How the Trump era is changing the federal bureaucracy

By Lisa Rein and Andrew Ba Tran By Lisa Rein and Andrew Ba Tran December 30, 2017 Follow @Reinlwapo Follow @abtran

Nearly a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy, a shift long sought by conservatives that could eventually bring the workforce down to levels not seen in decades. ... By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees, according to an analysis of federal personnel data by The Washington Post.

The diminishing federal footprint comes after Trump promised in last year’s campaign to “cut so much your head will spin,” and it reverses a boost in hiring under President Barack Obama. The falloff has been driven by an exodus of civil servants, a diminished corps of political appointees and an effective hiring freeze. ... Even though Congress did not pass a new budget in his first year, the drastic spending cuts Trump laid out in the spring — which would slash more than 30 percent of funding at some agencies — also has triggered a spending slowdown, according to officials at multiple departments.
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In some agencies, the number of people leaving has been crippling, according to former officials. At the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a wave of recent retirements has depleted the managerial staff at the enforcement agency’s 70 field offices, said Jordan Barab, who was a top OSHA official in the Obama administration. In all, the agency shed 119 permanent workers by the end of September, a 6 percent drop, personnel data shows.
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There are also tensions over forced reassignments for employees whom Trump officials view as out of sync with their agency’s priorities. ... Matthew Allen, a former Pentagon spokesman and onetime communications chief for the Bureau of Land Management, said he found himself quickly marginalized after he suggested that the bureau should share more public information about its activities. ... In late September, he was abruptly transferred to another office and demoted — among dozens of senior executives whom Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reassigned in the fall. The Interior Department’s inspector general is investigating the reassignments. ... Allen said he witnessed a “level of paranoia about whistleblowing and information that I’ve never encountered in all my years of federal service.” A spokeswoman for the Interior Department declined to comment, noting that Allen has a pending lawsuit against the agency.
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Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. The files and methodology used in the data analysis for this story can be found at wapo.st/trump-bureaucracy.
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andrew.tran@washpost.com

OSHA Is Bleeding: Shrinking Government and Killing Workers

December 31, 2017

OSHA workers Washington Post reporters Lisa Rein and Andrew Ba Trim published an excellent front page article today chronicling Donald Trump’s largely successful effort to shrink the federal government: “By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees.”

Trump hasn’t succeeded yet in passing a budget with significant cuts, so most of the reductions have come from hiring freezes, failure to hire political appointees, and increased retirements (accelerated by buy-outs) of disillusioned and frustrated career employees. ... While some people who reflexively think that government is bad are cheering, the fact is that these reductions mean less protections for workers, the environment, consumers, communities, children, the poor and just about everything that makes life in this country “great.”
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When President Trump came into office almost a year ago, he implemented a government-wide hiring freeze. That freeze stayed in place at OSHA until recently, when Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, apparently alarmed that OSHA inspection number had dropped precipitously in 2017, partially lifted the hiring freeze at OSHA, announcing in his opening remarks at a Senate hearing last month that “In August 2017, I provided OSHA with blanket approval to hire OSHA Compliance Safety and Health Officers (CSHOs), streamlining the hiring process to bring new OSHA staff on board in an expedited manner to ensure that OSHA has the necessary personnel to carry out its important work.”

But while it is true that Acosta lifted the hiring freeze for OSHA inspectors, the process is anything but streamlined from what I hear from OSHA staff. Approvals for CSHO hiring are trickling out at a snail’s pace, barely keeping up with retirements. ... Second, the agency doesn’t live by CSHOs alone.