NEWS RELEASES
BLM Reorganization Will Move Washington Staff To Western States
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through The Washington Posts' website.
The Washington Post reports that the Trump Administration’s Interior Department plans to relocate 84 percent of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters staff by the end of 2020. The staffers will be moved to western states to “provide an increased presence closer to the resources the BLM staff manages,” Joe Balash, Interior’s assistant secretary for land and minerals, stated in a letter to Sen. Tom Udall, top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee on Interior and environment. Balash estimated cost savings from the move to be $50 million over 20 years, although no price was put on the move itself.
Colorado, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s home state, will receive the most reassigned staffers, a total of 85 including 27 leadership jobs relocated to Grand Junction, Colo., where the new headquarters will be established. Some 74 BLM staffers will be reassigned to Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where they will report to BLM state directors. Only 60 staffers will remain in Washington. BLM manages more than 10 percent of America’s land, mostly in the western states.
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