Latest news with #governmentrelocation
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump Cabinet secretary to get swanky new setup as major agency moves headquarters out of D.C.
The Trump administration is moving one federal agency out of D.C. and displacing another – with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development set to score choice new digs in the progress. Coming out on top in the situation is HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who is set to get an executive suite up on the 19th floor of his gleaming new headquarters when his current 2,700 employees make the move. But the 1,800 National Science Foundation employees who currently occupy the building are in the dark about their own prospects, according to American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represents federal workers it says were blindsided by the move. 'While Secretary Turner and his staff are busy enjoying private dining and a custom gym, NSF employees are being displaced with no plan, no communication, and no respect,' the union fumed. It said the 'callous disregard for taxpayer dollars and NSF employees comes after the Administration already cut NSF's budget, staff and science grants and forced NSF employees back into the office.' The furious union local, which says it got briefed on the plan when it was suddenly announced, lists perks it said Turner is set to garner in his new space. HUD currently occupies a brutalist 1960s building near the Southeast-Southwest freeway in downtown Washington with a long list of upkeep needs. They include a 'dedicated executive suite' for the secretary, an executive dining room, reserved parking for five cars (presumably his security detail), plus 'exclusive use' of an elevator and a 'potential gym for the HUD Secretary and his family.' Also blasting the move was Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee. She slammed the administration for 'kicking dedicated scientists out of their building so HUD Secretary Turner can have a penthouse dining suite' in a blistering statement. 'For an administration so obsessed with claiming that it's cutting spending, how can Trump justify the tax-payer dollars it will take to meet Turner's ridiculous demands, like a gym for his exclusive use or parking spaces for his five cars?' she said. She also asked where the NSF staff would go and what was the plan. 'Once again, science loses, the American taxpayer loses, and our competitors, like China, win.' A HUD press release features an image of the gleaming existing NSF building, which the agency occupied a few years ago. 'The move would unlock several hundred million dollars in taxpayer savings, address serious health and safety threats, enhance the Department's work culture, and present an opportunity for greater collaboration and service to the American people,' it says. Turner talked up the move at a press conference with Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose state has competed with Maryland and DC over the years to serve as host to the NSF and other federal agencies. The NSF used to have offices in downtown DC before moving to Virginia after the Secret Service took over its prior office space. 'We will work with our friends at [the General Services Administration] to coordinate a staggered and thoughtful relocation process which takes into account the current team and employees of this building and the work they do on a daily basis,' Turner said. He added: 'We are all on the same team.' He also blasted the claims about a posh setup as 'ridiculous and untrue.' 'This is about the posterity and the future of HUD, not just for now, but for those that are coming behind me. My family and I were already blessed before we came so, this is about the HUD employees. This is not about me,' he said. HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett told the Daily Mail that contrary to 'sensationalist reporting' no one would be 'displaced' and that there would be a 'staggered and thoughtful approach.' 'There will be a secretary office – just as there is at HUD currently – and every other place of operation with executive staff. There are no plans to "build out" anything more than what is currently there,' she said. The spokeswoman said the move was done for staff safety and did not have 'anything to do with a new space or bells and whistles for the secretary,' although she did not deny that Turner would get the building features the union described. The agency release makes no mention of what would happen to the NSF employees beyond the 'staggered employee relocation plan.' It claims the move 'will save American taxpayers hundreds of millions in deferred maintenance and modernization needs.' HUD's building showed up on a list of government buildings to be disposed of – although numerous buildings fell off the initial draft. A GSA fact sheet now begins with the question: 'The first list was much longer, why is this list shorter?' It responds: 'Due to the overwhelming response that we received after publishing the first list, we are refining our process.' A federal judge has put a temporary pause on massive cuts to research funding that goes out to universities around the country. Universities have sued over Trump administration changes to 'indirect' costs that get awarded to their scientists. One plaintiff, the University of California system, estimates the change will cost it nearly $100 million a year.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Housing Department to Move Headquarters, Booting National Science Foundation
The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Wednesday that it was moving its headquarters out of Washington and into a building in Alexandria, Va., already occupied by the National Science Foundation, with no clear plan in place for the foundation's employees. It is the first major shift of a federal agency's operations out of the capital under President Trump's plans to relocate parts of the government. But once the housing agency moves in, the science foundation will need to move out. Union representatives for the foundation's employees said that more than 1,833 people with the agency work in the building, and that they did not know where those employees would go. Scott Turner, the housing secretary, told employees at the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, the agency's current headquarters just south of the National Mall, that the change would reinvigorate workers and save taxpayer dollars. The current headquarters, which date to the mid-1960s, face more than $500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs, according to federal officials. Michael Peters, the public buildings service commissioner at the General Services Administration, which oversees the federal real estate portfolio, said that federal officials were still arranging a timeline for moving science foundation staff out of the building. 'We're going to work with N.S.F. to identify the best solution for them,' said Mr. Peters, who spoke at a news conference on Wednesday with Mr. Turner and Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Washington Needs This Medicine. Trump's Formula Is Poison.
In recent weeks, President Trump has been ratcheting up a cunning tactic for consolidating political power: the relocation of parts of the federal government. Far subtler than defying court orders or renditioning people to foreign prisons, it is nonetheless an alarming development — and all the more shameful because it corrupts what could have been a valuable government reform. In the earliest moments of his last presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to 'shatter the deep state' by moving as many as 100,000 government positions out of Washington 'to places filled with patriots who love America.' In February, the administration began making good on that promise by calling on agencies to submit plans by April 14 for moving offices away from the D.C. area, purportedly to reduce costs. A day after the deadline, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to help carry out those plans by removing longstanding restrictions on federal office locations. All the while, Mr. Trump's appointees at organizations like the F.B.I. and the Department of Agriculture have been informing employees of their intent to disperse them across the country. Federal officials who are unable to immediately relocate their families hundreds or thousands of miles away will face termination, paving the way for their replacement by Trump loyalists. A bitter irony of such a destructive project is that government decentralization is a good idea. But politically motivated relocations will not improve the government or make it more responsive to its citizens; they will merely hollow out its functions and replace what's left with a sprawling network of loyalists. There's a better way. In a country of 340 million people scattered across nearly four million square miles, executive power should not be concentrated within a single metropolitan area. Although 85 percent of federal workers are stationed around the country, the officials making the most important decisions still do so largely from Washington. In this sense, the picture of U.S. executive authority is not so different from how it appeared in 1800, when collaboration was limited by the speed of the fastest horse and buggy. When the leadership of any organization is separated from the people it is meant to serve, both lose out. Leaders often have a better sense of what different people want, and care more about helping them get it, when they live across the street from them rather than across the country. (Even Starbucks is attuned to local signals, rolling out its pumpkin spice latte based on the arrival of fall in different places.) By the same token, residents care more about organizations they can reach with a walk or a drive rather than a flight. Imagine how much harder it would be for DOGE to destroy the executive branch if more people knew someone working for it. Distributed organizations also benefit from distributed expertise. If you want access to specialized knowledge in both finance and tech, for example, it only makes sense to have some employees based in New York City and others in Silicon Valley. What would a constructive vision of a decentralized federal government look like — one designed to foster genuine connection with the public and to ensure that its varied interests are better represented? At first, it would involve delegating more authority to executive officials already stationed across the country. From there, leaders might explore the possibility of relocating some D.C.-based officials, as Mr. Trump has suggested — but with respect and care, taking time to figure out which federal workers might actually be open to moving and where they should be located to complement work already being done in Washington. Most top officials would continue to reside in Washington. A legislative affairs official who acts as a bridge between Congress and the Department of Justice, for example, needs to be on Capitol Hill to do the best job. But a director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who regulates coastal erosion might be more effective if immersed in the coastal regions and communities that erosion affects. If this sounds like an exotic experiment, consider that decentralized leadership has already proven itself a successful model in many large organizations — private companies, yes, but increasingly governments, too. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, for instance, operates hours away from the top executive and legislative officials in Berlin, which helps safeguard judicial independence. South Africa distributes power by separating its three governmental branches across different metropolitan areas. On a smaller scale, the Pentagon operates a Silicon Valley office to enhance collaboration between the military and the tech sector. Up until now, few people in Washington have been willing to consider a more decentralized federal government. Some members of Congress in recent years did show serious interest in the idea — notably Representative Ro Khanna on the left and former Representative Tim Ryan in the middle — but they were always the exception. Democrats, for the most part, did not consider it a priority, often equating a good government with one heavily concentrated in Washington, while thoughtful Republican leaders on this issue never emerged. The result is that a good idea was left in the hands of Donald Trump and his allies, who are seemingly transforming a promising medicine for healing the executive branch into a poison to destroy it. In 2019, after Mr. Trump announced the relocation of two Department of Agriculture offices, his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, lamented how hard it was to remove civil servants and described relocations as a 'wonderful way' to accomplish 'what we haven't been able to do for a long time,' celebrating that when civil servants were told they would have to move to 'the real part of the country,' many quit. Though Mr. Mulvaney claimed that the relocations were intended to 'streamline' the two offices, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees said that they were designed to weed out dedicated civil servants 'and silence the parts of the agencies' research that the administration views as inconvenient.' A few weeks earlier, the administration announced the relocation of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colo. Bureau officials were given 30 days to move from Washington or face termination, resulting in more than 87 percent resigning or retiring. The new offices opened in the same building as the oil and gas companies that the officials were tasked with regulating. To some degree, the relative quiet with which the administration's relocation efforts have been met is understandable: Detailed plans are not expected to be made public, and calling on this Republican-controlled Congress to exercise oversight can seem futile. But one surefire way of losing a fight is to forfeit it in advance. Drawing attention to the Trump administration's evident efforts is crucial, but opponents must also reframe the issue. The goal should be to rescue the good idea of decentralization from the Trump administration's destructive vision. Americans deserve a federal government next door — not because we need to move it away from evil people in Washington, but because we should share it with the talented people around the country who already are or eventually could work for it.
