'They're Being Begged To Come Back': Val Hoyle Asks Secretary Doug Burgum About 'Gutting' Of Federal Workforce

Forbes Breaking News

During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing last week, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) spoke about the 'haphazard gutting' of federal workers.

Transcript

00:00Gentleman Neal is back, the chair recognizes the gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Hoyle for

00:05five minutes.

00:06Thank you very much, and thank you for being here, and I'd like to continue on this line

00:12of discussion.

00:14I represent Oregon's fourth congressional district, so the central and south coast of

00:18Oregon, and just over half of my district is federal lands, and Oregon's unique in that

00:25we have a checkerboard pattern of forest land ownership because of a history of parcels

00:31owned by the Oregon and California railroads, and so we have forest service, BLM, state,

00:38private, and tribal ownership all in this checkerboard pattern with all very different forest management

00:45practices.

00:46So public lands management, including public access to our lands, forest stewardship, fish

00:52and species management, and at this time, the most critical issue is wildfire prevention

00:58and management, and we can disagree on the cause, but the fact is that western Oregon has become

01:04hotter and drier, and there's a greater danger of urban complications that are putting my constituents'

01:11lives at risk, and these are facts I'd love to work with you on and address those issues.

01:18The other issues that we know, and there are issues with FEMA, no doubt, but it's being

01:24gutted, and our states can no longer count on the federal government to come in and provide

01:30the needed capacity and expertise during natural disasters, and it's concerning given the scale

01:36and frequency of major national disasters.

01:39I mean, we had a million acres burn in 2020 in Oregon, so it's a little terrifying.

01:45I'd like to ask you about the administration's plan to transfer the forest, the fire responsibilities

01:52to the new consolidated interior department, and specifically, what I don't want to see

02:01is something broken before we have a plan to put something new together.

02:06So briefly.

02:08Yes, the proposal that's in this budget would give us this year to work on plans integration

02:18with state, tribal, all the different agencies, because we've got U.S. Fish and Wildlife, National

02:25Parks, BLM, in addition to U.S. Forest Service, all have these federal agencies, so we'd have

02:32an opportunity to get input from all of those entities this year with the idea that when

02:37we go into next year's firefighting season that we would have better coordination.

02:42But when we use the word, I don't, I know the words like you move and transfer, but people

02:47will still be operating under their same brands, but we have to have unification around the.

02:52I just thank you.

02:54What I would like you to commit to, if you would, is to work in a bipartisan way to have

03:00those of us Democrats who represent public lands and forest lands at the table in a real

03:07and authentic way where we also have a voice.

03:09Well, yeah.

03:10The fire doesn't know whether it's on a blue or red district or whether it's on, it doesn't

03:15know whether it's on tribal or BLM or federal.

03:18So, and with that, I do want to talk about federal employees.

03:24Right now, we don't have the people to protect my district in fire season because of the haphazard

03:29gutting of the federal workforce.

03:31They fired people up and down the chain that maybe didn't have wildland firefighter in front

03:35of their name, but they actually get pulled in to do that work or do the support work.

03:41And now they're being begged to come back, and why would they come back to a place where

03:46literally Russell Vogt has said he wants federal workers to feel traumatized when they wake

03:51up in the morning.

03:52We want them to not want to go to work because they increasingly are viewed as villains.

03:57We want their funding to be shut down.

03:59We want them put in trauma.

04:01We had funding freezes for our private partners that are doing the work in both prevention and

04:06firefighting.

04:07They just immediately closed down our job corps where we had these young troubled youths that

04:12were getting job skills out in the woods doing fuels reduction, and they're not doing that

04:20work anymore.

04:22I'm all for creating efficiencies in government, but you need people to do the job specifically

04:27in the mid-level incident command centers.

04:29So I just want to say you have to treat workers well in order for them to show up.

04:35And I don't want to privatize our federal workforce, but we have issues in contracting.

04:40I've talked to Senator Sheehy, and specifically we had 200 unable to fill calls last year in

04:47Oregon because of the system that we use trying to get people that are the cheapest as opposed

04:53to people that are the closest.

04:55And we lost land, we lost homes, and next time we'll lose lives.

05:00We need more efficiency.

05:01There are ways that we can do this, restoring regional local dispatching for all resources,

05:07relying on states, and there are a number of things.

05:12I would love to work with you on that.

05:14As I said, I've talked to Senator Sheehy.

05:17There's a lot of things that we can do, but we have to ready, aim, fire, not just break

05:22it, and then cross our fingers and hope that all of our forests don't burn.

05:27So thank you again for being here today.

05:31Ladies and ladies, Tom has expired.

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