Rumored NPS Personnel Moves Reminiscent Of Past Attempts To Exert Political Will On Agency

President Trump reportedly favors chaos as a managerial tool, and proposed personnel changes at the National Park Service not only would insert that element into the agency's upper echelon, but also be reminiscent of past efforts to gain political control over the beloved agency.

Ironically, there is one player central to the Reagan administration's efforts to gain control over the Park Service more than three decades ago and the current move by the Interior Department to move top-level managers to lesser offices: P. Daniel Smith, currently the Park Service's de facto director.

As Susan Combs, a new Interior Department hire acting as the de facto assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks met in Denver on Monday with Park Service personnel to discuss the department's reorganization, Park Service managers from Alaska to Yellowstone were facing the prospect of being moved to less prestigious posts.

Dan Wenk, a former deputy director of the Park Service and Yellowstone's superintendent since 2010, reportedly was being transferred to oversee the National Capital Region; Bert Frost, Alaska Regional director since 2014, was being told to relocate to Lake Mead National Recreation Area as superintendent, and; Sue Masica, Intermountain Regional director in Denver since  2013, was to move to the same position at the Midwest Region Office in Omaha, Nebraska.

At the same time, Biscayne National Park Superintendent Margaret Goodro was said to be heading to replace Mr. Frost in Alaska; Midwest Regional Director Cam Sholly was to take over for Mr. Wenk at Yellowstone; and Lake Mead Superintendent Lizette Richardson was to become the regional director for the Intermountain Region. The moves were first reported by the Washington Post.

One of those involved told the Traveler those moves were just in the "proposal" stage and didn't know if Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would agree to them.

If the proposal is acted upon, it remains to be seen whether Mr. Wenk, Mr. Frost, and Ms. Masica -- all members of the Senior Executive Service who can be moved at the Interior secretary's discretion and who have 60 days to accept the transfers -- will agree to the moves or simply retire. In the past such transfers have been used to result in retirements, said Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, a nonprofit group made up largely of retired Park Service personnel.

“If you try to move someone with the purpose of getting them to retire or resign, and it might not be true so much with (Senior Executive Service) people because they sign a relocation agreement, but typically that’s referred to as a constructive discharge,” Mr. Francis said Monday during a phone call. “When you move someone for anything other than the 'efficiency of the Service,' then those moves would be in my mind inappropriate."

The transfers now said to be in play have similarities to those pushed by the Reagan administration in 1986. At the time, the personnel moves were being considered without the input of then-Park Service Director William Penn Mott, Jr., according to a New York Times article. Mr. Mott, when he learned of the scheme, was outraged.

T. Destry Jarvis, vice president of the National Parks and Conservation Association, said the Interior Department's political appointees ''are trying to ram this down Bill Mott's throat, and if he resigns they will be happy.''

Officials in the Park Service expressed similar views.

Mr. Jarvis said the Administration had tried for five years ''to make major philosophical changes in the management of the parks and have been stymied by the institution, its individuals and its reputation.''

Now, he said, ''they think they have a window while Congress is out and the media are preoccupied by the White House to dismantle the Park Service by changing the structure and the personnel and simultaneously moving into policy changes.''

Key in those discussions was P. Daniel Smith, at the time Interior's deputy assistant secretary, who the Times reported was suggesting personnel moves without discussing them with either Mr. Mott or his deputy.

Mr. Smith nearly two decades later was implicated for improperly paving the way for the owner of the Washington Redskins to cut down trees on a 2-acre scenic easement along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. He retired from the Park Service in 2014 after ten years as superintendent of Colonial National Historical Park. However, he returned to the agency this past January as an acting deputy director.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Mr. Smith recently personally contacted the top managers to tell them about their transfers. The group also noted that Mr. Frost is a witness against Mr. Smith in a case in which the deputy director allegedly made a sexually crude gesture while walking down a hall in the Interior Department.

“These multiple moves resemble a purge and have no apparent management motivation other than to marginalize and disrupt,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch on Monday. “Danny Smith informing a witness against him of an involuntary transfer does not pass the smell test.”

The reported transfers also come shortly after the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General found that nearly three dozen previous transfers of SES personnel were made without proper documentation or "information needed to make informed decisions about the reassignments..."

“This shuffle denotes the ascendancy of petty politics at the helm of our national parks,” said Mr. Ruch. “Entering its second century, the National Park Service is afflicted by ethically compromised leadership lacking a vision of its mission.”