Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Monday he expects a decision on moving Bureau of Land Management jobs from Washington, D.C. to the western U.S. “pretty soon.”
The Grand Junction Sentinel reports Bernhardt spoke at a meeting of the Western Governor’s Association in Colorado and was responding to a question about moving the BLM headquarters from Utah by Gov. Gary Herbert.
Bernhardt answered that the Interior Department is going through a process with the BLM and some other agencies to review jobs to determine whether they’re even needed, and if so, if the best place for them to be located is Washington.
“At the end of that analysis my expectation will be that I can tell Congress very clearly, here’s where I think these roles would be optimized and put to the greatest use and we’ll see if Congress will agree with me on that,” he said.
“I expect fully that we’ll move forward pretty soon in doing that and that it will involve a substantial element of BLM folks in D.C. being repositioned,” he said.
The BLM is expected to announce the location of its new headquarters by September. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said recently he expects the BLM to relocate to either Denver or Grand Junction.
Ogden has also been mentioned as a possible relocation destination for the BLM. During a visit to Utah last month, Bernhardt declined to say whether the Beehive State was in the running to host the new headquarters.
