One thing I noticed about the BLM State Director position announcement was this paragraph.
Effective January 1, 2010, OPM must authorize any employment offers we make to current or former (within the last 5 years) political Schedule A, Schedule C, or Non-career SES employees in the executive branch. If you are currently, or have been within the last 5 years, a political Schedule A, Schedule C, or Non-career SES employee in the executive branch, you must disclose that to the Human Resources Office.
What’s a non-career SES? Chat GPT said
A key distinction in SES is between:
- Career Reserved positions — must be filled by career SES officials to preserve impartiality.
- General positions — can be filled by either career or non-career SES appointees.
Non-career SES appointments are limited by law:
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no more than 10% of SES positions governmentwide may be non-career,
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and generally no more than 25% within a single agency
That was all a bit confusing.
Meanwhile, it turns out that seemingly political people are also making their way into GS-15 positions. I am told that this is common, but it seemed fairly unusual to me. The only examples I knew of moving from a political position in the Admin to a GS position was Doug MacCleery who worked in the staff then known as Timber. I was mildly surprised when a Deputy Regional Forester position in Region 2 (not sure exactly which deputy position with which responsibilities) was given to a person whose background was seemingly not particularly related to the work of the Region.
From this announcement:
Delgado most recently served as the Government Affairs Director at the United Farm Workers Foundation, where she developed and implemented legislative and administrative strategies aimed at improving living and working conditions for agricultural workers across the country. Previously, Delgado held roles of Legislative Director for the Healthy Communities Program and Senior Legislative Representative at Earthjustice. She also spent time as a policy fellow with the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change. Delgado received her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo.
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So I think that there are three axes of politicalness within the big P political landscape.
1. One is by the kind of appointment. Schedule A or C, or non-career SES.
2. One is by the background. Has that person a track record in FS affiliated work, whether from the ENGO side, the industry side, or state government?
3. One is by perceived alignment with the Administration. Certainly Admins want Chiefs, for example, aligned with their priorities. The WO scuttlebutt during the Clinton Admin was that that was the first Admin that had considered the (perceived) political views of GS-15s. I don’t know if that’s the case.
We can usually tell the Politicalness of the hire if they leave when a different color of Admin comes in. But let’s take the example of Doug Vilsack, who moved from a legislative affairs position in the State of Colorado to BLM State Director.
Vilsack, a Colorado College graduate and lawyer whose father, Tom Vilsack, served as the Department of Agriculture secretary in the Obama and Biden administrations after two terms as governor of Iowa, joined the BLM after serving three years as the assistant director at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, where he also headed up the department’s legislative affairs.
So when a new Admin comes in, they tend to look at the current folks and shuffle ones who are obviously politically affiliated to less desirable positions.
He told employees Wednesday he had been reassigned to a new role at the agency’s National Operations Center at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, the same complex that houses the BLM’s state office.
I think reassignments are possible when folks are SES. When I (in a career position) was moved to another position against my will, I filed a grievance and got my job back. Or at least that’s how I think it works.
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But.. many career folks left, who were retirement eligible and say they left because of the Trump Admin, including people here at TSW. So there’s a bit of a slippery slope there. Again, I think there are three vectors of Politicalness, type of appointment, background, and perceived alignment with the Admin.
Then there’s the Little P political landscape.. pleasing your boss, hiring your buddies or your employees’ buddies, or not hiring folks for gossipy reasons and so on. But pleasing your boss, small p can blend into big P if your boss is trying to please their boss who is more or less big P.
Anyway, some people were worried that the new FS State Directors would be “political”- I think they meant in the Big P sense. I tend to think that the Chief won’t pick someone with a track record of vociferous opposition to the current Admin, whether career or not.