With the White House seeking to dramatically shrink the federal workforce, sources told Exchange Monitor recently that senior executives with decades of experience in the Department of Energy’s weapons complex are leaving the government.
Those who may be departing, either through taking the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) deferred resignation or other means, such as standard retirement, include a former acting head of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and one or more site managers, according to sources who spoke to the Monitor.
So far, the Monitor has been able to independently confirm that Jeff Baran, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member and most recently DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) official in Washington, D.C., is leaving. Likewise, the publication received confirmation from Jay Mullis, EM’s manager of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, on his regularly planned retirement from DOE.
Many other names are widely rumored, including two mentioned below that the Monitor was not able to directly connect with by press time.
DOE press offices in Washington, D.C. have not responded to multiple inquiries regarding layoffs, buyouts or retirements in the past couple of weeks.
OPM closed out the deferred resignation, or “fork in the road” buyout program on Wednesday evening Feb. 12. Multiple sources who the Monitor spoke to late last week listed the following managers as leaving DOE:
Jim Owendoff has been DOE’s chief risk officer for the chief financial officer since October 2018. Prior to then, Owendoff worked in several high-ranking jobs within DOE Environmental Management, including as acting head of the nuclear cleanup organization early in the first Donald Trump administration. Altogether, Owendoff spent 21 years at Environmental Management, according to his online bio. He spent 25 years in the U.S. Air Force and also worked in the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security.
It was not immediately known when Owendoff might be leaving.
“He has been through it all,” at DOE, one industry executive said this week of Owendoff.
Mike Budney became manager of DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina in February 2018, according to his bio. For the three years prior to that, Budney headed business operations in the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Budney also spent 29 years in the U.S. Navy and worked with Northrop Grumman. .
Due to DOE reorganization, Budney’s responsibilities were reduced Oct. 1, 2024, when the Department transferred landlord responsibility for the Savannah River complex to the National Nuclear Security Administration from Environmental Management.
“You wonder who DOE has on the bench,” one executive with a DOE contractor told the Monitor Friday.
These and other anticipated departures are likely to mean several lower-rung DOE managers in the complex will be assuming more responsibility.
This is a developing story.
