Interior Secretary Deb Haaland Reels Her Bureaucracy Back Into the Swamp

President Joe Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Friday the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters will return to Washington D.C.

The decision comes as a partial reversal of the Trump administration’s 2019 relocation of the BLM command post among the lands the agency manages. The new office space in Grand Junction, Colorado, according to Haaland’s plan, will now serve as the BLM’s western headquarters while principal positions are brought back to Washington.

“The Bureau of Land Management is critical to the nation’s efforts to address the climate crisis, expand public access to our public lands, and preserve our nation’s shared outdoor heritage. It is imperative that the bureau have the appropriate structure and resources to serve the American public,” Haaland said in a statement. “There’s no doubt that the BLM should have a leadership presence in Washington D.C. – like all the other agencies – to ensure that it has access to the policy-, budget-, and decision-making levers to best carry out its mission. In addition, the BLM’s robust presence in Colorado and across the West will continue to grow.”

Haaland’s plan to maintain a significant staff in the Colorado headquarters was seen by some former Trump officials as vindication of their move two years ago, a move that Haaland railed against as an effort to “destroy the agency” while a first-term House member on the Natural Resources Committee.

“If it remains a small ‘core’ coming back to D.C., and the Grand Junction team is expanded, this is a great victory for our effort to reposition resources, decision-making, and accountability to the field,” Casey Hammond, who announced the decision to move as acting BLM director in 2019, told The Federalist. “Our plan had a small contingency remaining in D.C., so with this decision, Secretary Haaland has cemented our establishment of the Western HQ and relocation of nearly all positions.” (Read more from “Interior Secretary Deb Haaland Reels Her Bureaucracy Back Into the Swamp” HERE)

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