FORECAST IS POOR FOR TRUMP MAKING STUFF WORK

Storms gather over Weather Service

The labor union representing the National Weather Service last week told The Washington Post that its lack of staff is creating a storm in forecasting operations and the government agency is “for the first time in its history teetering on the brink of failure.”

The National Weather Service workforce at its 122 offices nationwide is spread razor thin, with hundreds of vacant forecast positions, according to the Post.

An independent May 2017 report from the Government Accountability Office showed staff vacancies increased 57 percent from 2014 to 2016. The overall vacancy rate reached 11 percent, or 455 positions, at the end of 2016 — up from just 5 percent (211 positions) at the end of 2010, the report said. The union believes the number of vacancies is even higher, closer to 700. The Morristown weather office that serves Chattanooga referred our questions about local staffing to a national public affairs office. That office took our question and promised a response, which we did not receive.

Another Post story from late September said President Donald Trump’s hiring freeze worsened an already bad situation just ahead of what would turn out to be a potentially record-breaking hurricane season. Staffing fell from an already strapped 3,425 in December to 3,368 in August, according to the Post. A senior official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, told Post reporters that the 2017 fiscal year appropriations act funds 4,453 people. The agency has an annual budget of $1.1 billion.

The GAO says the National Weather Service issues 1.5 million forecasts and 50,000 warnings every year, and each forecast office must by law be staffed with at least two meteorologists around the clock, every day of the year. In addition, there are six regional headquarters and 30 other offices that handle specialized tasks such as monitoring rivers, issuing tsunami warnings and analyzing data.

Since weather happens in every state and political district, Congress has noticed. The Post reports that in the fiscal 2018 budget markup for the Weather Service, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote that the “extended vacancies are unacceptable — particularly when the Committee has provided more than adequate resources and direction to fill vacancies expeditiously for the past several years.”

But the still increasing staff shortage is not the only Trump storm on the national forecast.

Trump’s nominee to lead NOAA is AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers — a businessman and lawyer who has lobbied to limit the amount of information the Weather Service can provide to the public for free, so that private companies like his might generate their own value-added products. In other words, they want to use government-generated information for their own private profit.

Confirmation hearings are not yet on the radar.

Trump needs a plan for planning

You might have noticed that President Trump and his administration seem to have a hard time getting anything done as planned or promised.

The opioid “national emergency” declaration became a “public health emergency” sans money but with a planned “really tough, really big, really great advertising” campaign.

All of the JFK assassination documents held private for decades were by law to be released Thursday, and Trump announced they would be. But it didn’t happen. Why? Because the Trump administration didn’t get the work done to redact names on segments of the documents deemed by intelligence to still be “too sensitive.” The administration has now reset the release time frame to April 2018. Never mind that Thursday’s release date was set in law 25 years ago, or that Trump had been talking and tweeting about the anticipated Oct. 26 release for a week.

The Trump administration “… thought they’d just make the announcement on Twitter and it was done, right?” said Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “From repealing Obamacare to spelling [correctly] the name of the British Prime Minister, they can’t get it done.”

Then there’s also FEMA’s detailed major storm plan for Puerto Rico. FEMA routinely makes such plans — years in advance — for potential disasters. But if the plan the government acknowledges it has was followed, why is Puerto Rico still largely without power or running water six weeks after being razed by two hurricanes? What did the plan call for? We don’t know because Trump’s FEMA told ProPublica the plan was too “potentially sensitive” to be released.

Then there’s deliberate dallying?

Here’s something the Trump administration likely deliberately dragged its feet on: Setting into motion the Russia sanctions Trump reluctantly signed into law in early August. The law had an Oct. 1 deadline.

Passed with near unanimous and bipartisan votes in both the House and the Senate, the law was designed to punish Russia for meddling in our election and for its annexation of Crimea. The sanctions would target individuals and companies with ties to Russian defense and intelligence agencies.

Congress passed the law because it was unclear whether Trump — with his fondness for all things Russia — would take any action on his own.

Late Thursday, 25 days past deadline and after some lawmakers raised concerns, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson authorized state department officials to release a list of target names to key members of Congress.

The excuse for the lateness was — as with the National Weather Service — understaffing.