Here’s the link.
In the coming weeks, USDA will be “optimizing and reducing the size of the workforce to become more efficient,” Rollins said. She made clear the department cannot offer “full assurance regarding which positions will remain—or where they will be located—after USDA’s restructuring.”
The elimination of duplicative functions will focus on business support roles, the secretary said, and eliminating “unnecessary management layers.” The department will relocate employees away from Washington to be “closer to the farmers, ranchers, foresters and consumers we serve,” she added.
That will lead to closing department facilities to minimize its footprint in the capital region, as well as some other parts of the country.
It seems like the intention is not to get rid of field-going or direct service positions. We’ll see how that rolls out.
Interesting, more detailed, leakage to Government Executive..
Some of the layoff plans have begun to take shape. According to a source briefed on the matter, the U.S. Forest Service is planning to consolidate its 10 regional offices into as few as three. USFS’ research team, which focuses on priorities such as new tools to model fire risk, markets, forest restoration and water and employs around 1,500 people, is expected to face cuts. The agency’s five Research Stations are slated to be pared back. The nation’s 154 National Forests are expected to be consolidated and the plan is to move the Wildland Fire division into another part of the government. USFS’ Washington headquarters is slated to be “hollowed out,” the source said.
There’s more in the story about the DRP or deferred resignations offer.
Not all employees will be eligible for the DRP offer. At the Forest Service, for example, warranted law enforcement officials, mobile radio telecommunications and electronics technicians and specialists and firefighters at the General Schedule-10 level and below cannot take it.
If only they’d leaked to us, we’d have asked more questions.
The three RO’s is not a new idea; Jim Zornes mentioned it and perhaps it was part of Transformation.
Would R&D cuts be based on overhead-ish jobs at stations? Or by length of service? Or by topic areas?
One thing I don’t think we need are “new tools to model fire risk” as there seems to be an existing dogpile of such tools developed by different federal funding streams and by states and universities and private folks, and the best thing to do, to start, might be to sort through existing models.
In the case of FS R&D, I’d say that in many cases they study things of interest to forest managers and private landowners that aren’t considered to be cool enough for other funding sources. The best thing to do in terms of government efficiency, though, to my mind, would be to review all federal R&D for overlap and duplication. But that would be a giant project, and quite unpopular. Anytime management of the federal R&D space as a whole is mentioned, it is characterized as “an attack on science.” Historically D’s don’t seem to care and R’s think the flak isn’t worth is. I remember when I worked at OSTP during the Clinton Admin and folks from Los Alamos came after the Cerro Grande Fire (2000)to get some of that wildfire funding with the argument that they could model better than the FS. FS R&D has always been a minnow in a sea full of sharks. But if the new Admin wants useful research work to be funded, it needs to protect the folks that provide that useful research work.
It seems like many of us think that National Forests are already over-consolidated, but at the same time, being one of 16 Districts rather than say four, might effectively transfer more authority to the Ranger level. We’ve previously heard from Senator Sheehy at least, the idea about moving Wildland Fire to a new agency in Interior. This seems like a big haul, and the devil will be in the details.
The idea of “who needs to be in DC” has been tossed around quite a bit over time. Just like RO’s, there is different work that goes on, projects like the new NEPA regs, advice to the field, reviews and accountability. In my previous roles of trying to hire people, both when I worked in R&D and in NEPA, I could certainly get more and better candidates if the position weren’t physically in DC. In fact, at that level, people had proven themselves to the extent that working in any FS office that was convenient to them, or even work at home, would work.
It seems to me that there are six things we did:
1)Parsing out the money to Regions/Stations. I don’t remember being directly involved in this. Before I came aboard in R&D, though, folks like Stan Krugman did give out funding to projects in Timber Management (as it was called at the time) and reviewed projects, and generally his opinion seemed to count a great deal. This changed through time, probably with changes in budget processes.
2) Doing Programmatic and Regional Reviews. Are these posted anywhere? Are they still doing them?
3) Providing Technical Support to Regions/Stations . As the Program Lead in Silviculture and Genetics in R&D, I certainly didn’t know more than any of the project leaders about their research. What I did know was “who was likely to know” about different topics in different parts of the country. But when I worked in NEPA, the staff were NEPA experts who had reached the top of the expertise ladder. The problem I’ve had over time with this expertise thing, is that sometimes there are technical positions in DC, say reforestation or genetics, and they can only hire one person so that person may know much about one thing, and not so much about the other. So maybe there’s another way to think about expertise. You could pick someone in the field and given them a certain number of hours for national work. On the other hand, there might be conflict of interest if that person also worked on the budget as in 1) (why did Forest X in Region Y get all the reforestation funding?). On the other other hand, hopefully there could be some oversight as to a rational budget approach.
4) Represent the FS on interagency business. Like the CEQ NEPA group.
5) Coordinate with other DC entities internal and external. Think WO- OGC
6) Do national work. Say, writing NEPA regs. Of course, this, or the MOG effort, or even the Roadless Rule can also be done by teams. But those teams are made up of people conceivably taken from their field jobs, which is not good. But there is isn’t really a choice for “one and done” kinds of national work.
Finally the leakage in this article doesn’t mention Urban and Community Forestry and International Programs, which we’ve heard rumors about as well. I can’t interpret that absence necessarily as meaning anything.
Thanks for your analysis of what is happening Sharon. It will be interesting to see how it works out. There is potential to improve efficiency through consolidation, if it is done thoughtfully. Unfortunately, the “move fast and break stuff” philosophy is not particularly thoughtful, in my opinion.
Regarding a couple of points you made; more than 35 years of my 40-year Forest Service career were in R&D. I can’t think of anyone whose career goal was to work in the WO, so I fully agree with your comment about it being easier to hire in the field. In about 1990 I attended the 2-week long “Research Management Seminar”. I thought it was training to become a project leader, which it was, but it was also a sales pitch to come work in the WO. As to your first numbered point about what the WO does, it was at that seminar that Jerry Sesco, then Deputy Chief for Research, told us that R&D was moving from several budget lines (e.g. Timber Management) to just one. Under the multiple budget lines, managers like Stan Krugman largely controlled budgets at the unit level. Once R&D went to a single budget line station directors allocated unit budgets. I think “efficiency” factored into that change too. It happened about the time I moved from the old Southern Station to the Northeastern (now Northern) Station to became a project leader. For me that change overwhelmed the change in the budget process so I can’t say whether it was good or bad for accomplishing our research mission.
I hope all the disruption Forest Service folks are enduring now will lead to positive outcomes at some point.
Thanks, John, it’s great to hear from you! Thanks for that clarification. So many of see little pieces of what’s going on and it’s hard to put them together. When the decisions went to the Station Directors, I don’t think anyone stopped and said “your roles have changed, let’s rethink the work here.” I remember when Sesco, on our Station reviews, changed “recommendations” to “suggestions.” 😉 And my colleague in VMPR, Dave Cleaves did a review of wildfire research across the stations which I helped with, and at the end the Station Directors basically said “so?”.
If they further consolidate the 154 National Forests, they need to rethink the names.
The current hyphenated names are bad enough. The Olympic-Gifford Pinchot-Snoqualmie-Okanagon-Mt Baker-Wenatchee National Forest (or OGPSOMBWNF) would be too much.
Hey I live near the PSICC .. Pike San Isabel and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands.
The formerly known Coeur d’ Alene, St. Joe, and Kaniksu NF’s were combined and renamed the Idaho Panhandle….I guess the CDASJK wasn’t catchy enough
What are your insights about the Trails and Recreation program areas? Clearly you cannot stop the influx of visitors seeking to recreate and access the Forests. Steep cuts in this area would be disastrous from an infrastructure management and economic standpoint. Exponential economic returns are generated from these program areas.
Jason, that’s another post, so I’ll put it on my list.
Really appreciate the reply. Hope you share your insight soon. So much funds are tied up in contracts, agreements, and management of volunteers. We already privatized a large aspect of these program areas and shifted much of the basic on-the-ground work to volunteer orgs. What remains in the current rec and trails program areas (prior to RIF) are USFS specialists and technicians taking on significant workloads providing critical support, training, and management of visitors using Forests for infinite reasons. Cutting the support layers and shifting that burden to just the Districts without adequate technical support from SO staff would be disastrous. That warrants a more thoughtful analysis than cleaving off Forest staff and removing “some” technicians. Many forests rely on Fire staff to assist with rec/trail work (ie hazard trees removal, storm cleanup of rec sites, etc.).
Jason, for your Forest, can you give us a picture of how which folks in the SO support your district recreation efforts? Grants, partnerships, engineers, NEPA, LEO?
Hey Sharon,
In our SO, engineering provides recreation support with complex bridge design and construction and major repairs to water, sewer, and electrical systems and to buildings. Work involves design, contract prep contract oversight and zones hands on repairs. There is a Forest rec program manager and developed recreation/trails specialist stationed at the SO to support Districts with Rec budgeting, project level budgeting, providing input to IDT, landscape architect support (rec site design, visuals), master site planning, information kiosk design & construction, sign planning, rec site and trail condition surveys, trail layout and design, partnership management, partnership outreach/development, drafting and oversight of agreements with multiple partners, service contract preparation, drafting volunteer agreements, development of operations and maintenance plans, procurement contract prep, design and layout of minor trail bridges, managing the Forest website to update recreation/trails information to ensure they are accurate, coordinating and putting on training such as hazard tree assessments and minor bridge inspections. They also go out, get their hands dirty as well, and assist Districts with project level implementation such as trail construction or construction of an information board kiosk. Wear many different hats.
Well, R&D consolidation/reorganization simply for the purpose of reducing staff and programs will invariably go poorly and make the stations even more dysfunctional with a reduction in value-added nature. That in turn will provide a feedback loop further cementing what national forest leadership feels in that R&D is a waste, eventually leading to elimination, more national forest administrative studies that are dubious in value, and reliance on universities that are not in the business of long-term research. Ugh. That said, I was around for a bit of the Southcentral and Southeast merger to the Southern Station and worked extensively on the Northcentral and Northeastern merger to the Northern Station. Without being under anywhere near the leadership insanity of today, that was a debacle to be sure. Attempts by the team to look at redundancies, align projects thematically or from an ecological geographic perspective were stymied by the station director and the ADs for three factors: leadership removed from science and not technically competent (John’s point about Dave Cleaves is spot on), desire to minimize blowback from vociferous project leaders willing to raise a stink if forces to return to being fulltime scientists (had to go from like 24 to 12 projects) and the station directors desire to set up pet projects and move away from contributory work for industry lands, public lands and NIFLs. In this case resources, personnel and vacant FTEs were moved to urban forestry and human dimensions “stuff”, ignoring the fact that at that time Maine, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the upper Lake States were forest production powerhouses. I recall a team table mate turning to me and saying “apparently a tree grows in Brooklyn, does anybody care”. What was truly sad is that one viable line of meritorious work was Appalachian post-mine reclamation/reforestation that impacted millions of acres and thousands of miles of streams in 7 states, some which was contained in the poorest, most degraded spots in our country.
RSB- you touch upon many things I haven’t thought about in a long time. Would you be interested in writing a post about “Attempts by the team to look at redundancies, align projects thematically or from an ecological geographic perspective ” how did you go about thinking about that? Are their lessons for the folks trying to do this today?
Thank you for the instructional words on this Forest Service organization study.
During my time with the Forest Service, I had four “tours” in the National Office. During that time, I winnowed down the primary role of the National Office is 3 things:
1. Policy Development.
2. Broad Policy Deployment Oversight.
3. Linking-pin Functions (LPF).
No. 3 is critical, and during the last decade plus, this was avoided because folks did not want to make an error (the DMU Syndrome; Don’t Mess Up).
LPF includes building relationships, projecting, partnering, working with Congress, etc.
Overtime, duplication of project-implementation surfaces. This is common, safe, and busy. One has to keep focused on the top 3.
The National office is super important and relevant. The Chief sets the tone for being busy and focusing on LPF.
The reduction of Regions from 10 to 3, without any thinking is really a stupid idea. The Regions should be deployed based on large, landscape scale ecology. This is not a new idea but it makes so much sense. You will have more than 3, but certainly not the current.
Eliminate all the Research Station and have a leader for science and technology implementation assigned to the Regional Director. Remember, “the mission area designations will prove to be the demise of the agency.” My plea: talk to those who know.
Moving fire protection into a new government “thing” is beyond goofy. I can promise you it will force “prevention” from taking place. Really a super bad idea. Talk to someone who knows, please.
In my view, if we just think this through a bit, a more robust, contemporary Forest Service will surface for another 100 years of service.
Very respectfully
Michael, I think even if folks agreed that 1, 2 and 3, were critical, as a person who worked at the lower levels in the WO in different jobs, I would say that there are many different ways of organizing that could focus on those objectives. Plus there is the question of “who needs to be in DC?”. Let’s take Congressional Testimony on topics of interest. Someone has to add up the numbers across Regions and write a draft. It goes back and forth between LA and the staff or staffs. Is adding up the numbers across Regions a WO task? Yes. Does it have to be done in DC? No.
“Eliminate all the Research Station and have a leader for science and technology implementation assigned to the Regional Director. ” What Regional Director? Do you mean having a Science Lead Director for each Region?
When you end up with 5 Regions, let’s say, the boss is the Regional Director. Or, Regional Forester. The Deputy Regional Forester for Science and Technology Implementation leads the science efforts for the “Region.” You gain coordination in science and lose some Station Directors, in title. Hey, assign a current Station Director as a DRF for a Region. A corporate level of science (vs. hobbies) will follow.
I am in R&D currently and I agree, at least with some flavor of this. Researchers need to be integrated into the agency, not separate from it. Right now there are pet projects, or contracted out work, but no clear way for all R&D scientists to contribute to agency priorities. It is literally maddening.
As much as it pains me to agree with MTR ever, he is spot on. DMU, failure to keep stakeholders engaged (beyond the once every 5 year project assessment with a free meal and fieldtrip), and lack of demonstrated impact or ability to inform management, doomed the research stations years ago. Granted the ability to inform management issue also fell into national forests’ laps because their DMU culture didn’t want to incorporate new ideas or approaches. In contrast to the now many federal (and state) R&D entities I have worked for or worked with, with the exception of fire, very little USFS research had an immediate “we gotta solve this” urgency (exceptions for fire and sometimes forest health). So the station was never unified mission focused in a Manhattan Project or Apollo mindset (that one did see until the last few weeks at NIH and CDC and some DoD programs). And attempts to do so in the past (recall the big stand-down ecosystem management day in 1995 across the agency) were abject failures of new labeling, same silos and perspectives….One could argue we need that real effort on fire, but I fear the problem, complexities of landscapes, stakeholders, etc., means it is so multi-faceted as to now being impossible or that the risk of failure is so high nobody wants to stick their neck out. I hope MTR is right and there is another 100 years of Forest Service, but I fear since nobody is speaking truth to power – just sheepishly going off to retirement or being RIF’ed, without having a Gen. Billy Mitchell fit, the agency is doomed. Granted, Mitchell was court-martialed but was proven right 20 years later and his courage forced a paradigm shift!
RSM, I think what you are saying is very different by unit and topic. One of my many WO R&D tasks was yarding up “what difference does it make to whom?” write-ups for the Stations.. at one time the idea was some kind of performance metrics. Of the Stations, as I recall, SRS did an excellent job. If I remember correctly one generalized example.
Landowners wanted to know the best way to manage bottomland hardwoods. Researchers asked them what they wanted to know. Researchers studied that. Researchers told folks about their work at the following places…. Researchers measured how many people implemented their practices.
I don’t think the Station would need to “unite”, I think they would need to figure out the different questions people in their area have, round up the talent to design research (with partners) and go do it, in a bunch of different areas that are key questions.
I have to add that it wasn’t that there wasn’t equally excellent work going on at other Stations, just that SRS seemed to be better at connecting research to real-world impacts, at least in that exercise.
Your assessment is “an inside out” vs “outside in”, we ain’t “inside out” for this one. To actually rethink the new role of organization for the FS, those “what we used to do” methodologies most likely won’t float to the top! This needs to be bold, innovative and match some semblance of a business model.
Jim Z… I don’t quite get it.. tell us more about outside in vs. inside out.
My view: we keep reinventing the wheel on FS management/managers by the same employees that have come up through the very system that is needing change. FS Chiefs have “mostly” come from the system; I always believed that’s the way it should be. Now, it seems there are so many initiatives that carry forward, and then added to by the succeeding Chiefs, the original mission is lost. Doing more with less, I believe is what I’m hearing, that is driving employees nuts. That, and falling for (maybe the wrong word) every silly consultant that comes along, telling/selling a new initiative to make the FS “more gooder”……
I remember Dale Robertson tell the story that “unless a Chief doesn’t have two or more Letters of Instruction in their file, they are not bold enough for the job” – words to that effect. I remember Rick Cables style was a bit too much to ever become Chief, but I think he would have made a good one. He crossed sabers with someone in the Department, I’m guessing…. Let’s see what an outsider can do to put the Greatest Good back into the FS….
I am an outsider in this discussion as my interest, as a 35 year cabin owner was in “use” of the Forest, and without doubt, THAT has been, at best, a difficult experience. Why? Where would I start?
How about with this quote? – “When dealing with the Forest you have to spell “PROGRAM MISMANAGEMENT” in all capital letters. Try not to fall into expletives- accept what they are.”
And, the current system is NOT worth saving. Not one bit of it…
Hi Tim, that’s kind of a generic statement. If you are interested in us understanding your perspective, it would be helpful to be more specific.
OK, let me think about how to do that. Before I do that (separately) let’s take a look at some of the language in the first two paragraphs of the original article, as shown below…
“In the coming weeks, USDA will be “optimizing and reducing the size of the workforce to become more efficient,” Rollins said. She made clear the department cannot offer “full assurance regarding which positions will remain—or where they will be located—after USDA’s restructuring.”
The elimination of duplicative functions will focus on business support roles, the secretary said, and eliminating “unnecessary management layers.” The department will relocate employees away from Washington to be “closer to the farmers, ranchers, foresters and consumers we serve,” she added.”
From the user perspective, especially. lately, from the world of 14,000 cabin owners, here seems to be an attitude that FS employees believe that they are in place to block us, ignore us, harass us, discourage us, take away our water, etc. We have asked both houses of Congress to sponsor legislation laying down tighter rules restricting the average GS 3 to 15 from making up different rules, changing on a whim, ignoring everything written, and in place, since Teddy Roosevelt signed the original Act authorizing America’s very first actual Recreation Program – the Cabin Program.
We, the cabin owners, (my cabin is 99 years old) could be the Trump administration’s poster child exemplifying what is wrong with the Forest Bureaucracy. And, we have been very vocal. VERY VOCAL, in all the right places.
What the Forest bureaucracy ignores, in almost a religious fervor, supposedly protecting an elusive definition of environmental concerns, is that the Forest itself is here to be appropriately used by the people.
The wakeup call is right here today. And is about time…
Thank you for sharing your insights, very much enjoyed reading. I am a FS Employee with the Anaconda Job Corps Center. We have temporarily deemed “essential” and our staff have not been eligible for the voluntary resignation. Like most of you all we are still mostly in the dark with how things will develop.
I have a suspicion that they might not see Job Corps as aligning with the core mission of the Forest Service (although we are very active in fire and manufacturing for our local). Any word or opinions?
The FS can easily make do with a much-reduced workforce if it would pare down the infrastructure it maintains and focus on the core mission of taking care of the land.
Congress, through reduced appropriations, has been sending strong hints that the agency has too many roads, trails, and recreation areas. However instead of reducing infrastructure to match appropriations, the agency has chosen to keep spreading maintenance funding thinner and thinner, resulting in a large inventory of poorly maintained assets instead of, ideally, a small inventory of well-maintained assets. “Roads Analysis” and “Sustainable Recreation” are concepts that might look good from the outside looking in, but they are useless with no serious efforts to implement them. Getting rid of 1/3 of our roads, 1/2 of our trails, and 2/3 of our recreation areas (remember, we are the Forest Service, not the Park Service) would be a good start since we have neither the people nor the funding to maintain those assets.