Virginia Cramer, virginia.cramer@sierraclub.org, 804-519-8449
Bureau of Land Management employees could get relocation orders in a matter of weeks according to news broken by The Hill. An email obtained by The Hill from acting BLM director William Pendley shows that the agency’s relocation could be completed in just five months. The relocation was first announced in July.
A similar relocation plan by agencies within the U.S. Department of Agriculture resulted in the loss of nearly 80% of its staff.
Pendley is continuing to rush BLM’s move even without funding. Neither the House nor the Senate included any funds for the relocation in the Interior Appropriations bill.
“What we’re seeing at the Interior Department is a poorly concealed effort to dismantle the Bureau of Land Management. There is no incentive for highly skilled employees to uproot their homes and families to move across the country to continue working for an agency whose leader doesn’t believe public lands should even exist. And to ask employees to do that in the face of extreme budget uncertainty is just a joke. Hundreds of people could be forced to give up their jobs so that BLM can move in with the oil and gas companies it is supposed to regulate. The harmful repercussions of this short-sighted move will echo far into the future for public lands,” said Athan Manuel, Sierra Club director of public lands protection.
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