Forest Service: Culture, History, Morale, Organization, Future

Here’s the link to the 2019 NAFSR study.  I wonder what is still true today? Given our previous discussion of shared services,  I note the description “zoned to the point of failure.” Looking over these frustrations as of 2019, it seems like the Keystone Agreements were a natural co-evolution .. frustrated FS folks couldn’t get through the hiring process or administrative burdens, and were not empowered to fix things determined at the FARs or OPM level..so farm the work out to organizations that are more flexible and can get the work done.

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In the responses, there was one over-riding theme: Important management priorities in most of the resource areas will not be accomplished with the current mix and level of skills in today’s Forest Service.

Leadership, Culture and Direction
Working Well
 Morale is fairly good
 People like their jobs
 Local support is mixed across the country
 Quality of new personnel is good if adequate leadership is provided
 Processes are improving and becoming more efficient
Concerns
 Units are below critical mass in terms of people and skills and cannot meet expectations
 Administrative requirements are deeply affecting the productivity of all field personnel
 New personnel are inexperienced, affecting decisions and results
 Districts are responsible for results, but lack the authority necessary to achieve them
 Priorities are clear but units are not confident they can be achieved
 Technical training is lacking in timber, engineering, wildlife and fisheries
 Many zoned personnel are spread so thin they can’t successfully complete priority work

Workforce Capacity
Working Well
 Fire organization
Concerns
 Administrative processes and centralized services are not user friendly
 The most “broken” administrative practice is the hiring process, which takes too long to complete and removes many approvals and decisions from the affected field units. This applies to both seasonal and permanent hiring procedures.
 Following the “process” often appears to be more important than achieving desired results
 With the exception of fire, all programs are suffering due to a lack of skills, personnel and funding
 Those providing centralized services do not seem to understand or care about customers in the field
 The perceived focus appears to be national data needs, not achieving work on the ground

Consolidation and Zoning
Working Well:
 It is estimated that 15-50% of the work is performed by partners, volunteers and community groups
Concerns:
 Some units believe they are zoned to the point of failure
 Large land bases, increased travel times, and lack of connection with communities is rendering many zoned units ineffective as they are not able to complete critical work and maintain essential relationships
 To increase the pace and scale of work, units will require a commensurate increase in critical skills including heritage, timber, engineering, soils, NEPA leadership, non-fire forestry technicians, contracting officer representatives, wildlife biologists and local partnership coordinators
 There is broad agreement that the Forest Service is abdicating its land stewardship responsibilities in the program areas of recreation, trails and special use program management2
 Forest supervisors and district rangers are very concerned about the continued erosion of funding and skills in the above-listed programs

On the Ground Management
Working Well
 The Environmental Analysis and Decision Making (EADM) initiative is positive, and units have high expectations it will bring about needed change
o The level of understanding about and status of the current effort varies widely
o It would be a monumental disaster to morale if this effort failed
Concerns
 The necessary skill sets and funding are simply not available to get the work done
 The recreation program funding has dropped extensively for a very long time and the Forest Service
cannot provide for the needs and expectations of the booming tourism market
 Process and administrative burdens exist in hiring, contracting, procurement and grants and agreements
 There is a strong disconnect between those leaders who want to get work done and those leaders who are responsible for the administrative functions necessary to get that work done. This is a universal frustration in the field.

Partnerships
Working Well
 Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) is a valuable asset and helpful tool in some locations. Its use depends on the individual state’s interest, capacity and funding.
Concerns
 Overall, the GNA program is limited by funding and certain authorities not being granted to the states
 The limiting factor to expansion of GNA, or shared stewardship, is people, skills and funding to do the job
 Field units do not have a clear understanding of what approach is planned without additional funding for the counties or states to fully participate

 

 

 

As I’ve been reviewing some of this information, and recent news and interviews, I’ve been thinking about “What does the Forest Service want to be?” “And how best to organize to carry that out? And what kind of people should be in-house, and what kind of activities and expertise housed in “public-private partnerships (for profit) “,  big not-for-profits (e.g.,American Forests or NFF),  contractors, State and Tribal partners, or concessionaires, local friends’ not- for- profits? What we’ve noticed in the last couple of years is farming out expertise to big not-for-profits who do their own contracting and hiring.  If that’s the wave of the future, then the FS needs more partnership coordinators and grants and agreements people, and fewer resource experts (keepers of scientific and practitioner knowledge).

But then there’s the idea of moving wildfire folks to Interior, which would require rethinking everything remaining.

But before “farming out work to NGO’s” was a twinkle in someone’s eye (2019) , NAFSR did a comprehensive study on changes in the workforce -in another direction.

Here’s a link to the study. I’m going to summarize the key points relevant to today’s workforce discussions.

If you look at this table, you can understand why employment might have dropped off since 1990 or so. It took a great many folks to do the work for that size of a timber program

Then there’s the increase in wildfire personnel compared to other folks:

Now I don’t think that folks will find the wildfire part surprising, but the botanist numbers certainly stick out.  Of course, we don’t have those numbers available for today.

What did the NAFSR report make of all this?

Implementation of the National Fire Plan in 2001 facilitated a massive change in the overall composition of the agency’s workforce.
According to statistics provided by the Forest Service, the number of fire personnel has risen 132 percent since 1992. At the same time, the ranks of specialists needed to support restoration
projects–including prescribed fire and silvicultural treatments– decreased by 54 percent.

Over the past years the agency has repeatedly stated its intent to accelerate the pace and scale of restoration on national forest lands to improve forest health. Recently, this goal was codified in the December 21, 2018 Executive Order 13855 entitled “Promoting Active Management of America’s Forests, Rangelands, and Other Federal Lands to Improve Conditions and Reduce Wildfire Risk.” After analyzing Forest Service workforce trends, NAFSR has concluded these initiatives simply cannot succeed without a major change in the workforce composition

For those who prefer quantitative analysis, this table provides the actual numbers and percentages associated with the change in workforce composition over the last 26 years. The most dramatic reductions in personnel have occurred in the disciplines of forestry and engineering. These skills must be restored if the agency is going to meet established restoration goals.

NAFSR understands that workforce composition should change over time as agency priorities change.
Workforce numbers will also fluctuate with changing budgets and unit configurations, and as efficiencies are gained through the development and use of new technologies. A change this dramatic, however, demands the immediate attention of agency leadership.

Next post: NAFSR Report, Field Interviews with Employees.

Please continue to share your RIF experiences in the comments on the previous post.

Today I’d like to start a discussion on “what makes centralization of resources or shared services work, in your experience?” This is also an opportunity to give a shout-out to services or people that work well as shared or centralized.

Shared Positions Across Districts and Forests

My very first job in the Forest Service was in 1979 as an Area Geneticist for the then-Forests Fremont, Winema, Ochoco and Deschutes in Region 6. The Forests shared an Area Ecologist, an Area Reforestation Specialist, and an Area Geneticist, and for awhile an Area Wood Utilization Specialist (yes, folks have been trying to do this for almost 50 years).

We were reviewed by the four Forest Supes at an annual meeting. There was much fighting over the time of Bill Hopkins (the ecologist) and little interest in my work (I think one of the Supes fell asleep during my presentation).   Nevertheless, the accountability was pretty much in our face, at least annually. I think later there were area fire ecologists and Bill had an assistant.

At least one of the Forests in R-2, when I was Planning Director had cross-District shared NEPA teams. This seemed to work pretty well also, as far as I could tell.

I was thinking about the sharing concept because one forest I know recently hired a new position, a full-time GS-12 Tribal Coordinator, and I wondered whether that position might also be shared. Maybe sharing across forests is more common in some places than others. Region 6 still has Area Geneticists, and probably other area folks as well. These sharing arrangements generally seem to work, perhaps because if they don’t, the Forests have direct authority to fix things.

Centralized Services Above the Area Level

Well, we all know about Albuquerque and often use that as a point in discussion. As I recall, though, we got used to getting computer help from the Helpdesk, or whatever it was called and it turned out OK after a period of adjustment. Then there are centralized groups that always seemed successful to me (shout out to them!)… the Content Analysis Team, the Forest Management Service Center in Fort Collins, various Enterprise Teams and perhaps you have your own favorites. These are ones from off the top of my head.

What makes some of these centralized efforts successful and others not so much?  What if Albuquerque is an outlier (granted, a long-term source of frustration, but still)?

So let’s develop some hypotheses for what makes a successful centralized service. Here are mine:

(1) A lead person who is knowledgeable and experienced in the work at hand, and you can talk to directly, and who gets work done, and tells you if it can’t be done in your timeframe. Good communication with knowledgeable person.

(2) Flexibility to do things the way they work best. Perhaps here is where centralized personnel falls down; they can’t solve problems because their boxes are so constrained by requirements.

In a way, RO engineers or special uses experts or minerals folks are also a centralized service. Their utility probably also depends on their expertise and how well their time is managed and prioritized.  For example at the RO level,  with RFs putting pressure on Regional Directors if Supes don’t like the priorities or performance and don’t get what they think is an adequate response from the Director.

So I guess shared services can work when there is clear communication and accountability, and perhaps a responsive back-up system for complaints. But I have to say for the Content Analysis Team, I never needed a backup, they gave me a timeline and followed it, and if there was a holdup, they had a good reason. I guess there’s an element of trust as well, and the importance of relationships with the lead person.

Perhaps this is a bit off the topic, but also in terms of expertise:

Experts in R&D

These folks are not centralized or shared, but they also serve to help folks in NFS and elsewhere. I think many are called on by forests for help and others not. For me, though I am not an employee, I’ve found forest economists to be both enormously helpful, and also fill a niche that much of academia has abandoned in search of currently faddish abstractions. Rumor has it that R&D is on the chopping block, but there is definitely a piece of that workforce that provides expertise to NFS, as well as private landowners and Tribes. Often Experimental Forests provide a long-term perspective that extramural research funding can’t achieve. Probably the people involved in these ideas don’t know the lack of utility provided by much research funded by other agencies.  Science of the scientists, by the scientists, for the scientists. The best thing IMHO to save bucks would be for each agency to take the lead in some areas and reduce duplication across agencies. Of course, that would lead to great wailing and gnashing of teeth and claims of anti-science by more powerful folks than those who stand to lose out by reduction in FSR&D funding. Perhaps that’s worth another post.

Tim asked this question:

Sharon et al— I’m curious how RIFs targeting the RO/WO could trickle down to districts. My understanding is bump & retreat means that RIFed RO people could potentially take jobs of folks in lower positions on the districts (in the same commuting area as the RO). Is that right? How widespread might this be?

I thought that this would be a good time for us oldsters to get our memory hard drives reconnected with our memories of RIF.  I think the last one was during the Clinton Administration.

“After all the rhetoric about cutting the size and cost of Government, our administration has done the hard work and made the tough choices,” Clinton said in a statement. “I believe the economy will be stronger, and the lives of middle class people will be better, as we drive down the deficit with legislation like this.”

The legislation was an outgrowth of Clinton’s National Performance Review, which launched in March 1993 with the slogan “Make Government Work Better and Cost Less.” Clinton appointed Vice President Al Gore to lead the review and issue a report within six months.

About 250 career civil servants worked on the review and created recommendations with agency employees.

Not everyone agreed with the Clinton-Gore initiative.

“There was opposition,” but union leaders supported reducing the power of middle managers, the target of most of the reductions, and the increased role of unions in bargaining, “so they felt this was an acceptable trade-off,” John M. Kamensky, National Performance Review deputy director, told PolitiFact.

But there were also Reagan RIFs

‘For every worker directly affected by a RIF, three to four more workers indirectly experienced career disruption,’ the study found.

The number of RIFs have dropped by 70 percent since they peaked in fiscal 1982.

Rep. Michael D. Barnes, D-Md., who co-chaired the task force, said the RIF policies are costing the government in morale, and ultimately failing to do what they were established to do — save the federal government money.

‘Our study tells us that no matter how you order or structure a RIF, it’s a bankrupt policy,’ he said.

Which is, of course, interesting to us today because what D Barnes said was a “bankrupt policy” was engaged in by the D Clinton Administration.

So here’s an opportunity to tell our own stories.   During the Reagan RIF, I was a GS-460-11 or 12 Area Geneticist (that’s another story).  I was told that a District Ranger with more time in grade in the commuting area could bump me.   I questioned that, saying by the same token, I could conceivably bump a District Ranger.  At the time, at least in R-6, folks were very particular about requirements for line officers. I don’t remember any women DRs at the time, for example. Apparently I did not meet the cultural requirements.  After I pointed this out, the talk went away, and I never knew what happened, but I didn’t get RIFed.

When I look at the OPM direction for RIF today it goes by..

1.tenure of employment (e.g., type of appointment);
2.veterans’ preference;
3.length of service; and
4.performance ratings.

Now I went to forestry school in the 70’s with many Vietnam-era Veterans, but I don’t remember that being talked about much at the time as a factor in RIF. Of course, my memories are hazy.
My point is, though, in my hazy memory, earlier RIFs were not particularly “thoughtful” as they played out through the OPM regulations and bumping. I see RIFs as more or less of a mechanical process, and while the media may focus on the intention (good=D, bad=R), the intention may not matter much after the button is pressed.

So I’m interested in hearing from people about their own experiences with RIFs. Probably most of the those RIFfed are not still around in our community, so we may not be able to hear their perspective.

So back to Tim’s question, I think it went by commuting area and series, and length of service, and don’t remember much beyond that.

Below I am posting a comment to the previous post on RO’s by Josh..

As I’ve said, the FS has had many efforts to cut costs (and focus on service delivery at the District level) over time.  Yesterday I was talking to someone who remembers the Transformation effort. He told me that the the group came up with the idea of having basically three RO-like entities for the country in terms of technical support, but actually continuing to have Regional Foresters and a few staff, mostly concerned about relationships, and not the rest of the things ROs do. Which I think are…

1. Provide technical expertise on how to do things

2. Be involved with budget allocation to Forests

3. Conduct activities that occur infrequently on forests (e.g., litigation prep)

4. Provide next level review, e.g. Objections and unit reviews.  About reviews, over my time in the FS they changed from being meaningful to being performative, both in R&D and in NFS; this was never more obvious than when we did a joint review with BLM who still took the concept seriously.  We in the Region ran the appeal/objection process, but all the folks doing the work were borrowed from Forests, although as I recall the Deputy RF decided on them.

5. Work on regional projects (e.g. Southern Rockies Lynx Amendment).

Conceivably Forest and District folks could be rounded up to do 5, but then that would be less work done at the Forest and District level.

If there were a simple answer, it probably would have already been done.

Anyway, I’d sure like to see the details of what the Transformation group came up with..

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Here’s one person’s experience of their RO.  I think the FS’s apparent inability to highlight recreation over time is one of the ongoing flaws in the system seemingly regardless of kind of Admin in place.

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I’ve been a Recreation and Wilderness program manager on a district for 22 years in R4. I can’t recall a time when I or many of my immediate colleagues had anything positive to say about many of the Regionals. Oh, individually I’ve had many solid working relationships that seemed to function as intended but the majority of the time it has seemed like the RO’s just been a major interfering pain in the ass. For the past 15 years now it’s gotten worse, with unresponsive, non-supportive staff at the RO doing who knows what, the Regions taking their cut of the budget for pet projects and doling out pittances to the Forests for budgets. For example, GAOA! One RO engineer got it in his head he wanted to be the guy with the big dollar prize project so he and he alone slapped a concept together for all of the back country airstrips in the region to get a massive upgrade. He operated in a black box of his own design, somehow got the funding then got in touch with the folks on the ground who actually managed and maintain many of these airstrips. Turns out not every single airstrip needed high dollar work like his project called for. Three years later we’re still attempting to sort out his mess and a year after this reality hit he left the Regional Office and handed his problem off to the next person up who ended up being some guy on a Forest within the Region.

We often say that the role of the Region is to facilitate the work on the Forests but in practice it seems more like roadblock due to power mongering or due to pet projects or interference due to egos who want credit or fear driven agendas masquerading as priorities such as the wildfire crisis strategy, which is now being wordsmithed.

Every few years the new Admin with help of the WO/RO rolls out a new shiny ball priority with an unfunded mandate for Recreation. Think 10-year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge. There has never been a well funded, direct focus on Recreation in my entire career. A few years ago Recreation seemed to be getting it’s due with a National program called Recreation as a Priority…we had hopes this would provide more manpower and more funding. It didn’t get a good rollout and a few years in many of us hadn’t heard bupkus, then things started to happen. We were standing up the temp to perm concept when it got entirely subsumed by every other resource area and before you knew it there was a massive hiring effort occurring forest service wide.
However due to it being wide open and less focused on recreation, it turned into a massive financial crisis.
The simple fact that the RO staff and budget officers didn’t draw a line in the sand and instead willingly walked the agency into this situation still blows my mind. Zero accountability.

The RO has played a pivotal role in setting all the Forests priorities including how fleet is administered. But now fleet eats 75% of my forest budget!! We can’t even right size rigs to programs because fleet is what we’re told by the RO. Its enough to make one sick. Now we currently face the new administration and the slapdash directives, terminations/reinstatements of the boots on the ground and a freeze on all external communication. Forest level EAs are being briefed all the way up to the WO and Dept level in order to determine if “controversy” exists and the project is alignment with the administrations goals. Insanity has peaked and I can’t see how the Regional Office does anything but make matters worse. They are currently tight lipped and not sharing any information about the coming RIF either.

I’m certainly not advocating for the dissolution of the Regional offices, but a hard look at performance and steering new expectations and standards would be welcome. I’m all for fixing what’s broke and solving problems, I’m a recreation practitioner, that’s what we do! But I don’t support a bull in a china shop approach either.

 

 

(1) We still don’t have a of the USDA AARP; it would be interesting to get Interior’s as well, at least the parts that refer to the FS and BLM.   We could FOIA them, and will if we can’t get it. But we are still waiting on FOIAs from last year, so.. Here’s a link to what’s supposed to be in them. Below is an excerpt.

1. II. Principles to Inform ARRPs
   ARRPs should seek to achieve the following:
   1. Better service for the American people;2
   2. Increased productivity;
   3. A significant reduction in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by
   eliminating positions that are not required;
   4. A reduced real property footprint; and
   5. Reduced budget topline.
   Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination
   of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient
   delivery of their statutorily-required functions.
   Agencies should also seek to consolidate areas of the agency organization chart that are
   duplicative; consolidate management layers where unnecessary layers exist; seek reductions in
   components and positions that are non-critical; implement technological solutions that automate
   routine tasks while enabling staff to focus on higher-value activities; close and/or consolidate
   regional field offices to the extent consistent with efficient service delivery; and maximally reduce
   the use of outside consultants and contractors. When taking these actions, agencies should align
   closures and/or relocation of bureaus and offices with agency return-to-office actions to avoid
   multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees.
   Agencies should review their statutory authority and ensure that their plans and actions are
   consistent with such authority.

(2) The Hotshot Wakeup had a podcast out yesterday on the Oklahoma fires, more resignations, and some discussions he had with people at the Forest Service  Now, we don’t know that that what those folks said is the the case, because he heard from some “sources not allowed to speak on record.” At the same time, many traditional outlets use the same kind of sources including our main other outlet, E&E News.  A brief summary: RF’s taking deferred resignation, there were plans floated to get rid of Regions before new Admin due to budget crisis, 9 Regions brought down to 3, budget saving, budget is in so much trouble- how dire it was.  When THW asked about where the bucks went, a source said that  BIL and IRA given billions give the bucks to NGOs, they were asked to get the money out ASAP, slush fund recycled into political campaigns, organizations friendly to those in power at the time.  Negligence or on purpose, the source’s  opinion was that it was on purpose, and the new Admin   ” inherited a budgetary nightmare”.

How could we know what the truth is?  Someone from relatively high in the food chain would have to tell us, and they are  unlikely to do so; either they’re still working or signing agreements about what not to talk about.  Certainly there was an unusual  cone of silence about the Keystone Agreements that Dave Mertz and I could not penetrate completely.  We did not receive answers from the folks administering the program, and many of my usual sources stopped talking to me entirely when I brought up the subject.  At the same time,  giving funding to your friends is part of being in an Admin.. but it’s the recycling to political campaigns that seems unlikely or unusual.  At the same time, people delving into the National Baptist/Coconino project wondered about some of the organizations skimming bucks in the name of equity (check out the comments and links to organizations). We only heard about the NBC  grant via a whistleblower who was concerned about the religious connection; how many more of these (non- Keystones) are out there?  How could we even find out where these apparently extra layers of overhead would ultimately go?

(3). Instead of an all-employees meeting for Forest Service employees, Chief Schultz had a “Chat with the Chief” video, in which he answered questions from specific employees. I think they missed the historical boat on this video by not mentioning Chief Silcox, but it didn’t affect the main point, that the Chief was new to the agency and that that is unusual.  I don’t think the format works, as the length makes it superficial for anything worth diving into.  Plus, I’m sure that the District Ranger is worth getting to know, but the time constraints mean that any hints of interestingness tend to get squeezed out.  On the other hand, everyone (non-employees) can watch it, so that part is good.   On the third hand, before current technologies we employees never had ‘all employees’ meetings” and we never missed them, so there’s that.  Rumor has it that the Chief wanted to do a deeper dive, but “everyone has a boss.”

(4)  We’ve all heard about grants being held up (but some are not, this seems confusing) but this E&E story was about a grant to the FS that the FS decided not to take. The title of the E&E News story was:

 Forest Service halts grant for cleaning up illegal Calif. cannabis operations

I don’t know, but it sounds like it might be dangerous. Carbofuran is really bad stuff… and maybe the growers would return while non-profit groups are attempting to remediate  trespass grows? Sounds scary.

The move comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s layoffs at federal agencies — including USDA (which oversees the USFS) and the Department of the Interior (which oversees BLM) — and frozen federal grant projects. It also comes as Congress considers legislation that would increase federal funding to do cleanup of illicit cannabis grows on federal lands around the country. The bill had a hearing in the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands last week.

Sadly, both those links go to Politico Pro instead of the hearing or legislation, so I had to try to find it..

It might be this bill (from 2023)..

This bill will:

• Authorize $250 million over five years for the Forest Service to use Superfund toxic waste remediation authorities to address environmental damages caused by the release of banned pesticides on federal lands for cannabis cultivation; and
• Raise the criminal penalties for using banned pesticides in illegal cannabis cultivation to a maximum of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in criminal fines to establish parity with the criminal penalties for smuggling banned pesticides into the U.S. The U.S. Sentencing Commission would then be required to review and update its sentencing guidelines for these crimes.

The idea for the bill came from a series of investigative stories by San Diego journalist J.W. August published in the Times of San Diego.

In 2019, the San Diego-based Border Pesticide Initiative was formed with members of the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Homeland Security, California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the City Attorney’s Office. In 2021, the group announced it had prosecuted over 50 defendants and seized over 1,000 containers of illegal pesticides.

Reps. Peters and LaMalfa first introduced this bill in October 2022.

It made me wonder how much of a problem this is outside of California. I remember there were issues in Colorado as well.

We have covered many things over the past 15 years of The Smokey Wire.  We’ve had number questions about timber, and folks like Mac  and Gil and Andy could always make sense of them.  Never before have I run into so much difficulty as with Forest Service employment figures.

Most recently, I ran across this letter sent on Feb. 14 by various members of the Colorado delegation to the US Congress, Bennet, Hickenlooper, Neguse, Pettersen, and Crow.

Our offices have heard for years about chronic understaffing at the USFS. Today, the agency’s workforce is nearly 30% less than it was three decades ago.  This significant reduction in staff has occurred even as the country’s population grew by over 100 million people, visitation to national forests exploded, and wildfire risk increased drastically. Agency employees have entered public service despite low pay, the frequently seasonal nature of the job, and limited housing in the remote areas they serve. With the rising cost of living across the state, Colorado communities are already challenged with limited USFS staff to confront land management challenges. Combined with the existing hiring freeze, yesterday’s staff reductions will stretch the agency to its breaking point and place an enormous burden on Colorado communities.

If I count back from 2025 for 30 years, I get 1995. If I go to this handy  John Kusano powerpoint about workforce trends from 1992 to 2001. It looks here remarkably consistent in terms of permanents .. a little over 30K in 1995 and 35,560 in 2024.  If I eyeball the Kusano powerpoint graph at 31K, then there’s actually a 15% increase in permanents over the last 30 years.

Since these numbers are so different, I have a phone call in to Bennet’s office to find out where those numbers came from.

 

People were working on diversity way back then (2001)

 

I thought that this slide was particularly interesting..given the recent problems (24 years since this ppt was presented)  with over-hiring.

Looking for historic trends, I found this story in the Mesabi Tribune from August 23, 2002:

“We are down nationally about 10,000 employees overall from where we were eight to 10 years ago,” Sanders said.

Many new people have recently signed up for TSW, and I would guess that they are interested in the FS employee questions, so I thought for new folks I would lay out the recent history, at least what I see and what I’ve heard. Others are welcome to their own observations. I’m intentionally spending more time on these topics due to the nature of this time period and folks’ concerns. So people who miss the regular programming, know that that will be back at some point.

I think it’s important to track budget as well as number of employees.  Like our Wildfire colleagues, I think there’s much good in being a learning organization/public  rather than a blaming organization/public. All the entities (Congress and Admins) had their own parts to play.

(1) As we saw in the last post on this, it appears that FS numbers were relatively consistent from 2018 to 2023. (budgets and employees were apparently at equilibrium, even if numbers were suboptimal.)

(2) Then came a giant influx of funding via BIL and IRA.  Congress thought it was a good idea to spend lotsa bucks, supposedly for climate, but everything can be related to climate.or climate equity, or climate justice.. so everything was included. Perhaps they did not consider the difficulties of agencies spending so much suddenly, and to be able to scale up with adequate oversight? And here we are.. perhaps they could have been more careful and possible achieved better outcomes ultimately with less funding.

(3) The FS (Biden Admin) decided to take a bunch of the funds (FOIAs have been unsuccessful at finding out how much exactly, but 400 mill or so?) and obligate it to NGOs (non-competitively, and not requiring a match).  This was intended at least in part to “build capacity” which required the NGOs to contract or hire to get work done. I don’t know the status of these agreement, but I do know NGOs hired people to do work formerly done by employees, and we have covered some of that previously here.

(4) The FS (Biden Admin) also hired a bunch of people via a major hiring effort.  At the time, I recall employees were telling me a) they were told to hire as many as they could, and b) some folks (even those in ROs) complained that many of those people were bulking up SOs, ROs and the WO.  Some folks also questioned new positions that did not previously exist and didn’t seem directed at the most critical needs. Of course, that’s in the eye of the beholder. From the previous post.

In 2023, 3080 were added of which 740 were fire.
in 2024, 2780 were added of which 690 were fire.
So in two years, 23 and 24, the FS added 5860 permanent positions, of which 1430 were in fire? If we take, say, 28,500 (the average of 2018-2022), that would be about a 20% increase in perms in two years?

If, as said in that post, 1400 non-fire positions were conversions from temps to PSEs; we don’t know how many fire positions were conversions, but probably not all.

So if we add 1400 non-fire conversions to all 1430 of the fire positions (acknowledging that some of them were also conversions) we get 2830. If we subtract that from 5860, we get 3,030 additional employees who are neither fire nor conversions from temps.

So the FS is still up from previous years in terms of what we might call “non-converted from temps and not fire” recent hires. Of course, this does not help any individual units, who may be down or never have been fully staffed.

Now, since the FS knew that some of this was short-term funding, they could have put a cap on the hiring (if the databases were up to it). But as anyone can imagine, it’s easier to let the dogs out than to get them back in. And in a quasi- decentralized organization,  it’s up to whomever is doing the hiring and what they think is important.

My own experience is that given a chance to hire perms, we would always do that.  Because the next time you’re in a budget discussion, you have the ultimate card to play “I have to cover salaries for perms.” Plus it’s only rational, if you see others (staffs, forests, districts) hiring for what you think are relatively less important positions, why not get in on it, and not  leave your own staff out in the cold?  For a federal agency, the budget winter is always coming, and it makes sense to bulk up.  Everyone was acting perfectly rationally.  It may be that the new budget process affects this kind of behavior, though, I don’t know.

There was also the effort to convert temps to permanent seasonals, which we’ve discussed before.  This approach makes a lot of sense, and is better for the employees, but, as a result, it costs more. One observation  in the previous comments by Anonymous was that

But generally, in my experience, programs that used to hire four 1039 seasonals were able to advertise around three PSEs.

(5) And so it went, until the Biden Admin (Sec of Ag?) decided to use the House marks (reduced compared to 2024 final) for the 2025 budget.   A budget reckoning occurred, and the FS found itself $750 million short.

(6) Realizing this, the FS (Biden Admin) said it would not hire any temporaries for 2025 to make up the budget deficit. If, in fact, most (fire and non-fire) temps had been converted to permanent seasonals, this might not have had an unduly bad impact.  But it probably varies quite a bit by unit.

(7) Trump Admin comes along and fires all probationary employees including the newly permanent seasonals, but got them back due to judge’s order, at least for now.  Original idea being to save federal bucks, perhaps intentionally, before the agency heads were confirmed and began to fight back.

(8) Trump Admin asks for Agency Reorganization Plans (ARRP), which includes employee numbers as well as other stuff (I hope someone will share, so we can discuss here):

Phase 1 (Due by March 13, 2025)

This phase focuses on initial agency cuts and reductions. These plans should identify service delivery subcomponents, statutory requirements, and potential eliminations or consolidations. They should also outline efficiency tools agencies intend to use to achieve efficiencies, including hiring freezes, attrition, and RIFs, with specific targets and timetables

(9) Now that we have a Chief and Sec of Ag in place, we will see what the FS (Trump Admin) comes up with in their ARRP.

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Now, back to Congress, which is often its own cluster regardless of Admin. Maybe in addition to the the Dogpile of Powers, we can also have a Joint Cluster among branches…

(9) Congress passes CR (or doesn’t?)

(10) Congress might increase firefighter pay (good idea, but costs more) and hopefully would include that in budget, but who knows?

(11) Congress might also start a move of firefighters into a fire agency within Interior (for very logical reasons, as there are many interagency clusters involved with wildfire, at least according to fire folks, e.g., Kelly Martin, which we can only imagine..)  with unknown impacts to remaining work for FS.

(12) This is a bit off the employee topic, but also relevant:
The general problems with managing agencies by Continuing Resolution (remember how the decision not to hire temporaries for FY25 was initiated by the Secretary telling the FS to abide by the House marks (#5)) . The general problems were described in 2018 in an article by Jeff Neal for Federal News Network.

The bottom line on this is that the federal budget process is broken. Agencies are not getting appropriations until too late in the fiscal year. They operate under continuing resolutions that limit their ability to plan and to start new work or to hire new staff. Contractors are left not knowing if work will continue or terminate, and everyone in the contracting process (government and industry) crams most of the contracting process into six months of the year or less. The impact is significant. In a 2017 letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Defense Secretary Mattis said: “Long term CRs impact the readiness of our forces and their equipment at a time when security threats are extraordinarily high. The longer the CR, there greater the consequences for our force.”

That’s my take of the history. What did I get wrong? What have I missed?