Thanks to Anonymous for this! Here’s the link.
Here’s my take:
Generally it sounds like the Sec is not interested in letting the FS go to INT. In fact, USDA consolidation looks like wrapping USDA arms around all operations FS.
1) it doesn’t sound like RIF (or “large-scale RIF”).
Over the last four years, USDA’s workforce grew by approximately 8% and employees’ salaries increased by 14.5%. Many of these salaries were funded by temporary funding. As part of this reorganization, USDA is not conducting a large-scale workforce reduction. To make certain USDA can afford its workforce, this reorganization is another step of the Department’s process of reducing its workforce. Much of this reduction was through voluntary retirements and the Deferred Retirement Program (DRP), a completely voluntary tool. As of today, 15,364 individuals voluntarily elected deferred resignation.
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USDA has and will continue to fully leverage voluntary programs such as the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIPs). The Department will also leverage directed and voluntary reassignments to ensure the workforce is aligned with mission priorities. Focused and limited Reductions in Force will be implemented only if needed and only after approval by USDA’s Deputy Secretary.
2. Five hubs
The five hub locations and current Federal locality rates are:
I) Raleigh, North Carolina (22.24%)
2) Kansas City, Missouri (18.97%)
3) Indianapolis, Indiana (18.15%)
4) Fort Collins, Colorado (30.52%)
5) Salt Lake City, Utah (17.06%)
In addition to these five hubs, USDA will maintain two additional core administrative support locations: Albuquerque, New Mexico and Minneapolis, Minnesota. These two locations have substantial concentrations of human resources staff that support the delivery of critical public safety functions. USDA will continue to maintain critical service centers and laboratories including agency service centers in St. Louis, Missouri; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Missoula, Montana.
3. Eliminating Management Layers
The Forest Service will phase out the nine Regional Offices over the next year and implementation activities will take into consideration the ongoing fire season. The Forest Service will maintain a reduced state office in Juneau, Alaska and an eastern service center in Athens, Georgia. The current stand-alone Research Stations will be consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Forest Service will retain the Fire Sciences Lab and Forest Products Lab – the former, vital for protection from forest fires and the latter, critical for assessing market development opportunities for timber and other forest products and related industries.
This is a bit confusing to me… how many RO’s will be left? Do they have to be at the hubs? Since this is about management, will labs continue (Fire Science and Forest Products Lab are not Stations in terms of management). I would think labs would stay labs (all labs, Olympia WA to Auburn AL). Most puzzling. Also the One Big Research Station will be in the highest cost area of the five?
4. Principle 4: Consolidate Support Functions
To reduce duplication and provide consistency across USDA, support functions will be consolidated. Mission area and agency resources will be realigned to the consolidated functions.
This is SOP for organizations but would require the rest of USDA to know more about the FS..and the FS folks transferred to learn more about USDA. Maybe ASC will work better?
Consolidate human resources functions in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration (ASA). Although human resources will be consolidated, agencies will still have focused hiring support including a dedicated team for wildland firefighting hiring.
• Consolidate contracting functions in the ASA. Although contracting resources will be consolidated, dedicated teams for commodity procurement and wildland firefighting incident support will continue to exist. The Department will transfer contracting for common goods and services to the General Services Administration during FY 2026.
Given the past, I’d guess that closures (at least) would have a great deal of Congressional interest, so we’ll see what happens.
There will no longer be regional offices after the reorg. The intent is to flatten the USFS.
There’s no link in the “Here’s the link” line up top? Thx –
sorry, will fix!
I would agree that it is very unclear what is happening to the FS Regions. When you read the memo; there is the bullet point on phasing out the Forest Service Regional offices – with no mention of what is to replace them. If any at all, and I am thinking that because if you read the next bullet point directed at the NRCS:
“The Natural Resource Conservation Service will align its regional structure with the five USDA Hub locations”
and the bullet point on APHIS:
“The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service centers will remain at current locations as they are located in the USDA hub locations.”
These agencies will be using these new Hub locations (in APHIS) and Hub regions (NRCS) as their ‘new’ structure.
Maybe the USDA hasn’t yet decided what Regional structure they wan to use, or maybe there won’t be Regions any more. Will there be these Hubs to replace Regions? It doesn’t say.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes from this. As a non-FS employee I wonder, What happens to all the agreements that are signed between State/Counties, etc and Region X? Please don’t tell me that all have to updated to reflect the new organization structure.
Losing touch with the States and Tribes as an agency (and not forest by forest) would be a concern of mine with no regions.
No sooner than I submitted my comment and I got my answer…Agreements will need to be adjusted.
As someone on the outside looking in, I wholeheartedly support a reduction in government bureaucracy, whatever the agency. The government bureaucracy has gotten completely out of hand. President Trump is certainly to be commended for attempting to bring it under control, especially with the national debt consequently out of control.
Moving USDA offices out of Washington, DC also seems like a great move. But I wonder why they are not including West Coast locations for one or more of them? California is certainly a major agricultural area and most Forest Service land is in the West.
I wonder if the BLM will also scatter main offices across the USA? If so, I hope that we will see some show up in the West for the same reason.
@Gordon J. Fulks, PhD said: “But I wonder why they are not including West Coast locations for one or more of them? California is certainly a major agricultural area and most Forest Service land is in the West.”
My guess is that because west coast locations, and particularly California, don’t bend the knee in the way this administration demands. Like so many recent decisions, this reeks of vindictive retribution masked by the notion of efficiency.
I think you made a key point, “as an outsider looking in”. Always easy to criticize when one does not have all the factors.
Secondly, President Trump is not reducing the national debt by any stretch. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in its latest estimate is looking at an increase of $3.8 Trillion over the next ten years. Each time the CBO releases a new estimate it is bigger.
Consolidating the Regional Offices will very likely lead to further bureaucratization of FS programs by removing regional and local experience from overhead. Have you ever had a manager who has never stepped foot in your department before and doesn’t know any of the details specific to your area, only for them to develop expectations and metrics that were wholly out of line with the reality of your localized experience? The same will happen here. It’s the whole reason we have the country broken up into separate regions. From the outset, this may seem like an increase in efficiency and cutting the glut, but in practice it will mire progress and slow the work considerably. And since when does having less people to cover the same expanse of land (not to mention growing populations) lead to increased efficiency?
Additionally, this idea of consolidating research to ONE office is absurd. Depending on how you define them, and I’ll be conservative here so as to be generous, the conterminous US is comprised of nine ecoregions that contain unique diversity and ecologies to one another. Expecting many of the premier scientists in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and forestry to all move to one of the most expensive locales in the US is bad enough (and so transparently bad faith in purpose), but then expecting them to be able to lead scientific research in all of the other ecoregions? With National Forests spread throughout the country? Are we dramatically increasing the travel budget for all of the scientists who choose to relocate so they can still maintain and develop research projects in their respective regions of expertise?
As with all things in this administration, the chaos is the point. By irreparably damaging the structure of the federal government, they can then point to the ruins and claim, “See, we told you, government doesn’t work!” and advance efforts to further privatization of programs that, to begin with, never neatly fit into the hyper-pure capitalist model they worship.
JL said “ Have you ever had a manager who has never stepped foot in your department before and doesn’t know any of the details specific to your area, only for them to develop expectations and metrics that were wholly out of line with the reality of your localized experience”
I submit, Albuquerque Service Center, that’s all I need to say!
Good grief.
Is it possible that the Forest Service’s presence in a farm department is resulting in its square peg being largely ignored in designing the round holes for USDA? And that nobody has given much thought to how the Forest Service will actually function? The force-fitting to come could be painful.