The Mission of the Department of the Interior is to protect and provide access to our Nation's natural and cultural heritage and honor our trust responsibilities to Indian Tribes and our commitments to island communities.
However, the closest the department’s establishment is to a Constitutional requirement appears to be based on the “common defense” when the Bureau of Indian Affairs was actually a part of the War Department. There is actually nothing in the Constitution addressing this department or any of its bureaus.
The current Secretary of the Interior is Kenneth L. Salazar. Secretary Salazar spent four years in the US Senate and five years as Attorney General of Colorado. I have been unable to find a single item in his background that is comparable to the mission of any of his subordinate agencies.
I. Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes.
a. Mr. Hayes, an environmental and natural resources attorney, was a member of President Obama’s Transition Team. He had previously served as Deputy Secretary from 1999-2001 and as Counselor to the Secretary from 1997-2001.
b. Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget
i. Performs and oversees the following activities: presentation of annual budget request to the Office of Management and Budget and Congress; other Departmental budget activities; management control and financial management; property, procurement and grants management; energy conservation; information resources management, including management systems, ADP and telecommunications; policy and program analysis; environmental affairs; management improvement; directives and regulatory management; personnel management, including training and career development; aircraft services; safety and space management; information and library services; law and drug enforcement; emergency preparedness; and special emphasis programs, including construction management, equal opportunity, small and minority business utilization and minority educational institutions.
ii. National Business Center
1. Douglas J. Bourgeois, Director
2. NBC provides services to government agencies in the areas of Human Resources Management, Financial Management, Information Technology, Training, Contract Management, Aviation Services, Appraisal Services, Facilities Management, and other business areas.
3. It appears to the GUNNER that the Center has taken over some of the responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer.
c. Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Tom Strickland
i. Mr. Strickland is a former US Attorney for Colorado and the Secretary’s Chief of Staff.
ii. National Park Service
1. Acting Director Dan Wenk
a. Mr. Wenk is a Landscape Architect.
2. Preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. The Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.
iii. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1. Acting Director Rowan W. Gould
a. Mr. Gould is a Marine Biologist
2. To conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
d. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk
i. Mr. Echo Hawk is a former Attorney General for the State of Idaho. He’s a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma.
ii. Bureau of Indian Affairs
1. Director Jerold R. Gidner
a. Mr. Gidner is a member of the Chippewa Nation
2. To enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.
iii. Bureau of Indian Education
1. Director Kevin Skenandore
2. To provide quality education opportunities from early childhood through life in accordance with a tribe’s needs for cultural and economic well-being, in keeping with the wide diversity of Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages as distinct cultural and governmental entities. Further, the BIE is to manifest consideration of the whole person by taking into account the spiritual, mental, physical, and cultural aspects of the individual within his or her family and tribal or village context. The BIE school system employs thousands of teachers, administrators and support personnel, while many more work in tribal school systems.
a. In GUNNER’S VIEW, education is a matter for state and local government, not the Feds. This Bureau should be closed.
e. Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Lyle Laverty
i. Mr. Laverty is the former Colorado Director of Parks. He favors user fees for parks and prefers private sector volunteers to perform work previously done by Federal employees.
ii. Bureau of Land Management
1. Acting Director Mike Pool
a. Mr. Pool has been with BLM for over 30 years.
2. Responsible for carrying out a variety of programs for the management and conservation, of resources on 256 million surface acres, as well as 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate, These public lands make up about 13 percent of the total land surface of the United States and more than 40 percent of all land managed by the Federal government.
iii. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement
1. Acting Director Glenda Owens
a. Ms. Owens is a former Assistant Solicitor in the department’s Solicitor’s Office.
2. Charged with balancing the nation’s need for continued domestic coal production with protection of the environment. In its beginning, OSM directly enforced mining laws and arranged cleanup of abandoned mine lands. Today, most coal States have developed their own programs to do those jobs themselves, as Congress envisioned. OSM focuses on overseeing the State programs and developing new tools to help the States and Tribes get the job done.
iv. Minerals Management Service
1. Acting Director Walter D. Cruikshank
a. Dr. Cruikshank is a Mineral Economist and has been with the Department for over ten years.
2. Manages the nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf.The agency also collects, accounts for and disburses more than $8 billion per year in revenues from Federal offshore mineral leases and from onshore mineral leases on Federal and Indian lands.
f. Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Anne Castle
i. Ms. Castle is a Colorado attorney who has specialized in water issues, water related transactions, and advice on water policy.
ii. U.S. Geological Survey
1. Acting Director Suzette Kimball
a. Dr. Kimball is an Environmental Scientist.
2. An unbiased, multi-disciplinary science organization that focuses on biology, geography, geology, geospatial information, and water, we are dedicated to the timely, relevant, and impartial study of the landscape, our natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten us.
iii. Bureau of Reclamation
1. Commissioner Michael L. Connor
a. Mr. Connor had been with the department for 8 years, he spent the last seven years as a staffer/Counsel to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources.
2. Best known for the dams, powerplants, and canals it constructed in the 17 western states. These water projects led to homesteading and promoted the economic development of the West. Reclamation has constructed more than 600 dams and reservoirs including Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and Grand Coulee on the Columbia River. Today, we are the largest wholesaler of water in the country. We bring water to more than 31 million people, and provide one out of five Western farmers (140,000) with irrigation water for 10 million acres of farmland that produce 60% of the nation's vegetables and 25% of its fruits and nuts. Reclamation is also the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the western United States. Our 58 powerplants annually provide more than 40 billion kilowatt hours generating nearly a billion dollars in power revenues and produce enough electricity to serve 6 million homes.
g. Solicitor David L. Bernhardt
i. Performs the legal work for the United States Department of the Interior. Our primary client is the Secretary of the Interior. We provide advice, counsel and legal representation to the Immediate Office of the Secretary, the Assistant Secretaries, and all other bureaus and offices overseen by the Secretary. The Solicitors Office is organized into the Immediate Office of the Solicitor, the Ethics Office, five legal divisions, an administrative division, and eighteen regional and field offices located throughout the United States. The Solicitor is the chief attorney for the United States Department of the Interior, principal legal adviser to the Secretary of the Interior, and is assisted by a Deputy Solicitor, Special Assistant, Ethics Director, Senior Counsel for Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution, six Associate Solicitors, eight Regional Solicitors, and a staff of more than three hundred attorneys and four hundred total employees. More than half of our attorneys are assigned to regional and field offices located as far west as Anchorage, Alaska and as far east as Boston, Massachusetts. The rest of our attorneys are assigned to our divisions located at headquarters in Washington DC.
ii. What do all the attorneys at the Department of Justice do? The Solicitor is, of course, an attorney. As is the Deputy Solicitor. Yet they have to have a Counsel to keep them straight!
h. Inspector General Earl E. Devaney is on a leave of absence as the President has appointed him as Chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Does he get paid for the both positions? The Acting IG is Mary L. Kendall.
i. Ms. Kendall has been Deputy IG for nine years. Perhaps Mr. Devaney should resign and let her have the IG slot.
ii. However, as I’ve previously mentioned, the IG responsibilities and staff should be transferred to the GAO.
i. Special Trustee for American Indians (Acting) Donna M. Erwin
i. Established by the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994. OST provides Department-wide oversight for the reform of Indian trust management and the implementation of new fiduciary and accounting systems. Within two years of its inception, OST’s oversight role was expanded by Secretarial order to include operational functions: accounting, investment and disbursement of beneficiary funds. In addition, OST maintains trust records, conducts land appraisals and provides beneficiary services including a call center and Fiduciary Trust Officers.
ii. I think that this should be a function of the Treasury Department.
j. Chief Information Officer Sanjeev “Sunny” Bhagowalia
i. Mr. Bhagowalia has ten years service with the Department of the Interior and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Prior to entering government service he spent fourteen years with Boeing Corporation.
ii. Provides leadership to the Department and its bureaus in all areas of information management and technology. Functional areas include: IT investment and portfolio management, enterprise architecture, cyber-security, information resources management (including Freedom of Information Act, Privacy Act, records management, and DOI’s web presence) and telecommunications services (including voice, data, and radio communication systems and services.) Authorities for the organization are: the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Clinger-Cohen Act (formerly known as the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996), the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, the Federal Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Federal Information Security Management Act, and the E-Government Act of 2002.
Were you aware that DOI has EIGHT law enforcement agencies under its wing? Those eight agencies employ over 4,000 “cops”. That's 6% of all employees of the department.
The Office of Justice Services in the Bureau of Indian Affairs has a Division of Law Enforcement Operations (this includes 42 BIA police units and 149 Tribal Police Units); a Division of Corrections (which should be transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons); a Division of Professional Standards (Internal Affairs); a Division of Drug Enforcement; a Division of Tribal Justice Support (Indian Courts. Since Indians are actually US Citizens, this division should be closed and the local, state and federal courts take over the case load); and the Indian Police Academy (co-located with the Department of Homeland Security Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. This academy could be closed and its mission taken over by FLETC).
The Office of Law Enforcement and Security of the Bureau of Land Management employs approximately 200 Rangers and 70 Criminal Investigators. These 270 men and women can, and do, enforce “normal” laws, however, their focus is on mineral resource theft; wilderness area violations; hazardous materials dumping; archaeological and paleontological resource theft and vandalism; cultivation, manufacture, smuggling, and use of illegal drugs; timber, forest product, and native plant theft; off-highway vehicle use; alcohol related crimes; and wild land arson.
The Security, Safety, and Law Enforcement Office of the Bureau of Reclamation is primarily responsible for the safety and security 479 Dams, 348 Reservoirs and 58 Hydroelectric Power Plants. Perhaps some of the employees of the BIA Division of Corrections should be transferred here!
The Fish and Wildlife Service has two separate law enforcement agencies; The Division of Refuge Law Enforcement and the Office of Law Enforcement. The Division of Refuge Law Enforcement is primary enforcement activities are conducted on Service lands and perform numerous law enforcement duties and responsibilities. They conduct patrols, surveillance, short-term investigations, apprehensions, detentions, seizures, and arrests. Cases are prosecuted in the Federal court system (Why can’t the BIA do this?). Officers deal with a wide variety of crimes, including but not limited to: natural resource violations, traffic violations, crimes against person, crimes against property, homeland security issues, and alien and drug smuggling. Office of Law Enforcement personnel focus on potentially devastating threats to wildlife resources – illegal trade, unlawful commercial exploitation, habitat destruction, and environmental hazards. Law enforcement officers investigate wildlife crimes; regulate wildlife trade; help Americans understand and comply with wildlife protection laws; and work in partnership with international, Federal, State, and Tribal counterparts to conserve wildlife resources. Special Agents of the OLE are whom we “civilians” refer to as Game Wardens, but more probably should be considered Game Wardens with an Attitude! Wildlife Inspectors of the OLE serve at border crossings and ports of entry.
The Office of Investigations of the Office of the Inspector General consists of Investigators and Special Agents. They primarily investigate the department itself, but you know my feelings about the assorted IG offices.
The Office of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Management of the Office of the Secretary provides oversight to the other seven law enforcement agencies – not supervision, just oversight. This office appears to be knee jerk reaction to 9/11 and, in my humble opinion, just create another layer of bureaucracy to screw up the works.
The National Park Service has two law enforcement agencies; the Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Management and the United States Park Police. The Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Management employs 1,500 full time and 500 seasonal law enforcement officers, the famous Park Rangers. This may seem like an awful lot of LEOs, but when you consider the number of National Parks and Historic Sites they protect it may not be enough. However, there is some redundancy here, I don’t know how much, but here’s an example: Fort Barrancas National Historic Site is one of the old 19th century forts guarding the entrance to Pensacola Bay in Florida. It has Park Rangers, but it is located aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola and is also protected by Navy “cops” and Security Guards. Some of the Park Rangers could be more profitably used somewhere else. The US Park Police have been around for over 200 years and they patrol and guard our US Parks. Now I don’t want to sound politically incorrect here, but most of downtown Washington DC is made up of National Parks – all of the monuments, the Mall, the Ellipse, the Tidal Basin, part of the Potomac River, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and many more. If these areas were turned over to the DC Metropolitan Police Department, the US Capital Police Department, the Maryland State Police, etc. etc. etc. perhaps we could get more bang for our buck!
It is GUNNER's View, that overall the Department of the Interior should be retained even though it is not a Constitutionally mandated department.
God Bless the USA,
Gunner Sends
No comments:
Post a Comment