The latest step in the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the federal government, released Wednesday, directs agencies to base their fiscal 2018 headcounts on a budget proposal that prescribes an almost 10-percent funding increase for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management.
The Environmental Management (EM) office, which cleans up nuclear waste created by Cold War-era weapons programs, has a headcount of about 1,400 federal employees and an annualized budget of about $6 billion for fiscal 2017.
Assuming that ratio of full-time-feds-to-funding remains constant for the next budget, the EM headcount could rise by more than 100 employees if Congress approves the Trump administration’s proposal to increase the office’s budget to $6.5 billion.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the latest details of the Trump administration’s plan to pare back the executive branch Wednesday in a 14-page guidance to agency leaders titled “Comprehensive Plan for Reforming the Federal Government and Reducing the Federal Civilian Workforce.”
“What the guidance really does is tell them, look to the budget blueprint and fashion your hiring and the paring down of your workforce consistent with the budget,” Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
The guidance also lifted Trump’s ban on hiring new federal employees, which he put in place on his first full day in office.
A DOE spokesperson in Washington did not reply to a request for comment Wednesday.
This week’s OMB guidance also orders agencies to “develop a plan to maximize employee performance by June 30, 2017.”
The administration further told agencies that their 2019 budget requests should include a so-called agency reform plan “that includes long-term workforce reductions.” OMB wants to see a draft of this plan from each agency on June 30, according to the guidance released Wednesday.
