Among a flood of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump upon taking office was a temporary hiring freeze for federal agencies with some exceptions.
According to the document, no positions that were empty as of noon on Monday, Jan. 20, can be filled, and no new positions can be created.
According to the executive order, the directive does not apply to “military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.” The executive order expires 90 days after the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Management and Budget submits a plan to reduce the government’s workforce, according to the document.
Larisa Bogardus, the Vale Bureau of Land Management public relations officer, said in a text message on Tuesday, Jan. 21, that she could not comment on the hiring freeze. She noted that the Vale BLM employs 173 people.
Like the freeze he put in place at the start of his first term in 2017, Trump’s executive order is unclear about which positions would be exempt from the hiring freeze.
As of Wednesday, Jan. 22, the Vale BLM office had two firefighting vacancies posted on the official website for finding federal jobs.
Two other federal agencies under the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Malheur County – the Farm Services Agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service – did not directly answer questions about how the hiring freeze might impact government services in the county.
Tyler Johnson, the county executive director of the Farm Services Agency in Ontario, forwarded the Enterprise’s request for comment to the agency’s state office in Tualatin. Alejandro Moreno, the state outreach coordinator and public affairs specialist, said in a Wednesday, Jan. 22, email that he forwarded the request for comment to the agency’s “national team.”
Lynn Larsen, head of the federal conservation office in the county, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The farm service and natural resource offices do not appear to have job openings as of Wednesday, Jan. 22, according to the federal jobs website.
Scott Owen, the national press officer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s hiring freeze drew a swift rebuke from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden. In a Wednesday, Jan. 22, statement, Wyden said the executive does nothing to make government more efficient and will cause problems in the longrun.
“Blanket federal hiring freezes like this gimmick hurt Oregonians and Americans immediately by kneecapping agencies’ ability to respond to people’s needs in a timely and helpful fashion,” Wyden said. “That damage at the local level is compounded by the fact that this stunt does nothing to improve government efficiency and has proven historically to create long-term problems that end up costing taxpayers more money to fix.”
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