Over the past few months, I’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from public lands stakeholders and policymakers across the West and in D.C. Many have expressed disappointment that I’m not at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to help the administration achieve its goals to unleash American energy as well as to make progress on intractable issues such as certainty in grazing permits and rights-of-way, reducing invasive species, and improving the range.
But the truth is, even if my nomination hadn’t been tanked, I wouldn’t be there. I’d still be one of 140 other nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate. For example, Brian Nesvik, the former Director of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department is an excellent nominee for Director of the Fish & Wildlife Service. His confirmation hearing was exactly one week before mine was scheduled, but he remains in Wyoming.
Senate Republicans and the White House are trying to get all the nominations through before the Senate leaves for the August recess, but Senate Democrats are slow-walking the process. Majority Leader John Thune is threatening to cancel the August recess to convince the minority to allow noncontroversial nominees like Nesvik through.
Even if he and other key Interior nominees like Leslie Beyer, Assistant Secretary of Land & Minerals clear the Senate floor in August, it will take time for them to get in and get acclimated. It takes time to get rolling in any new job, and the work has been piling up since the start of the Trump Administration. Meanwhile, there still hasn’t been a new nomination for BLM Director. Since it takes several months from nomination to final confirmation, it’s unlikely there will be a confirmed BLM Director this year. In the absence of appointees to do the work, the backlog of leases continues, land use plan revisions languish, and rulemaking remains stalled.
