Staffing problems are continuing to plague the Trump administration, as time goes on. The president has routinely failed to nominate qualified individuals to serve in important posts across government, and staffing issues inside the administration have now even afflicted the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which operates as a part of the Department of the Interior.
Multiple news outlets are reporting Thursday that the head of that agency, Bryan Rice, has now resigned after just six months on the job.
His resignation comes after a wave of scrutiny of the Department of the Interior as a whole over the reassignment of some 33 career staffers, one-third of whom are Native American. Native Americans make up less than ten percent of the workforce inside the Interior Department, and the higher level of Native Americans among the reassigned staffers prompted concern that there had been racial bias underlying the reassignments.
The Inspector General’s office that supervises operations at the Department of the Interior was unable to come to a conclusion one way or the other on the question of whether or not the reassignments violated protocol, citing poor record keeping practices inside the agency. Even still, questions remain, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is reported to himself have commented at one point that he “doesn’t care about diversity,” in the description of one report from Talking Points Memo about the subject.
It’s under this cloud that Rice is reported to have resigned, although as of late into the afternoon on Thursday, the agency had not confirmed his departure. BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling simply commented:
‘It is our policy not to discuss DOI personnel matters in the press.’
Rice’s immediate predecessor Weldon “Bruce” Loudermilk was reassigned away from his position as BIA chief early last year alongside the at the time two other highest ranking Indian Affairs officials inside the Interior Department.
Outside interests point to the Interior Secretary as keen on opening up Native American lands for oil and gas extraction as a reason for his seeming indifference to including actual Native American voices in the discussion.
Senior policy adviser at the BIA under President Obama Bryan Newland described the situation by saying:
‘If you have experienced people who understand the U.S. government’s responsibility to Indian tribes, they’re more likely to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we have an obligation to our 567 tribes, and you can’t just open everything up to mining and drilling.’ Those folks were moved to get them out of the way so that the oil- and gas-centric policy can move quickly.’
Zinke has certainly proven his propensity towards opening up more areas for industrial activities like mining and drilling in the past. He announced a plan earlier this year to open up basically the entirety of the U.S. coast to offshore drilling that was immediately met with widespread criticism. That plan is still trudging along, and Florida has since been exempted from it.
The plans from Zinke fit into a wider pattern in the Trump administration of ignoring concerns about the environment to push forward on moneymaking plans. The president, infamously, went so far as to move to withdraw us from the Paris Climate Accord last year, something that the French president went after him for during a recent address to the U.S. Congress.
Featured Image via Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg via Getty Images
