The bill that now appears poised to reopen the federal government is a stay of execution for the Interior Department employees whose jobs have been on the Trump administration’s chopping block.
Tucked into the funding package crafted by a bipartisan group of senators, legislative language states that “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department, agency, or office of the Federal Government.”
The 31-page continuing resolution‘s freeze on RIF action lasts only until Jan. 30. Interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon, but department-watchers are gloomily speculating.
“My guess is that Interior would move forward with RIFs later, as they’ve said that their plans had nothing to do with the shutdown,” Desiree Sorenson-Groves, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, said Monday. “We had been hearing for months that a RIF would come, so … it’s hard to imagine they would walk that back.”
Jacob Malcom, who formerly headed Interior’s Office of Policy Analysis and now leads an effort called Next Interior, likewise said Monday that he “would not be surprised if they interpret the language in the bill to mean that planning can continue then move on Feb. 1 to initiate the RIF notifications.”
Last week, the Interior Department advised a federal judge in San Francisco that it was freezing any plans to “imminently” lay off employees for the duration of the federal government shutdown.
“Any final decision to take action and issue RIF notices has not yet occurred and, in fact, is presently on hold, given the lapse in appropriations,” Rachel Borra, Interior’s chief human capital officer, stated in a Tuesday court filing, adding that “any decision to restart the RIF process is subject to further review and discussion by agency leadership.”
In an earlier court filing, Borra had indicated that Interior planned to cut more than 2,000 jobs from the department, across agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey. The former, for instance, was slated to lose two staffers from the Hoover Dam Field Office, among many other cuts, while the latter was identified as losing 39 workers from its Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado.
Exactly how many people would be laid off under Interior’s plan is not clear, as the department only provided specifics for layoffs in areas with some union representation.
In other court filings, nine federal agencies previously informed a federal judge that about 3,900 employees had received at least preliminary RIF notices during the federal government shutdown. The continuing resolution would require that any laid-off employees be reinstated.
