The Trump administration is moving the headquarters of the Forest Service from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City. The decision is the right one and, in a small way, restores political and economic power to citizens. Other federal entities should follow suit.
Washington has become a behemoth it was never meant to be. What was once a small village on the Potomac has become a swamp of special interests and an ever-expanding government, which too often ensnares and hobbles the nation’s people rather than governing in their interests.
Beginning nearly a century ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created a litany of government agencies with massive bureaucracies. This dramatically expanded the reach and role of the federal government in a way that our founding fathers would neither have recognized nor approved.
As bureaucracies grew, the federal government became ever more removed from citizens. This has distorted our country, wrenching it toward a leftist and statist dispensation, changing what it is and the way it is governed for the worse.
The federal capital has been called “recession-proof” because its many agencies and army of employees keep the city and surrounding areas distant and detached from the rest of the country during economic downturns. By some estimates, four to six of the nation’s 10 wealthiest counties are in the Washington metropolitan area. In the 13 counties around D.C., more than half of households are in the top quartile of the country’s earners.
This is a bad thing for the nation. It is also bad for states and locations adjacent to the district. Northern Virginia and portions of Maryland near D.C. are filled with government employees, contractors, and lobbyists, many of them transient residents who, nonetheless, have changed the political makeup of these states. Their concerns and their politics are often worlds away from those of other residents because they have a vested interest in the flow of money through Washington and the continued expansion of the dirigiste government.
The federal government needs to spread the wealth, jobs, and their attendant political power.
The Trump administration’s decision to move the headquarters of the U.S. Forest Service is a good start. On March 31, the Department of Agriculture announced that the Forest Service would be relocated to Utah as part of a “sweeping restructuring of the agency” and to move its “leadership closer to the forests and communities it serves.” The shift is part of a “structural reset and a common-sense approach to mission delivery.”
Salt Lake City is a good choice. The federal government owns an average of 27% of the land in each state. But the numbers are much larger in western states such as Utah.
In Maryland and Virginia, the two states surrounding Washington, D.C., the federal government owns just 3% and 9% of land, respectively. In some East Coast states, such as Connecticut and New York, federal ownership is below 1%. But out west, the federal government owns 47% of Wyoming, 62% of Idaho, 63% of Utah, and 80% of Nevada. Decisions made by the Forest Service affect the everyday lives of everyone in the west far more than they do those living in the east. It is common sense to have Forest Service management closer to the people being managed.
As Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins noted: “Moving the Forest Service closer to the forests that we manage is an essential action that will improve our core mission of managing our forests while saving taxpayer dollars and boosting employee recruitment.” The Forest Service stands to be both more responsive and more in tune with its mission when it is closer to its front lines. And it stands a better chance of interacting with, and benefiting from, those with intersecting interests.
Lobbyists and special interests are in D.C., but the real stakeholders, the citizens of the nation, aren’t so geographically concentrated.
As the Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz pointed out: “Effective stewardship and active management are achieved … where forests and communities are found, not just behind a desk in the capital.”
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Other federal agencies should follow suit. Does it make sense for the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees more than 245 million acres, much of it out west, to be headquartered in Washington, D.C.?
The Trump administration’s decision will make an important government agency more efficient and more responsive to its mission while also reducing the concentration of political and economic power that has made the federal government more remote and less effective. Ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday, it is a great and important first step in restoring government to the people.
