WHEN MOORE SAYS LESS
On September 17, U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Randy Moore announced in a virtual presentation to the agency’s employees that the USFS will not hire any temporary seasonal employees in the next fiscal year due to expected budget cuts.
Moore began the presentation by congratulating the staff for their fire management efforts over the past year. He then delivered the difficult news, promising to be frank and transparent: “We will not be bringing on any additional seasonal [employees], outside of fire.”
USFS has reduced its staff by about 8,000 jobs over the last 20 years. However, Moore noted that this will be the largest single-year staff cut in recent history.
In March, the Forest Service requested $8.9 billion in funding, a $500 million increase from the previous year’s $8.37 billion. But on August 29, Moore released a statement indicating that the agency was preparing for a reduced budget.
Then, on September 25, the Senate passed a continuing resolution to extend federal spending to avert a government shutdown through December 20, 2024.
What these staffing cuts mean specifically for USFS crews in Mono and Inyo Counties is yet to be determined, said Lisa Cox, Inyo National Forest Public Affairs Officer.
“I probably won’t know until next year,” she said. “The only thing we do know is that it will impact the kinds of services, maintenance, and management we normally provide.”
Those impacts include staffing visitor centers, maintaining trails, and overseeing campgrounds, she said. She hopes partnerships with local nonprofits will help mitigate the loss.
“The Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association [now Sierra Forever] has been a key partner in operating our visitor center, and we hope that continues,” she said. “But as for how much we would need to rely on them, I don’t know the exact amount.”
The continuing resolution means that the USFS does not have a budget to spend on operations or equipment, and Cox says she doesn’t know when a resolution will come to help. “Hopefully, when the next budget resolution passes, we’ll be able to purchase what we need to do our jobs again.”
Additionally, due to certain limitations based on geography, Inyo National Forest staff have already been struggling to hire and retain employees for the positions that are available.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) determines locality pay, which allows for certain areas to receive higher pay based on the local cost of living.
In more expensive areas, there is typically higher locality pay, Cox said. However, in the most recent OPM review, Mono and Inyo Counties received the lowest locality pay available.
This presents a challenge in hiring, even for fire positions, the one type of seasonal employment not affected by the budget cut.
Inyo National Forest is currently hiring seasonal wildland firefighters for the upcoming season.
A saving grace for USFS employees is that the agency has been, and will continue to be, converting temporary positions into permanent ones. Cox is hopeful that transitioning more temporary positions into permanent ones will help with retention.
“Temporary employees are a bit quicker and easier to hire, but in the long run, we weren’t retaining them,” she said. “People didn’t want to keep applying every year.”
I visited the Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center on Wednesday to ask if they knew whether they’d be hired back next season.
But they couldn’t provide much information, even if they wanted to.
“We’ve been given a list of talking points from the region that are pretty bland,” a USFS employee told me. “I can’t really speak on the record about it.”
He told me he wasn’t sure exactly what was in store for the Eastern Sierras.
“My assumption is that, in Mammoth specifically, we do have many partner organizations, so something will happen with those organizations,” he said. “But that’s not going to be the case for the rest of this forest that aren’t in resort destinations.”
Then, he hushed himself, and said he’d already said too much. He pointed to his uniform, and said as long as he was wearing it, he was restricted in what he could say.
