A proposed bureaucracy shake-up that would have the nine field-office heads at the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) reporting to a new Washington-based manager remained ongoing at press time Friday, a DOE spokesperson said this week.
The proposed reorganization, which would be the second for EM since 2014, seeks to streamline the agency’s roughly $6-billion-a-year nuclear-cleanup office by turning seven separate offices known as mission units and mission supports into a three-branched tree comprising Business Operations, Field Operations, and Regulatory and Policy Affairs, according to a DOE presentation obtained this week by Weapons Complex Monitor.
A DOE spokesperson in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a query about who the agency would tap to become associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations, the Washington-based manager who will be responsible for corralling input from the directors of DOE’s nine major cleanup programs across the country.
Currently, field office directors report directly to the office of Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Monica Regalbuto.
“Discussions regarding this proposed reorganization are ongoing,” the DOE spokesperson said. “No reduction-in-force, pay reductions, or downgrades for EM employees would result from the proposed reorganization.”
DOE delivered its reorganization proposal to a union representing federal workers May 18, according to a 12-page DOE PowerPoint about the reorganization, but the union still has not been fully briefed about DOE’s proposal, a spokesperson told Weapons Complex Monitor.
“Management has the right to reorganize, but unions can negotiate over the impact on employees and their working conditions,” a spokesperson for the National Treasury Employees Union wrote in a Friday email. “In those cases, we pay close attention to such issues as the potential impact on employee grade and pay levels, appropriate training and proposed changes to their work schedules, duties and their performance appraisals. We will work closely with our two DOE chapters to ensure employee concerns are addressed.”
The proposed Business Operations unit would manage complex-wide procurement and acquisition, along with communications and congressional affairs. That includes the DOE EM public affairs office, according to a 48-page companion document that explains DOE’s PowerPoint in greater detail.
Centralized within the proposed Regulatory and Policy Affairs segment are infrastructure disposition — what to do with buildings and facilities EM no longer needs — waste materials and management, and congressional relations. The first two are constant concerns of EM’s congressional overseers, including members of the small, bipartisan Nuclear Cleanup Caucus.
The Office of Environmental Management employs about 1,400 civil servants nationwide, including about 160 in Washington, and about 110 in Germantown, Md., roughly 30 miles northwest of the Capitol.
