By Darryl Fears and Juliet Eilperin / The Washington Post
In a speech to the oil industry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke claimed that nearly a third of his staff is disloyal to President Trump, saying that workers in Washington are reluctant to relax regulations to permit increased mining for coal and drilling for natural gas and oil on public land.
Zinke promised a “huge” change by restructuring staff positions and possibly shifting decision-making positions in the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Reclamation from Washington to points out West in the speech to the National Petroleum Council of oil and gas executives, first reported by the Associated Press.
“I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag,” the news agency reported the secretary as saying. Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, fell back on military jargon to show how he intended to bring them in line, saying it’s necessary to “push the generals where the fight is.”
The speech was Zinke’s latest effort to instill fear in his staff. He told a Senate panel in June that he wanted to strip 4,000 employees from the Interior Department – about 8 percent of the full-time staff – as part of meeting Trump’s proposed budget cuts. Attrition, reassignments and buyouts would be employed to achieve his goal, Zinke said.
If that didn’t work, he said, layoffs could follow. That same month, Zinke ordered the reassignments of 50 Senior Executive Service employees, forcing many into jobs for which they had little experience and that were in different locations. At least one executive, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife director stationed in Atlanta, quit.
Interior’s Office of Inspector General is evaluating the reassignments to determine whether they violated the U.S. code, which instructs an agency’s leadership to notify affected personnel well in advance of the reassignment and give them a chance to choose a job option. Several executives said their reassignment notices arrived out of the blue with no prior discussion.
In an unrelated missive to Interior staff, Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt took the unusual step of sharing the names of executives who were dismissed after an inspector general report determined that they had engaged in poor behavior.
“I am troubled that there is not a universal sense in … Interior that those few employees who have failed to uphold … standards are appropriately being held accountable,” Bernhardt wrote in a memo Monday. “Please be assured, that I am committed to ensuring that leaders at all levels of the department are, themselves, ensuring that legally sound, measured, and decisive action is being taken.”
He went on to name a BLM supervisor and National Park Service ranger who were fired for “misuse of his position for personal gain” in the first case and “misuse of government equipment” in the second. “I share these examples because you need to know that your leadership is listening,” the deputy wrote. “We will hold people accountable when we are informed that they have failed in their duties and obligations.”
Zinke said in his speech that the changes to bring his staff in line to support Trump’s goals to widen mineral extraction on taxpayer-owned land are “going to be huge,” the AP reported. “I really can’t change the culture without changing the structure.”
Permits to drill, dig and log are protected by regulations that delay the application process. “The president wants it yesterday,” Zinke said. “We have to do it by the law.”
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