President Trump on Monday put a freeze on federal government hiring, an action that could have wide-ranging impacts for the National Park Service as it moves to hire thousands of seasonal rangers and other employees for the upcoming summer.
Beyond seasonal positions, there are many vacancies involving permanent positions that parks are trying to fill. Then, too, there are personnel who have been offered permanent jobs but haven't begun working and are wondering how the hiring freeze will impact them.
At the National Parks Conservation Association, President and CEO Theresa Pierno said the hiring freeze would adversely affect the National Park System.
“Protecting our national parks requires the dedicated efforts of tens of thousands of rangers and other Park Service employees every day, but much of their staffs are edging closer to retirement. Parks already have 10 percent fewer rangers and other staff compared to a few years ago," said Theresa Pierno in a prepared statement. "They cannot continue to be hampered by low staffing, and that’s exactly what will happen with this hiring freeze.
"Park rangers are already forced to do more with less because they don’t have enough staff to handle record-breaking crowds. If Congress and the administration don’t work together to better staff our parks, this will only make it harder for those remaining park staff to care for and manage America’s favorite places.”
Traveler has reached out to Park Service officials for their interpretation of the scope of the hiring freeze and will update the story when possible.
Comments
Wow, the drama queens and fear mongering. A fire fighter will be exempt.
L - Our country is a different place but the basic principles of its founding and the existence of our inalienable rights haven't. They are just as applicable today as they were then.
For Gravy - rather than laughing perhaps you should be reading more carefully. I did not say I wanted to revert to the country as it existed at the time of our founding, I said I wanted to go back to the priniciples of that founding. As said above, those prinicples, limited government and individual rights are just as applicable today as they were then.
More "alternative facts" from the White House:
"At a news conference Monday, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said the freeze ensures taxpayers get effective and efficient government and said it "counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years."
"Statistics from the Office of Personnel Management, though, show that the number of executive branch employees hasn't been this low since 1965, and that the number of employees has stayed more or less steady in the last 15 years."
"...the Department of Veterans Affairs currently has 2,000 vacancies and said "it is the American veteran that is going to suffer" because the agency is now barred from filling those vacancies."
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Workers-dismayed-by-President-T...
In my opinion. I love travelling and I also love nature. If i am going to another country I would love to experience their parks, nature, and different scosystems. I would be very upset if they said "sorry your not a citizen you cannot experience this beautiful section of the earth". All people should have to rights to experience and learn about all of OUR Earth.
Ban foreign visitors from our parks?
Our parks may well be the best ambassadors we have.
Tahoma, executive branch employment did grow about 14,000 jobs during the Obama administration. You might not call that dramatic but there was growth. But the real point is this a first step toward reducing the size of the government. It does fall short in one respect however. Although it prohibits outsourcing to bypass the freeze, it doesn't address the massive preexisting outsourcing of governmental activities. But that will likely need to be addressed at the Congressional budgetary level.
I am sympathetic to the NPS. National Park visitation rates have increased dramatically. It's an affordable vacation for domestic travellers AND international. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/travel/national-park-service-record-visits...
So you have increased visitation to the National Parks, decreased staffing, now the seasonals don't get hired (who may I remind you, are students working for the summer, working class folks, veterans, and retired folks working their encore careers). Permanent jobs are not filled either. Sure, you could probably cull some of the excess across the whole federal workforce, but for a "President" who touts job creation, he just null and voided thousands of jobs in public service. And with the repeal of ACA, these thousands of people with their jobs taken away will have no affordable health insurance. The cost of this is enormous and it's already been proven that federal hiring freezes costs the nation more than it saves.
The largest budget item is military spending. If there's some where to cut look there. Don't forget these jobs are just as important as manufacturing jobs, especially for the people who are going to lose them.