‘Makes no sense’: Interior Dept employees baffled by Trump admin reassignments

In early May, hundreds of Interior Department employees began receiving emails informing them they’d been reassigned to different jobs. Park Service communicators were moved under the Bureau of Land Management support staff. Longtime BLM staff were transferred to similar roles in vastly different agencies like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or the Bureau of Reclamation. Co-workers sharing an office were placed on remote teams working on new projects.

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According to DOI, these changes were meant to boost efficiency and balance workloads across its agencies. But to five DOI employees who spoke with SFGATE on the condition of anonymity, because they are afraid of losing their jobs, the changes were baffling.

“It’s like they put us into a bingo roller cage and plucked us out with zero care about individual wishes,” said one employee.

The reorganization of communications, information technology, human resources and other departments followed a sweeping consolidation launched last year that moved thousands of employees from agencies across the department into a centralized operation under Interior headquarters. In May, officials reshuffled many of those same employees into new assignments, sometimes placing them in bureaus outside their areas of expertise. Some have stayed in familiar roles but are now tasked with training new colleagues on the basics of each agency.

The Interior Department is able to reassign employees to new roles, but must follow guidelines laid out by the Office of Personnel Management. The rules require the agency to have a legitimate reason for the reassignment, the job must be of the same pay grade, and the employee must be qualified for the new position.

Employees described a reassignment process marked by widespread confusion, shifting guidance and uncertainty about the future.

“When I tell you that it makes no sense, I’m not exaggerating,” one employee told SFGATE. “It’s just insane — absolute insanity.”

In the months leading up to reassignments, Interior employees described their workplaces as tense and disorienting. “Everyone knew something was coming, but we weren’t sure what it would look like or when it was finally going to come,” an employee said. “Everyone was really scared. No one knew if they should push through or just try to find a new job.”

One memo reviewed by SFGATE sent by Interior deputy communications director T. David Smith had a single word in the subject line: “Reassignment.” The body of the message was just as blunt, listing the new position title, pay grade, agency and supervisor with no details about the job itself.

“This reassignment is being made to support the unification reorganization of the Office of Communications and to promote the efficiency of the service in alignment with the Department’s priorities,” it said. “Your service with DOI is appreciated and we look forward to your reassignment.”

How employees were selected for their new positions is unclear. Some described the reassignments as random, while one said that employees were seemingly “drafted” by a few high-ranking Interior employees like a professional sports team. New organizational charts have been shared almost exclusively in digital meetings, according to employees, and not distributed.

The Interior Department did not answer questions from SFGATE about what criteria was used to determine communications staff reassignments and whether subject matter expertise was taken into account. But an unnamed Interior spokesperson did reiterate the rationale for the reorganization. 

“The Department is modernizing to eliminate unnecessary duplication, improve efficiency, strengthen coordination and better align resources with mission-critical work,” the spokesperson told SFGATE in an email. “For too long, similar functions were being performed in multiple places across the Department, creating inefficiencies, inconsistent processes and unnecessary administrative burden.”

Employees don’t see it that way. One suggested that the restructuring was designed to split up familiar colleagues in an effort to reduce information leaking to the media about Interior operations.

“They did this for disruption because they’re not happy with leaks across the agency,” the employee said. “They want to divide us, cut out communication between workers.”

In theory, centralizing functions such as communications, human resources and information technology could save money by reducing the need for each agency to maintain its own support staff. But communication employees have described the unification efforts as anything but efficient. 

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Over the past year, communications at the Park Service and the Interior Department have been cinched, causing long delays. One employee at the regional level described even the most straightforward media requests being bounced back and forth between individual parks and Washington, D.C.

Jon Jarvis, a former director of the National Park Service, told SFGATE that he’s seen multiple attempts to consolidate functions at the Interior Department, but that this is the first time he’s seen it happen with communications — and he thinks it’s “about control of the message, not efficiency.”

“Allowing the bureaus to speak to the public and the media on their own is the most efficient, but the political appointees in the DOI don’t trust the public servants,” he told SFGATE in an email. “So they have pulled communications staff into the DOI and then are shuffling them around to be under the control of DOI and not the bureau leadership or culture. It is a mess and the real loser is the public, when all the messages are subject to a political filter.”  

Tony Irish, a former Interior Department attorney who now works for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told SFGATE that many employees believe department leaders underestimated how specialized communications jobs are within individual bureaus.

“What a National Park Service communications person does may be very different from what a U.S. Geological Survey communications person does,” Irish said. “They’re all communications jobs, but the expertise required is completely different.”

Several employees echoed that concern, describing a reorganization that treated communications specialists as interchangeable despite years of experience relating to specific agencies, policies and public audiences.

“At the end of the day, people are very frustrated, very depressed over this reorganization effort,” a DOI employee said. “You can spend the whole day looking over the shared documents and trying to find any reason for any of this, and then realize there really isn’t much of a plan.”

Employees said the concern is not just over nonsensical role changes, but also the brain drain across the department as veteran workers retire, resign or seek jobs elsewhere. Last spring, the Trump administration gutted the Park Service, leaving the agency with a historically small staff.

“The past year has been so harsh and we’re losing institutional knowledge every month,” another employee said. “Most everyone I know is dissatisfied. People are going to start leaving. People are going to give up.”