It’s always a great pleasure and honor to connect across the agency with each other. During these calls, I look forward to the insights, questions and the leadership that you all provide. During yesterday’s call, we focused on several topics: the proposed changes to the way we comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the way we will move forward with our Job Corps centers, consolidation of certain staff areas and functions, hiring, and who we are as an agency.

Below is a summary of the points that were covered in the call. We look forward to ongoing engagement with all of you. If we didn’t get to your question during the call, you can ask it in in the Leadership Corner Forum, but please read the summary first—you might find your answer there. You can also listen to a recording of the call; check back Monday for a link.

National Environmental Protection Act
These proposed changes to how we comply with the NEPA regulations were not created lightly. We reviewed nearly 10 years of our own environmental analysis data and looked at 100s of projects—our own and other agencies’. What we realized is that we over-analyze. We take more time and do more analysis than other agencies for similar size and scope projects—and over and over again the result is a Finding of No Significant Impact. Gathering public input before the analysis will continue to be required for all environmental impact statements. 

We heard the requests from our partners and the public for more time to provide comments, so we extended the public comment period by 14 days. Understandably, there are concerns associated whenever changes such as these are planned,…Read More