# ‘There is literally no one’: The fallout coming to Lake Tahoe after forest service gutted
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Come on… Please tell me that you have more than that? Please tel me that you can create some level of thoughts on your own and not buy all the BS.
Is there an issue with illegals immigration yes… is it the root of all our issues… nope.
Tariffs to stop drugs… or to make us rich?
Point is that the actions that are taking place are having real impacts on people and they will be long lasting.
I always hear people decry social programs and then cry about running calls on homeless all night. When you reduce or eliminate programs the problems that the programs were created to fix do not go away… they just go unaddressed. That is when it all falls back on the ultimate social safety net… 911.
Right now there are hundreds of millions of dollars in joint projects between CA and the Feds that are not being spent on the programs( hazard reduction) because no one is answering the phone on the fed side. Why… because they were laid off.
As I said earlier… what I hear most is the “Na-Ah” argument. Please tell me that you can come up with something other than regurgitating the same old garbage.
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I wouldn’t have expected anything less of a long winded “na ah” response from you. Since you brought it up, prop 36 is the best thing to happen for social programs in our state. So, let’s get back on track. As far as I know, the hiring freeze does not affect firefighting positions.
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It hasn’t affected any primary fire positions and there’s no indication that it will. However it has gotten rid of a fair amount of people that hold red card qualifications and that will reduce the ability of the agencies to respond to emergencies. The forest service has indicated that it wants to do away with a third of its employees. In an agency so entrenched in fire response and repair, there is no way that kind of reduction in force won’t reduce its ability to respond to disasters.
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I’m reading here that NPS is also looking at a 30 percent payroll reduction and that makes me sad. I’ve met loads of these folks and they are good people, it sucks if any of them lose their jobs. They play a large role in fire prevention, like trying to keep dummies from burning the forests down. In the event of emergency, they manage crowd-control, which is not an easy job. I’ve seen some amazing high-altitude extractions, coordinated between Fed SAR and CHP helicopters. I feel bad for anyone reading this thread who might lose their job.
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Possibly, these agencies do need to slim down, but not at the sharp end of the stick.
You need to remember who is making the decisions. Way on high says we have to reduce the workforce, but then you have to remember who is making the final decisions. The Admin of the agencies. It is easier to shed the field people that you have no contact with than the folks who work around you every day.
The Head-Shed will protect itself while everything else wil go to He$$ in a handbasket.
It will always be someone else’s fault, but they will continue to do their jobs .
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Apparently NPS staff at the Mendenhall Gklaciuer Visitor’s Center has been reduced to one person. The Center receives 1.5 million visitors annually. A huge problem is clueless visitors being unaware of the potential dangers of carrying food into an environment where hungry bears are ubiquitous.
This goes beyond ignorant dispersal of garbage items, and the chances of someone being seriously injured or killed will skyrocket without adequate staffing to patrol the crowds and ensure that tourists don’t wander with their lunch bags.
The idea that people who have no idea how most of these systems work, no idea about who does what when and where, are going to increase efficiency is an unfortunate fantasy that will lead to real-life nightmares in broad daylight.
Personally, I prefer that people waiving chainsaws around in public spaces know how to use them.
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During a “normal” downsizing the budget is cut and the administration makes the decisions on which positions to cut. Often those cuts are made to critical programs with the hope that the public will push back and the cuts will be reduced. That is the normal dance.
Right now anyone on “probation” is being fired or forced to resign. So, if you are a 10 year employee and just took a promotion to a new job and were two weeks into the new job… you got laid off. If you listen to how this is being done… the letter states that they did not meet the minimum requirements or were not performing to the expected level. That language is required within the government code to remove someone from service.
So… now not only are you out of work but if you look at your resume and someone asks why you were let go… it is because you were “unsatisfactory”.
Having lived through the Pete Wilson “pay for performance “ era in CF I can tell you that the genesis of much of the pay disparity for CF came from that era. Pete Wilson espoused much of what we are hearing now. It has taken 3 decades to overcome those actions.
The damage short term will be significant but we will survive it, the long term brain drain and damage will take decades to repair. The natural succession plan has been interrupted and will be felt in the future when there will be a gap in qualified staff to fill critical jobs.
As far as the sharp end folks… An army crawls on its stomach. When you lose the support staff the organization struggles to meet the needs of the sharp end folks. You actually lose (over) sight of things like waste-fraud and abuse. One of the first positions that were cut across the board were IG’s… whose very job it is to look for and root out waste and fraud.
If you have spent any time on an IMT you see the value of all the staff( non sworn) people who keep an IMT on track and bring significant value and expertise to the effort.
This is at best a chaotic and unplanned effort and at worst a political stunt to support a narrative…not much different than opening the gates of a dam and pushing a conveyance system to near failure to dump water into a dry lakebed with no way to move it into the two systems that can move it and then telling people that you sent it to LA to fight fires… it is just simply not true.
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You couldn’t be more wrong comparing a good IMT with the federal government.
The federal government grew tremendously in the last decade plus. A good IMT grows as it is needed, and when the need decreases so does the staffing. The federal government could take a lesson from the operation of a good IMT, expand when needed, then decrease when the need reduces.
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I did not make a comparison between the government and an IMT. Not sure where you got that.
My comments about IMT’s were in regard to the IMT’s losing potential members as those members lose their employment with the DOI.
As far as an IMT right sizing… that is only done as the incident winds down or the complexity changes.
Those decisions are made by members of the C&G based on real time information… and extensive discussions with the field level leadership and the AHJ. The decision to downsize the IMT is a collaborative process meant to hold the ground that was gained and ultimately for the customer and the troops doing the work to not see any reduction in support or service. 16 years on a Type 1 IMT taught me that.
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Well that’s not very efficient - blow every thing up and then pay people not to work?
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back pay even if they were not in pay status when terminated?
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I would imagine that would mean no back pay.
NOAA to cut another 1000 jobs…
Why cut NOAA… well they study things like the climate. If you do not like the science… then just eliminate it. Look down….
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Well, you just made my point! The same happens on both sides of the aisle. Maybe you just exposed your bias by thinking the other party is just that much better. My point was actually pretty simple, our government is very fat and needs to be right sized for America. We don’t need the federal government involved in every aspect of our lives by trying to solve everyone’s problems with the current outlandish number of departments and personnel in D.C… Smaller government actually works the best. Government actually was created for one purpose, to have oversight over public safety in our country. That’s it! It appears you may not believe there is fraud, abuse, and out of control spending in D.C. and that every single bureaucrat in D.C. is absolutely needed. It is not the role of government to solve everyone’s problem. We have a difference in opinions and that’s o.k… Healthy debate is good. I respect your position, but I just think you’re wrong, that’s all! Cheers!
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I do not agree… and did not expose any implicit bias… but rather pointed out the obvious… this current administration is based on chaos. If you do not agree… look at your 401K this afternoon.
As for the role of government… its job is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. Everyday Americans do not have supercomputers to analyze the ICON vs the GFS model runs on a severe weather outbreak, they do not have laboratory equipment to test for insects that are entering our country and could wreak havoc on our agriculture industry, they do not have testing equipment to find problems with materials used in our vehicles.
The cuts to NOAA are symptomatic of the underlying process of reducing the government to a level where it will cease to be able to serve the citizens.
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The primary job of the Federal government in the beginning, was to protect this Country and its citizens.
All else has been politicians doing their thing to stay in power.
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Protecting its citizens can be taken in a multitude of ways and it absolutely has been right and wrong. But here, in this forum, I’d venture to guess that we’d all agree that NOAA and the NWS are vital to protecting all aspects of this country and its citizenry.
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I think what I find most interesting in some of this anti government is sentiment is that is comes from what seems like ( at least in part) from government employees.
It is always funny to me when career firefighters from California complain about California and how they cannot wait to leave the state and the taxes…
As a firefighter in this state who has traveled and worked with firefighters from all over the country… our retirement and post retiree healthcare is unmatched…
I suspect if this was aimed at the state level there would be some different comments on this site.
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