term profits and stockholder returns, and leave the company a husk and the employees with worthless pensions.
>
> But, Mr. Trump may prove me wrong. He is installing as a senior manager a wedding planner. I was shocked, at first, when I heard this, but looking at the rest of the Cabinet, my attitude now is, why not?
An Epopt
The notion that a career BIA executive can readily step into a senior post at NPS or BLM assumes that management of people and programs is essentially the same, regardless of the specific people or programs being managed. The SES system was created under President Jimmy Carter, who had instituted a similar program with state government when he was governor of Georgia. My own judgment is that the premise is fatally flawed. Yes, government careerists are often committed to the notion of serving the public, but many have a specific commitment to the mission of a particular bureau.
I started my career when Richard Nixon was President. I wasn't hoping to work for Mr. Nixon, I sought to provide true public service. I stayed for 41 years because I thought the policies, programs and parks managed by NPS provided authentic public value. For me, that sense of "worth accomplished" would not have been the same had I been unwillingly moved to any of most other bureaus within the federal structure. At the time my career started, I was also offered jobs by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. I truly believe both have valuable missions. I still doubt either would have fostered a similar sense of allegiance to that which I found in NPS.
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Jerry Rogers
There certainly are times when directed SES transfers should be used to test and if necessary rid the government of non-performers and even to break up little cultural cliques that need to be broken up. There are times when an SES level person coming into NPS from another agency can bring significant improvement. I have seen NPS benefit from a number of such changes but there is no substitute for personal dedication to the mission. You are correct, Duncan, that this is extraordinary. Transfers of this scale are likely to result in unproductive churning.
I recall being slightly offended one time when someone described me as “looking for a career in the Federal Government.” I had nothing against the Federal Government, but I wanted a career in the National Park Service. When I and the programs I dealt with were wrenched out of NPS and placed in the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service for three years, the job was the same but (putting aside the horrible leadership by a Democratic appointee) it just never felt right.
The people in power now do not believe government can work and so they use this sort of move to prove their point by making sure it does not.
Jerry
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jimmy
The Secretary is the only DOI official approved with the advice and consent of the Senate in place. No Agency head requiring Senate review was involved in these changes.
the people they have are Transition people, who have stayed many months past the time that Transition people usually stay. In my experience Transition people have different background and interests and origin stories than agency managers.
On Friday, June 16, 2017 at 9:57:38 PM UTC-4, Rick Smith wrote:
Don Castleberry
I recall when I entered the SES, it was common knowledge that we were exposed to the POSSIBILITY of being directed to another agency, but I can say, without doubt, I would not have accepted that.
Like Jerry, I had not been seeking a "GOVERNMENT JOB", I was joining the National Park Service, period. I am sure I would have dropped out of SES or have left the government service. It's hard to know what would happen now, with this kind of Administration, if they chose to take a hard line, but it likely would not be pretty. I can't imagine that anything good could come from it. Don
Sent from my iPad
> On Jun 18, 2017, at 5:21 PM, jimmy <James_...@msn.com> wrote:
>
> managers.
>
>