President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to push ahead with plans to relocate multiple federal agencies away from Washington D.C., but a new analysis from CNN's Curt Devine argues that such a move might do Trump more harm than good.
In his piece, Devine examines the ramifications of Trump's decision to move the headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management all the way out to Colorado during his first term.
"The BLM move became an unproductive debacle marked by an exodus of experienced employees and a surge in vacancies that arguably undermined the then-Trump administration’s agenda, according to a half dozen current and former senior BLM staffers – including the agency’s current director — and a CNN review of government records," writes Devine.
Tracy Stone-Manning, the Biden administration's director of the Bureau of Land Management, told CNN that Trump's move of the bureau was "wildly disruptive" and that it still isn't operating at the same level as before Trump came into power.
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“It’s years of opportunity cost when we could and should be focused on the work of the bureau, for public lands and the American people, and we had to instead focus on rebuilding the bureau,” she explained. “We are still piecing it back together.”
Devine reports that Stone-Manning's claims have also been backed up by a Government Accountability Office report about the move that "found that the relocation caused BLM headquarters’ vacancies to nearly triple in less than a year" and that "out of 176 staff who needed to relocate, only 41 accepted their reassignments and the rest left their positions."
