[The Hill] The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has lost more than half of its Washington-based employees who were slated to move out West as the agency pushes ahead with a controversial plan to relocate staff.New internal numbers from the Interior Department obtained by The Hill show 69 employees have left the agency rather than accept the new assignment. Another 18 left after the plans were announced but before they could be reassigned.
Those 87 employees outnumber the 80 who have agreed to the move.
The figures are at odds with the ones referenced in December by acting BLM Director William Perry Pendley, who said in an email that roughly two-thirds of staffers had agreed to move.
"This is a huge brain drain," said Steve Ellis, who retired from BLM’s top career-level post in 2016. "There is a lot of really solid expertise walking out the door."
The Interior Department, which oversees BLM, did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The BLM move would uproot nearly all of the agency’s dwindling Washington staff out West, leaving just 61 of 10,000 employees in the nation’s capital.
Under the relocation plan, roughly 25 employees would work at BLM’s new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., while another 150 or so would be placed in the agency’s existing offices out West.