Grand Junction is grateful that it will be the site of BLM headquarters in the West, but it’s dealing with a letdown too.
This editorial was written by The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction.
The BLM is coming to Grand Junction. Now what? When we first contemplated the impact of this move, we imagined the entire Washington, D.C., operation — some 300 federal workers — being transplanted en masse to a campus setting somewhere in the Grand Valley.
That’s not how this is going down. The BLM is moving its top brass, 27 senior-level officials, to Grand Junction, but twice that many workers are moving to Lakewood. Other BLM employees are headed to other Western states.
A day after feeling like this was a gamechanger for Grand Junction, the letdown is palpable. We’re stuck between feeling grateful that Grand Junction will be known as the BLM’s Western Headquarters and frustrated that such a distinction has been hollowed out to its barest impact.
Pardon the cynicism, but this community comes by it honestly. From the Colony Oil Shale project to Jordan Cove, we’re used to seeing exciting developments fizzle around here. That’s how the Interior Department’s reorganization feels at the moment.
It doesn’t help that much of the rest of the country thinks that this is a thinly veiled attempt to dismantle any conservation-oriented aspects of the agency in service to President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.
“Secretary Bernhardt is asking families to uproot their lives in a matter of months or possibly lose their jobs, all for a PR stunt,” Erin Riccio, Western Slope field organizer with Conservation Colorado, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s yet another cynical attempt to drain the Interior Department of expertise and career leadership. Our public lands deserve an agency that is effectively coordinating with the Interior Department more
broadly, and with Congress.”
“Secretary Bernhardt is asking families to uproot their lives in a matter of months or possibly lose their jobs, all for a PR stunt,” Jennifer Rokola, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s yet another cynical attempt to drain the Interior Department of expertise and career leadership.”
That seems to be the prevailing attitude among conservation groups and environmentalists. But we still think the idea is solid — that public land managers shouldn’t be absentee landlords. They should live among the people affected by the impact of their decisions.
We may have hoped for more in terms of sheer numbers of employees relocating to the Grand Valley, but with the highest-ranking ones in our midst, the potential for growth is good. If this is to be the apex of power of the BLM’s hierarchy, it will attract people both inside and outside of the federal government who may find it advantageous to be within the BLM’s orbit.
In that vein, perhaps we’ll come to see this as an important first step toward something bigger. Maybe all the hype proves to be true — that Grand Junction is the nexus of everything the BLM does — and the agency begins to recognize the benefits of having more top decision-makers here.
It probably would have been a stretch to accommodate 300 Washington, D.C., transplants all at once, anyway. So maybe we should be grateful for the chance to start small.
Disappointments aside, there’s still no doubt that this is an economic development coup of the highest magnitude. It’s one more component of a diversified economy. It’s also an opportunity to plan for the growth that should come from having a federal headquarters in our town, in addition to all the other opportunities that are arising.
Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.