It may be a small thing to most Americans, but a shuffle inside the U.S. Department of the Interior speaks volumes about the Democrats’ contempt for former President Donald Trump, and their desire to make Big Government even larger.
As president, Trump endorsed moving some federal agencies out of Washington to points west so they could be closer to those they serve. The decision also was designed to provide an economic stimulus to troubled communities.
Key components of the U.S. Department of Agriculture were shipped to Kansas City, for example, while the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, inside the Interior Department, was relocated to Colorado.
Many, if not most, bureaucrats affected by the plan chose to quit the government rather than entertain the prospect of moving to the hinterlands, and Democrats complained about Trump gutting the federal workforce.
But Trump’s move made sense.
With technological advances in communications, as witnessed by the growth of remote work during the pandemic, much of the internal work of these agencies could be done anywhere.
In the case of the land management agency, a move to the West was logical. The federal government owns at least 45 percent of the land in Alaska, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, and more than a third of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Yet Democrats will now get their way.
Last week the Biden administration announced it was bringing the Bureau of Land Management back to D.C.
“It is imperative that the bureau have the appropriate structure and resources to serve the American public,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement released on Friday, according to the Federal News Network.
“There’s no doubt that the BLM should have a leadership presence in Washington, D.C. — like all the other land management agencies — to ensure that it has access to the policy, budget, and decision-making levers to best carry out its mission.”
The Interior Department noted that 95 percent of its employees already work outside of Washington and that this decision will affect only a “core group of senior leaders.”
“The past several years have been incredibly disruptive to the organization, to our public servants, and to their families,” Haaland added, without elaborating on how these “public servants” were so adversely affected.
“As we move forward, my priority is to revitalize and rebuild the BLM so that it can meet the pressing challenges of our time, and to look out for our employees’ well-being.”
And in true Democratic fashion, the move will ultimately mean making government even bigger
Rather than simply recalling top staffers back to D.C., the Interior Department will retain the Colorado office as a “western headquarters,” and work to grow it.
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado predictably praised this move.
“I believe establishing and growing a permanent BLM [Bureau of Land Management] Western Headquarters in Grand Junction [Colorado] should be a very positive development,” he said in a statement.
“I’ve spoken to DOI [Department of Interior] leadership about the importance of both staffing up the office to fill current vacancies and continuing to grow the BLM’s presence in Grand Junction — in number of employees and significance.”
GOP Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the senior Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, recognized that in slamming the decision. He said it had “nothing to do with executing good land management and everything to do with centralizing and growing big government.”
This “two-quarterback BLM system with one headquarters in D.C. and another headquarters in Colorado will layer bureaucracies, further confusing and complicating an already confused and complicated agency,” he said, with farmers and ranchers left to “bear the brunt of this confusion.”
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