The Department of Agriculture has announced plans to close its mammoth headquarters in Washington, lay off thousands of its nearly 100,000 employees, and relocate offices and many remaining workers to hubs across the country. The decision follows President Donald Trump’s executive order to transform “the Federal bureaucracy” by eliminating “waste, bloat, and insularity.”

This should come as no surprise. In 2023, Trump promised that if reelected, he would “continue the efforts launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington Swamp. Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out, and I mean immediately, of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America, and they really do love America.”

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More than three years earlier, on the campaign trail in Colorado in 2020, Trump bragged about his decision to place the BLM headquarters in Colorado because “the people who manage the lands of the great American West should live right here in the Great American West.”

When I joined the Trump administration in July 2019 to lead the BLM, I learned of the plan to move its top employees to Grand Junction. First proposed by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, it had been abandoned by deep-state BLM bureaucrats but resurrected by the current secretary, David Bernhardt. Those employees were headquartered at the historic Interior Department steps from the White House but mostly in exorbitantly priced rental offices near Washington Nationals Park.

My mission, that summer day in Bernhardt’s office as he handed me the spreadsheet listing the positions being relocated, was to complete the move, justify it to senators, representatives, committees, and staff, and promote and defend it in the national, but mostly Western, media.  Bernhardt ensured the administrative and logistical assistance required, especially that provided by the late Jim Cason, with whom I served in the Reagan administration. As Trump enthused later in Colorado and as I argued subsequently in the Denver Post and, after leaving government, in the Las Vegas Review Journal, despite caterwauling by Democrats and the Washington media (alas, I repeat myself), the move was a huge success.

The first working day of 2020, I opened the Grand Junction headquarters. In August, with more newly hired federal employees in the office or en route, Bernhardt officially declared it the Robert F. Burford headquarters, named after the BLM’s longest-serving director, a local hero, a decorated World War II Marine, and an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. Being in Grand Junction, near the edge of the Great Basin, made sense. Ninety-nine percent of the 245 million acres of land managed by the BLM is in the 11 Western states and Alaska; fewer than 50,000 BLM acres are east of the 100th Meridian.

Moreover, 97% of BLM’s employees are in the West and Alaska, which means that, prior to Trump’s relocation efforts, they were separated by two and four time zones from their bosses in Washington. Thus, as BLM employees and Alaskans affected by their decisions — nearly all of them (BLM manages 70 million surface acres and 220 million subsurface acres of the state’s 365 million acres) — return from lunch, BLM’s top decision-makers are stuck in traffic on I-95.

Speaking of which, Grand Junction and other Western locations to which top positions were redeployed, including Billings, Boise, Reno, and Santa Fe, feature minimal commuting time, a significantly lower cost of living, less congestion, and proximity to the wide-open spaces that include federal recreational lands. So coveted were the positions being filled that we were forced to cap applications at 50, which still brought in highly qualified experts who wanted to help manage BLM’s single-purpose and multiple-use lands while living in the West. In fact, as a member of the interviewing panels, I asked whether each candidate would bid on the position were it in Washington, D.C. “No,” replied each one. All wanted to work and live in the West.

When I led the BLM from the nation’s capital, each day we made decisions relying on a piece of paper, a map, and a photograph. Everything changed with my move to Colorado. As a challenging fire season hit in the summer of 2020, including the Grizzly Creek and Pine Gulch wildfires near Grand Junction, I was on the scene with supervisors from the National Interagency Fire Center, which had relocated to Boise, Idaho, in the 1990s.

Likewise, using a government vehicle, I often drove to BLM district and field offices in Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming that had not seen a BLM director in decades. BLM offices in Arizona, California, and Nevada were short flights away. Being on the land with local land managers and law enforcement rangers provided me with a perspective my colleagues on the East Coast lacked.

Similarly, I was available to those affected by the BLM’s decisions. On my first day, the head of a small recreational group drove over from Denver, and in my final days, four sheriffs from rural Utah drove in to meet with me. None of them could have afforded a trip to Foggy Bottom. So it was with scores of others, including county commissioners.

In the end, 222 BLM positions were placed in vibrant Western communities closest to the issues for which they were responsible, for example, wild horses in Nevada and archeological treasures in New Mexico. Forty senior leaders and key decision-makers were in Grand Junction. Sixty-one positions, including those in public affairs, congressional affairs, regulatory affairs, Freedom of Information Act compliance, and budget development, remained in Washington. As for those at the BLM who did not want to move West, we found federal positions near their homes for all of them. As a result, we incurred no legal challenges, no formal Equal Employment Opportunity or United States Merit Systems Protection Board complaints, and no adverse union activity.

Government accountants advised that, even with the costs involved in making the move, the American people would see savings in travel and office rental expenses. Funds would be used more wisely thanks to the synergy of seasoned senior managers working closely with the BLM employees in the field while in near-daily contact with Western officials, stakeholders, and neighbors. Most importantly, the BLM’s decisions would be better, more defensible, and longer lasting because they would be made closest to the people directly affected.

LET’S RELOCATE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Not surprisingly, the Biden administration moved those BLM decision-makers back to Washington, DC, which, combined with the Biden-Harris lawless approach to federal lands management, unilateral decision-making out of the White House, and failure to consult with far away local citizens, elected officials, and tribal leaders, infuriated Westerners.

Today, even some left-of-center commentators acknowledge that, given the BLM’s location in the West, Trump 45’s relocation efforts made sense. The same can be said about the USDA’s largest agency, the U.S. Forest Service. Its 35,000 employees manage 193 million acres, 80% of which are situated in the 11 Western states and Alaska. It is time for Smokey the Bear to move West.

William Perry Pendley, a Wyoming attorney and Colorado-based public-interest lawyer for three decades with victories at the U.S. Supreme Court, served in the Reagan administration and led the Bureau of Land Management for President Donald Trump.