Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants to have his departmental reorganization up and running by July 1/DOI

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's timetable for reorganizing his department and its bureaus calls for the overhaul to be "operational" by July 1, 2019.

Under his vision, the reorganization that touches the National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 12 regions will be created from the Caribbean to Alaska and the Pacific islands. Each region will have one Interior Regional Director to oversee operations. How those operations will be conducted remains to be seen.

"It is important for you to know that some topics may purposefully lack specific or detailed answers for now because the leaders out in the Regions and Field Stations will be the ones who build and shape their Unified Regions. One size does not fit all," Susan Combs, the secretary's senior advisor exercising the authority of the assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, wrote last week in a mass email to all Interior Department employees. "Our Unified Regions are very diverse and may take different approaches based on their unique priorities and needs. For example, some Unified Regions have significant recreation components, while other Unified Regions have significant permitting and collaborative conservation workloads, and some Unified Regions have significant workloads in all of our Mission Areas."

Still to be determined is which agencies will have their headquarters moved from Washington, D.C., to Western cities, and whether Congress will agree to fund the reorganization. Also to be determined is just how the various agencies will integrate their operations across traditional lines. For instance, while the Park Service is directed to protect landscapes and resources for future generations to enjoy, the BLM has a multiple-use mission that includes mining and logging on public lands.

"Over the next several months, the Regional Facilitators and Leadership Teams are working together to develop the plan for how recreation, conservation, permitting, HR, IT, and procurement will operate in each region," Combs wrote. "The Regional Facilitators will meet again as a group in December to discuss these topics. In January and March, the group will discuss additional information regarding IT and procurement assessments. By July 1, 2019, the Unified Regional Office will be operational in each region."

The Interior official said the plan will not require a reduction in force. 

"We believe the reorganization will facilitate inter-bureau coordination, training, and experience and will therefore enhance employees’ career development and job opportunities across bureaus," Combs wrote. "As positions are vacated through voluntary retirements or moves to new roles, some of those positions may be filled in a different location."

What could impede the reorganization work is a switch in power in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, could become chair of the House Natural Resources Committee if the Democrats on Tuesday win a majority in that chamber.

“Secretary Zinke and Deputy Secretary Bernhardt are smashing the Interior Department to pieces and telling employees to pick up the mess," the congressman said last week. "The organizational plan described here is unworkable for a number of reasons and demands oversight that Republicans on this Committee have conspicuously failed to provide. This should not be the first time Democrats on the Committee of jurisdiction learn about these plans, and should we hold a House majority in January, we will get to the bottom of why this work was done without congressional awareness.”