Heinrich Presses Secretary Burgum on Staffing Cuts at Interior, Slow-Walking of Permits for Clean Energy Projects

On Cutting Nearly 20% of Staff at DOI 

Heinrich began, “I am concerned that over the last year, we have seen a hollowing out of the Department of Interior. Nearly 20 percent of Department of Interior staff have been either pushed out or have left or have retired, and yet, the Department recently offered another round of deferred resignations. And I hear from my state, on the ground, about not being able to get messages returned, phone calls back, permits approved. So why is the Department continuing to offer buyouts and deferred resignations when that only deepens our ability to actively manage these landscapes?” 

Burgum answered, “Well, first of all, I would just say that I reject the overall thesis that somehow we have, well, we haven’t... No one's been pushed out. The only way people have left is with voluntary retirement programs.” 

Heinrich interjected, “I have personal friends who feel pushed out.”  

Burgum answered, “I understand people may feel that way, but the fact is that...” 

Heinrich continued, “When they got the Fork in the Road email, and I know that didn't come from you, it came from someone who's not even in the government anymore. People got the message.” 

Burgum responded, “And all of those, all of those initial DOGE things from old, from the initial first weeks of the thing, those were all stopped by unions and courts, and they were all offered their jobs back, so us rehashing...”  

Heinrich interjected, “But they got the message that they weren't welcome. And many of those people just moved on. And they were some of our most experienced folks.” 

Burgum answered, “Well, it is true that across the federal government, that the federal government employees today, like they are in many state governments have a massive number of people that are at or above retirement age, and so that's just, that's a case, when people have taken the voluntary retirement. We've got an organization, when you've got that many people stacked at the top, it doesn't create a lot of opportunity for young people moving up. So there's a flip side, is [that] people are saying, ‘hey, now I've got an opportunity to stay and have a long career in this agency.’ To your specific question about the recent thing. There [were] groups of people last year that did not have the opportunity to take the voluntary retirement. That was a small group. We started with 65,000 people, the group that was offered, and then considered this round were about 1,500 people that were never offered the opportunity, last year. Of those that accepted it, we rejected over 500 of those because we have the ability to say, yeah, if you take it, but we determined, with a park superintendent that you're essential. Sorry, you can't take the early voluntary retirement. But a number of those folks were working in areas like communications, like human resources, where we were substantially overstaffed. When I cut in, we couldn't even find out how many people worked in HR, how many people worked in comms, how many people actually worked in a park? There [were] no IT systems. Turns out, we had over 2,000 people working in HR For 65,000 people, that's one HR person for every 30 team members. You know, that's off by a ratio of three to four versus a private sector company the same size. And I don't blame them. I blame the fact that we have underfunded... We’ve underfunded [the Department of the Interior] so badly that people don't even have the tools to do their job. But we're working to fix that as well. And so this is the last round of voluntary [resignations] that we're doing. In this group, there'll be about 1,000 people that will take early retirement, but none of those are related to frontline jobs in parks. We will end up with more people working...”  

On Purposefully Slow-Walking Clean Energy Project Permits 

Heinrich began, “Last week, a federal judge determined that wind and solar companies are likely to prevail in their lawsuit against the Trump administration's policies blocking those energy projects. The judge placed a preliminary injunction on your department, implementing policies designed to block new energy projects coming online. Will you comply with that judge's order?”  

Burgum answered, “First of all, we disagree vehemently with a District D.C. judge's view, that somehow having appropriate reviews of energy projects on our internal procedures is...” 

Heinrich interjected, “Well, appropriate reviews are one thing, but the Chairman used the phrase permits were ‘slow-walked.’ We're not seeing permits move off your desk. Permits are being slow-walked, so there was an injunction. Are you going to comply with that judge's order?” 

Burgum answered, “The Solicitor's Department will respond to any active litigation. But as I said, we disagree with this.” 

Heinrich followed, “I'll just be very blunt: if permitting reform is a priority, the permitting system has to work. And if you want members of my Caucus to support permitting reform, we have to know that balls and strikes are going to be called — that there is not a thumb on the scale of this system. That confidence does not exist right now, Secretary.” 

Burgum answered, “Well, I would say I would be thrilled if, if there was going to be unanimity about not having the thumb on the scale, because we just came out of four...” 

Heinrich interjected, “So let’s do that together.”  

Burgum continued, “We came out of four years of that, and we're in as we try to get back to a balance...” 

Heinrich continued, “Both sides are likely to say, like, their side had the thumb on the scale here, our side had the thumb on the scale there. Let's make this a system where you can't do that.” 

Burgum answered, “I think that would be fantastic — love to have, love to have your support to do that. To be clear on this court order, it's absurd to me that a court would say that we can't review projects. That's basically what it says, and that's an internal executive branch element...”  

Heinrich concluded, “You can review projects, but at some point, you have to make a decision. We've got six projects that have gone through the entire review. They have EISs and EAS that are ready to go. They're all just lacking your signature. That's not review. That is, by definition, slow-walking.”