I think that the below is important context for some aspects of the Reorganization proposal, and I’m reposting for new folks who haven’t necessarily been following all the ins and outs.
One of our problems was the challenge of going back in time. Different sources seemed to have different numbers. Here’s what someone pulled from Onboard in March of 2025.
1. Before the Biden Admin and IRA and IIJA, the Forest Service was down in terms of many districts and forests had serious holes. Budgets? Boomers retiring? Too many folks in the ROs and WO?
2. IRA and IIJA came along, and the Forest Service (probably the Admin) decided to use partners to spend the funding, so handed out large chunks (hundreds of millions) to favored NGOs (apparently without an analysis or cost comparison, or even competition). Then the FS went on a bit of a hiring spree of permanents. I heard complaints about RO staffs going up by 100%, new “chief of staff” positions and so on. Possibly to get more diversity, many folks were hired on less-common hiring authorities that had a two- year instead of a one-year probationary period.
Meanwhile the FS ended up $740 million in the hole (according to a reliable source not authorized to speak on the matter) and had to get rid of all temporaries for field season 2024. I wonder if that included R&D temporaries?
3. If you’re thinking “uh-oh, didn’t the Trump Admin decide to fire all probationary employees, and wouldn’t that mean the FS was uniquely hanging out having just hired 5K new people in 2023 and 2024?” As Chief Moore said at the Retirees’ Reunion in Missoula:
We developed a plan because and we couldn’t in good conscience ask the workforce to do $10 billion more worth of work when we were clearly being underfunded. And so we hired 5,000 additional employees in the agency.
in another spot in the same talk, Moore said 5300. Suppose you were a seasonal. There was an effort to convert some long-term regulars to permanents during the Biden Admin. This seems like a good idea for those who want it. It still looked good when the other temps were laid off. But then you were still on your probationary period, so..
Meanwhile, I think a judge said to the Admin, “no, you can’t do that with probationaries.” So the probationaries could come back, (how many did?) but the FS still needed to have fewer perms to meet budget requirements. Based on the court case, the FS could only use voluntary authorities or develop a RIF plan. Many of us retirees have gone through RIFs and it’s not pretty in so many ways. So the only tool left was voluntary, leaving bunches of people who hadn’t necessarily been hired to do District or Forest level work, and were not as experienced as the people who left.
Meanwhile, people hired by the NGOs mentioned earlier are doing some of the on-the-ground work that employees used to do. Positions that my co-workers used to hold as permanent positions are now advertised by NGOS and the newly hired can be seen driving FS trucks, working on FS ground, and wearing NGO-labelled gear.
If you’re confused, it’s OK. I think we’re all confused. That’s why one consistent ask from me for the past 17 years has been the People’s Database, where the Agency brings together stakeholders and partners and regular people to determine what information to collect consistently.
From a quick AI query:
“The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) experienced significant growth in permanent personnel during the latter half of the 20th century, growing from 7,484 permanent staff in 1949 to a peak of over 32,000 by 1990.
Forest Service Permanent Personnel Trends (Approximate):
1949: 7,484
1979: 21,953
1990: 32,375”
Look at current numbers and my question is where are these people??? The OKA-WEN SO is open to the public only TWO days a week and other SO’s are no longer open to the public at all!!
Did current FS folks miss the mesage???
It was doing MORE with LESS, not doing LESS with MORE.
Oh, what a tangled web…. Sixty and more years ago I worked seasonally (1962 thru 1966) on a half-million acre eastern Sierra Nevada ranger district with four permanent personnel (district ranger, range conservationist, forestry technician/fire control officer, and clerk) supplemented during summer by fire prevention guard (me), three-person fire crew, three-person trail crew, and two-person recreation crew–all of whom worked interchangeably as needed to get the jobs done and done well. How it all worked is easily discerned from my little book “Toiyabe Patrol” (Third Edition 2018). How it got so complicated since I just can’t fathom…. –Les Joslin, Bend, Oregon
Thanks, Les! Good to know you are still around.
To the question at the wnd of #2: It did include R&D temporaries. And they made the R&D permanent seasonals work only their minimum appointment (such as 13/13 or 18/8) even though they typically worked much longer.
Appreciate the sharing you are doing here. And your question to the Chief on 1A, even if they got your name slightly wrong!
As usually, nothing makes sense if you read anything from the WO, nor in the NYT.
A cautionary note about AI. I’ve found that AI combs lots of documents to find answers–what documents of the FS are typically searchable?–official bureaucracy document that originated in the WO or RO and only those end up in archivable searches. –And few of these documents were reliable 40 years ago nor are they now. All the “official” documents just reflect the latest politics that the yes-men (and women) in Washington elect to push.