Firing of 800 NOAA Employees

[John Farley]

I am in favor of limited government. But civil defense - including weather - should be one of the Federal government’s few responsibilities. Weather requires an overall infrastructure that no private company is going to be able or willing to pay for, especially in low-population areas.

Having said that, I am sure there is a ton of bureaucracy and redundancy that can be pruned. Why would NOAA/NWS be different in that regard than any other government agency? We have to be intellectually honest about that, and not get upset just because we are weather enthusiasts. I saw one comment about some NWS offices needing support from neighboring offices during big events; might this not be a good idea? No organization can afford to base its year-round staffing on infrequent peak demands. Maybe there are some cuts to operational NWS positions that are inappropriate, but I feel like we really don’t have a clear enough picture about this yet, there seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there.

ST is not a place for political battles, so I hesitate to post this. But it’s very difficult to have this NWS discussion without delving into policy decisions, including tax policy. It bothers me to *not* respond because this may be all that people see and will start to believe without understanding an alternative view.



We have a progressive tax code, and the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) applies as it always does: a small percentage of people pay the majority of taxes. Those tend to be the people at the top of the income and wealth ladder. So of course tax cuts will benefit them. But “billionaires” are not putting their money under their mattresses. They are deploying capital for investment that drives economic growth. Even if they just invest their tax savings in the stock market, that is driving economic growth. Regardless of who gets it, I would rather see money circulating in the private sector than in government coffers.

As for corporations - they are ultimately owned by people. If you have a pension or retirement account that invests in individual equities, then you as an individual benefit from a tax cut given to a corporation. A corporation is an abstract entity. Less money to the government and more to the corporation is in the private sector and ends up in individual hands somehow or other - through an increase in equity value, or dividend distributions, or deployment of capital in other investments that benefit the overall economy.

Economic growth is driven by consumers, not by billionaires or corporations. If people do not spend money, the billionaires and corporations cannot sell their goods. Since I was a child in the 1950s, taxes in higher brackets have been cut over and over. The percentage of US wealth held by the top few percent has gone up and up. Today the top 3 percent own more wealth than half of the population. The super-rich do not need further tax cuts, especially at the expense of damaging essential services from agencies like the NWS. And many others, like the work the Forest Service does to prevent wildfires that are an ever-present threat where I live and in many other places. And they do not need further tax cuts at the expense of running up the deficit more. Even with all the massive cuts going on, the cost of tax cuts going mainly to billionaires and corporations is greater than any savings that may be achieved by the meat-axe cuts going on now.

 

[KenMcWatters]

Economic growth is driven by consumers, not by billionaires or corporations. If people do not spend money, the billionaires and corporations cannot sell their goods. Since I was a child in the 1950s, taxes in higher brackets have been cut over and over. The percentage of US wealth held by the top few percent has gone up and up. Today the top 3 percent own more wealth than half of the population. The super-rich do not need further tax cuts, especially at the expense of damaging essential services from agencies like the NWS. And many others, like the work the Forest Service does to prevent wildfires that are an ever-present threat where I live and in many other places. And they do not need further tax cuts at the expense of running up the deficit more. Even with all the massive cuts going on, the cost of tax cuts going mainly to billionaires and corporations is greater than any savings that may be achieved by the meat-axe cuts going on now.

100% agree with Randy Zipser and John Farley. The immediate problem is that Elon Musk has been given the power to make arbitrary cuts to multiple federal agencies. NOAA is the just the latest, more will follow. This is following exactly along the Project 2025 playbook, which was available to read over a year ago. I warned about the danger to NOAA on this site back then. I can't believe Americans had this information available and still voted for this. At least I hope some of them are regretting their votes now, and will think harder about future elections. It isn't just playing politics, it's not like rooting for your favorite sports team, this has real impact on all of us and our livelihoods!

Elon Musk is not subject to any oversight, since he was not approved by the Senate, and in fact the current administration even denies that he has an official role in DOGE. That gives him free rein to run amok. Good luck to those of you contacting your Congress people, but this is bigger than NOAA. The ultimate goal is to cut government to a minimal size, beyond minimal to the point of closing entire agencies, to enable the ultra-rich to pay as few taxes as possible and have as little regulations on their businesses as possible. Read the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer if you want further insight.

As for comments that NOAA and the rest of the federal agencies needed to slim their bloated bureaucracies.. here's a rebuttal from the AMS: The U.S. Weather Enterprise: A National Treasure at Risk

 

[Randy Zipser]

Mike Smith has raised a very good point in Post #9 about Washington’s inability to listen and act on common-sense ideas related to weather and natural-disasters (please see his posts). I share his frustrations. How the recent NOAA dismissals were carried out has only heightened my angst!

In this post, I will attempt to address his point to “share a plan for solution” rather than just rehashing the problem. That said, I fully accept that in the current chaotic administration in Washington, DC, there is no appetite to implement what I propose below. However, when more normal times return in the future, here is framework that will hopefully be seen as a better and more-sensible way to accomplish the same objective that the DOGE’s “hatchet” approach so miserably fails to do.

The plan is based upon having multiple, independent auditors (all from outside Washington, DC, or even better, geographically dispersed, and having no personal or professional ties to anyone individual or agency who works in, with, or for any federal agency), come to the District of Columbia and surrounding-state suburbs and conduct thorough audits of all agency headquarters. This professional separation is absolutely essential for maintaining a sense of appearance in and public trust for objectivity during what will be a multi-month task assignment.

THE PLAN

• Following proper existing established operating/contracting procedures, task the General Services Administration (GSA) to vet and hire multiple independent professional auditing firms to conduct separate, behind-the-scene, audits for each federal agency over a specified period and according to a predetermined calendar schedule, not to exceed one 12-month period.
• Task either one auditor per agency or assign multiple auditors for each agency, whichever is determined to be most logistically efficient and/or cost-effective. The potential advantage to using multiple auditors is that the responsibility of each auditor can be more-narrowly focused and scheduled appearances can be more randomized, so as to get a more-accurate picture of what is occurring within a given agency’s daily operations.
• In general, the task to be carried out by each auditor is to collect objective data on every aspect of an agency’s daily operations, including, but not limited to: hierarchy and structure; personnel and labor (including internal human resource administrators or departments); benefits (including healthcare/child daycare, etc.); seniority/promotion practices; plant and equipment (including costs of building rental space, desks, chairs, cubicle walls, computers, consumable office supplies, etc.); and technology (including keeping current with rapidly-evolving Artificial Intelligence chips, devices, and trends).
• The main objective of the task outlined in the previous step is threefold:
• • To determine where budgeted agency funds are currently going;
• • To determine where the largest funding “drains” are;
• • To determine what functions and which personnel (by title or job description) are absolutely essential to the agency’s daily operations and which are not.
• Following the initial 12-month period of field data collection, a period of not to exceed 6-months will be slated for all auditors to confirm accuracy, collate, and analyze independently and without collusion their data into written reports detailing their findings and recommendations for each agency in their area of responsibility.
• After completion of the previous step, a period of 90 days will be devoted to a bicameral, bipartisan Select Committee of Congress, consisting of members approved by vote in each house, to convene for as many times as necessary to discuss, consider, or debate the information presented in all auditor reports. At this stage, only this Select Committee will have access to all auditors' findings and recommendations; no individual auditor or its firm, nor agency heads, or the general public, will be privy to all findings at this time.
• At the end of this 90-day period (or perhaps, sooner), the final recommendation(s) of the Select Committee will be presented in a Final Report to both the full U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, following usual protocol for whenever new legislation is introduced. It is the Congressional branch that holds the Constitutional “power of the purse” (“Appropriations Clause”), so it is during this stage that these recommendations will be approved (or not) to become law, and, if approved, will be made public.
• Finally, the package will be sent to the President for either signature into law (or if vetoed, can be overridden by Congressional vote).
• Upon becoming law, agency heads will be ordered to implement the specific changes specified in the law pertaining to their agencies. Guidelines will likely be developed by each agency to handle dismissal of all affected employees and to ease the burden of their transition to unemployment.

It should be noted that the entire process of the plan above should take no more than twenty-four consecutive calendar months to complete. This plan, had it been implemented sooner, could have been completed before the mid-term election coming up in 2026, which could well determine any possible shift in the Congressional balance of power. But instead, what we got was the "Project 25/MAGA/DOGE" Plan…and all the sudden chaos, hardship, and disruption that is causing for NOAA and other agencies. I welcome you to share these ideas with your state’s Congress persons or others who you think may be interested.

 

[John Farley]

Thank you Randy, for this very thoughtful post. In an earlier life, I had several experiences working with federal grants, both in 501(c)(3) non-profits and in university research grants. These grants carried requirements for very detailed reporting and in many cases, regular audits, in order to confirm that the money was spent in accordance with what the grant was intended to fund. Failing to carry out these reporting and auditing requirements, or being found to have spent grant monies in ways not in accordance with what the researcher or organization had agreed to do could get you in big trouble in a hurry. Unfortunately, it did not appear to be the case that the government did anything nearly this stringent with its own bureaus and departments. They seemed more careless about how they spent money allocated to them than they would allow to occur with non-profits or universities that they funded. What you propose would eliminate actual waste rather than the meat-ax approach being used now, which is actually wasting more money than it is saving, by firing many of the youngest and brightest employees with potential futures of great contributions, and who are the lowest paid government employees, only because they are the easiest to fire. The result of this is a lot of waste as projects in which there has already been a lot of investment go unfinished.

 

[Ken Perrin]

Thank you Randy, for this very thoughtful post. In an earlier life, I had several experiences working with federal grants, both in 501(c)(3) non-profits and in university research grants. These grants carried requirements for very detailed reporting and in many cases, regular audits, in order to confirm that the money was spent in accordance with what the grant was intended to fund. Failing to carry out these reporting and auditing requirements, or being found to have spent grant monies in ways not in accordance with what the researcher or organization had agreed to do could get you in big trouble in a hurry. Unfortunately, it did not appear to be the case that the government did anything nearly this stringent with its own bureaus and departments. The seemed more careless about how they spent money allocated to them than they would allow to occur with non-profits or universities that they funded. What you propose would eliminate actual waste rather than the meat-ax approach being used now, which is actually wasting more money than it is saving, by firing many of the youngest and brightest employees with potential futures of great contributions, and who are the lowest paid government employees, only because they are the easiest to fire. The result of this is a lot of waster as projects in which there has already been a lot of investment go unfinished.

What you and Randy propose would take time, thought, and effort. Unfortunately these are commodities in very short supply in our present Rapid Results/Instant Gratification culture (to include the political culture). I fear that these policies will lead to tragedy, and even that will not be enough to wake them up.

 

[Randy Zipser]

Thank you, John and Ken, for your thoughts. I never understood why NOAA was placed under the umbrella of the Department of Commerce in the first place. Its mission, it seems to me, has always been more aligned with science than business or economics. Historically, NOAA replaced the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) on October 3, 1970; ESSA was created as part of a reorganization of the Department of Commerce in July, 1965. So, that is how NOAA became linked to the Commerce Department.

If it were up to me instead of Elon Musk, I would completely reorganize all current federal agencies whose principal missions are related to science and technology into one new organization called the Department of Innovative Technologies and Sciences ("DITS"). Of course, the NWS and all ressearch/warning functions associated with atmospheric data-gathering would fall under DITS' purvue. This structure also makes sense because weather science will always require cutting-edge computer technology to process the sheer volume of daily data that is being collected from observational sites all over the world, and AI will only increase this dependency.

You are right, Ken, that to do a top-to-bottom review of all federal agencies the right way will take patience, effort and planning--something that, as you have pointed out, is in very short supply in Washington, DC, nowadays. But, thankfully, we will not always be the tumultuous times that we are in now, so looking forward to more normal times in the future, perhaps a more sesnible approach will be taken toward thoughtfully reducing the size and cost to taxpayers of our federal bureaucracy.

 

[Mike Smith]

I fear that these policies will lead to tragedy, and even that will not be enough to wake them up.

Joplin was as tragic as they come. The warnings were absolutely botched by the pre-Elon NWS and by local EM.

If you had family members killed in one of the many unwarned tornadoes of recent years, I'm certain you would think those to be tragic. What makes it especially awful is virtually all of those tornadoes would have been warned of 20 years ago. The NWS has regressed.

That's why makes the current situation so difficult. We absolutely need a vibrant state-of-the-art NWS but don't have it. Change is needed.

 

[Randy Zipser]

Joplin was as tragic as they come. The warnings were absolutely botched by the pre-Elon NWS and by local EM.

If you had family members killed in one of the many unwarned tornadoes of recent years, I'm certain you would think those to be tragic. What makes it especially awful is virtually all of those tornadoes would have been warned of 20 years ago. The NWS has regressed.

That's why makes the current situation so difficult. We absolutely need a vibrant state-of-the-art NWS but don't have it. Change is needed.

Mike, I have enjoyed reading both of your excellent books: When the Sirens Were Silent and Warnings.

A couple of points about needing "a vibrant state-of-the-art NWS" come to mind. Throwing gobs of money at any federal agency never, in reality, accomplishes fully reaching some well-intentioned, desired goal. So, it's not a matter of funding alone that makes the NWS more effective at delivering the services it provides to the public (whether it be daily weather obs or tornado/hurricane forecasts and warnings). If only that were the answer...the NWS may not have regressed!

What is more concerning is a decades-long trend to shutter parts or--under the current regime in Washington--all of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). The reason that this is important to the discussion about "needing a vibrant NWS" is that the current president is dead-set about slashing Title 1 (economically disadvantaged student) funds and education grants. Just because a student comes from an impoverished home does not necessarily mean that he/she is not driven or bright enough to aspire to be a professional meteorologist someday! That's why it's so sad that the current leaders in Washington are setting exactly the WRONG example by not making it easier for K-12 students to achieve the basic, necessary educational skills that they will someday need to build and secure the "vibrant, state-of-the-art NWS" of the future. Private, big-donor funding has never appeared in sufficient quantity to fill this void in the past, which is why funding by the public in some form will always still be necessary.

Bottom line: before any meaningful change for the better can take place to improve the NWS, first, a complete change "of heart" by our political leaders to embrace the educational needs of our young people must be made a national priority, exactly the opposite of what is happening in our country today. We need only to look across "the pond" to Western European nations (particularly the Nordic countries), or to places like India, China, Australia, or New Zealand, to see examples of why making education a national priority is so important, not only for raising our abysmal level of literacy, but also to compete for the jobs in science and technologies that will be required in the modern NWS workplace of the future.

 

[Mike Smith]

Randy,

I would prefer not to discuss politics beyond that of NWS, NOAA and FEMA, plus the USAF Hurricane Hunters -- the agencies with work with.

Mike