Already burdened by chronic staff shortages, low morale, an $11.3 billion maintenance backlog, and claims of disloyalty by the Interior secretary, the National Park Service will soon ask “a number of employees” to accept voluntary early retirement, according to a memo obtained by the Traveler.
Where eligible, those in identified positions will be contacted by the agency’s Washington Support Office detailing offers that may include severance packages, called Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP), according to the email sent this week to all employees by Deputy Director of Operations Michael T. Reynolds, who has been serving as interim director.
“In recent years, budget reductions and the absorption of fixed costs have constrained the ability of NPS units, including parks and program offices, to recruit and fill positions through attrition and existing workforce management authorities,” the memo said. “High priority permanent positions remain lapsed in order to afford existing encumbered positions, and seasonal positions critical to the operation of national parks are not filled. Units have also seen their workload change as old processes are modernized and new responsibilities emerge.”
Employees were told that the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) approval is a continuation of a buyout program that began in 2014 and isn’t the result of a government-wide reform plan being developed by the Interior Department and the Office of Management and Budget, and Congress.
“If you are offered a VERA or VSIP, your acceptance is completely optional. You will notice the first word in each of these authorities is ‘voluntary’ and that’s exactly how they should be interpreted,” the email said. “You are not encouraged one way or another to accept or decline. The decision is yours and you should think it over carefully. Your Regional Human Resources Manager can answer any questions you may have about this offer.
“I recognize the work you do every day is not only valuable but has been essential in developing the remarkable organization we have all helped to build. I want each and every employee to know, whether you are offered a VERA/VSIP or not, and whether you choose to accept or not, that the work you do is no less important to those you serve.”
The move would further deplete institutional knowledge from the Park Service, which hasn’t been able to fill all of its open positions for many years.
“Since 2001, the parks have lost the capacity to hire over 1,400 people due to annual NPS appropriations not keeping up with costs and with inflation. For too many years, the Park Service has been required to absorb fixed costs, and appropriations have not kept up with costs associated with employee salaries and benefits,” Deny Galvin of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks told a subcommittee of the U.S. House Natural Resources
Committee in testimony earlier this month.
The Park Service continues to be mired in the bottom 25 percent of all government agencies in terms of being a great place to work, according to the annual Best Places in the Federal Government to Work survey. In addition, a survey revealed that nearly 40 percent of the Park Service workforce has been the victim of sexual harassment, intimidation, or discrimination.
In September, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told the National Petroleum Council that "I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag," according to The Associated Press.
All this while national parks surge in popularity, with record-high visitation surpassing 330 million in 2016 during the Park Service’s centennial year.
Comments
I'm pleased to see the left for the first time that I can recall finally worrying about the national debt. I am also disheartened that the right seems to be less concerned all of a sudden. Much like personal finances I'd rather be the one doing the lending than the borrowing. If the National debt isn't addressed soon we will end up like Greece and Argentina.
Kurt, the headline of that piece gives away it bias. One estimate put 143 million people benefitiing from these cuts and that doesn't include the benefits that will accrue to the middle class from the corporate tax cut. It is not a cut "for the wealthy" We saw strong growth after the cuts of Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton. Bush's cuts would have had the same effect but for the disasterous CRA policies of Clinton/Reno which blew up into the mortgage crisis during Bushs term. Even tax cuts weren't powerful enough to overcome that mess.
Forget the headline and read the guts of the story, EC.
Trump to friends: you all just got a lot richer.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mar-a-lago-you-all-just-got-a-lot-r...
I won't be impressed to see a little less money deducted from my paycheck, knowing that the super-rich get most of the tax bill benefits, and our National Debt will most likely be going up. Trump's cuts to the National Park Service's already inadequate budget are awful. Trump, who formerly criticized Obama for playing golf, has run up an extra tab of tens of millions of dollars, just in Secret Service protection, while he plays golf at his resorts on weekends. This is something he vowed not to do.
EC-
1) How about if the N Korean missles fly we call in 1 (or 2, or even 3) of the 10 extant CVNs instead of either "Ranger Rick" or the next CVN after CVN79 John F. Kennedy? Or, if we're trying to do something about the launched missles, maybe AEGIS or THAAD which are on other ships, not CVNs. CVNs are for relatiation, which would be called for in that case, and for many other purposes, but they're not going to stop ICBMs any more than Ranger Rick will.
2) I'd like to see your data for "the last four major tax cuts were followed by massive increases in tax collections". That's not how the numbers work in the official documents I've seen: revenue didn't rebound after Reagan's cuts until the subsequent tax increases.
Back to the original post: the buyouts require that the specific position not be re-filled. This isn't directly or only a RIF (reduction in force) in response to budget cuts: in many if not most cases another position will be filled. The "justification" from OPM for VERA/VSIP is that NPS allegedly has lots of senior current employees with skills that were needed 10 or 20 years ago, but not matching current needs. The buyouts facilitate NPS eliminating currently occuplied positions no longer needed, and replacing them with different positions meeting current needs. So, in theory* VERA/VSIP can't be used to ease out bad chiefs or superintendents or interp rangers or most generic position descriptions, because those specific position descriptions would need to be refilled. They _can_ be used to do things like replace historians with social media experts or pure interp rangers. [I value historians way more than the powers that be appear to do!]
* There is at least one work-around that is legal, and in the couple of cases I've heard of was beneficial to the parks & NPS as a whole, so not abusive. But, given the OMB guidance that seems to say that NPS doesn't use & abuse seasonal & term employees enough, so needs to make their lives harder, I've deleted my explanation before posting this lest I make HR & hiring even more disfuctional for the folks who have to deal with that. The inability to get a simple position (with funding available) approved, advertized, applicant pool certified, and then a candidate hired is one of the top impediments to operations at many parks.
Tomp 1) Because CVN 1-10 might be elsewhere deployed . Unfortunately, NK isn't the only trouble spot we need to be worried about.
2) The data is readibly available. https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-33... Tax reciepts were never below the level pre cuts and even after the increases the tax rate was well below the precut levels. By the end of Reagans term, reciepts were up 65% despite substantially lower rates than when he entered office.
A little insight for those of you outside the loop. Nepotism and cronyism is rampant! Your chances of obtaining a job without "knowing " someone in the system is slight. The most qualified candidates are not the most hired candidates. Relatives, friends, neighbors and, yes, even those of the same race or ethnicity are more often chosen over the more qualified.
Under the table dealings are common and go un-investigated. I know for a fact that contracts are given to the same companies, over and over whether or not they are the low bidder. I also know fod a fact that sub par jobs are consistently signed off on and become the problem of the maint workers. I know for a fact that workers have been "asked" to do work, on company time, at higher ups residences. I know for a fact that "stuff" has been purchased by company credit card and installed in personal residences. I am talking about private homes. I know for amfact that there are many, many employees who spend the day shooting the breeze with each other, non productive, dead wood, leaving early, dissapearing for part of the day, using co. vehicles for personal errands, even using co. buildings and rooms for parties. The list goes on and on......