WASHINGTON — Aside from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s comments about wanting to push more staff and resources away from Washington, D.C. — to the “front lines,” as he likes to say — few details have been made public about the Trump administration’s plans for reorganizing the Interior Department. Nevertheless, Republicans made clear at a hearing of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources that they support the move. The Thursday hearing, titled “Transforming the Department of the Interior for the 21st Century,” examined “goals and policy ideas for reorganizing and relocating parts of the Department of the Interior and its bureaus,” according to a committee memorandum. In his opening statement, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark. ), the subcommittee’s chairman, said that Interior has “lost touch” with the concerns of the U.S. public, and that “decades of top-down directives issued from Washington” have rendered the department inefficient and unaccountable.

Source: Huffington Post December 07, 2017 23:14 UTC