Interior lacks permanent leaders for key agencies controlling roughly 500 million acres of public la

Source: Washington Post

The Energy 202: Interior lacks permanent leaders for key agencies controlling roughly 500 million acres of public land

By Dino Grandoni
July 3 at 9:29 AM

The National Park Service does not have one. Neither does the Bureau of Land Management. Same goes for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

None of those three land management agencies, which together oversee more than 480 million acres of surface area nationwide, according to figures on their websites, have received a permanent director during the nearly 18 months since Donald Trump became president.

Instead, those agencies are being run by temporary “acting” officials — people not formally nominated by President Trump and who do not require confirmation by the Senate.

In the Trump administration, the absence of Senate-confirmed officials is hardly unique to the Interior Department, which houses those three agencies. Altogether, Trump has not nominated individuals to 185 ambassadorships, directorates and other high-level posts in his administration, all political jobs that require Senate nomination, according to data kept by the Partnership for Public Service.

But the absence of confirmed leadership presents challenges for a department with the physical and regulatory scope of Interior — and one with the sweeping ambitions of its secretary, Ryan Zinke.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/07/03/the-energy-202-interior-lacks-permanent-leaders-for-key-agencies-controlling-roughly-500-million-acres-of-public-land/5b3a2a141b326b3348addc47/