By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A cell phone call may have helped stop the controversial transfer of the Angell Civilian Conservation Center near Yachats to a private contractor.
The Trump administration Wednesday dropped plans – at least for two years – to close nine U.S. Forest Service centers and transfer 16 others to outside contractors.
In Oregon, the proposal would have closed a Forest Service center near Estacada and transferred operations at Angell and Wolf Creek, near Glide, to contractors. Contractors already operate 98 Job Corps centers around the country, but under the U.S. Department of Labor.
The key to the abrupt change may have been pushback from Republican members of the House and Senate, but especially from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Even though McConnell has strong influence with the Trump administration, three of the centers proposed to close were in his home state.
One of the senators leading the fight to stop the changes – and get McConnell involved — was Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
On Thursday, in a conference call with reporters, Merkley said he talked with McConnell briefly at a recent barbecue hosted by a Georgia senator. Merkley said he followed up by calling McConnell’s cell phone.
“It’s not something I normally do,” he said of the call. “It’s very important to strike up a partnership with the majority leader … and he has a big influence with this administration.”
Merkley said he also had an “intense, testy conversation” with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
And Wednesday, just as suddenly as on May 24 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Labor Department announced their closure plans, Perdue and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta reversed course.
“For the time being, USDA does not intend to transfer these centers to [the Labor Department] to allow management to determine a pathway that will maximize opportunity and results for students, minimize disruptions, and improve overall performance and integrity,” they said in a joint statement.
The announcement ricocheted around Yachats, setting off relief and celebrations among Angell’s staff and students and statements of praise at a Yachats City Council meeting.
Bryan Wilson, director of the Angell center, said Wednesday’s announcement was “pretty exciting.”
Wilson is in charge of 115 students, 45 Forest Service employees, 20 outside contractors and a yearly budget of $5 million on the 17-acre campus three miles north of Yachats.
Merkley and Job Corps officials said the Forest Service’s announcement to close or transfer operations lacked even a basic plan of how to accomplish that by Sept. 30. More than 1,000 federal employees were also expected to lose their jobs, a big issue in mostly rural areas.
“There was no plan … or even a minimal plan,” Merkley said. “There was no idea of what to do with students or programs. This came out of a backroom discussion in the Trump administration.”
Wilson said he had been holding regular meetings with staff and students to keep them abreast of developments. He said everyone learned lessons from the turmoil the past three weeks – his is to make sure the Angell staff and students stay connected to the community.
“A lot of people don’t know what we’re about or what we do,” he said in an interview Wednesday night. “We know how to react now and we’ll start to share that story more with the community.”
In May, Agriculture officials said that many of the centers operated by the Forest Service were low-performing, some with security problems, low enrollment and uncertain job prospects for graduates. Perdue said Job Corps was not a “core mission” of the Forest Service.
Angell had been one of those, plagued by mismanagement until Wilson’s arrival late last year, has enrollment much less than its 160-student capacity and a poor national ranking in performance.
Some 30 Angell students have been dismissed from the program in the past three months for violating the center’s strict no-drug policy, Wilson said. Enrollment had been rebounding prior to the May 24 announcement and now that the transfer order has been rescinded, hiring can also resume to fill 13 staff vacancies.
The politics of rural jobs
The administration’s announcement to close or transfer the centers quickly ran headlong into political reality, the Washington Post reported Wednesday — most were in Republican strongholds President Trump won in 2016.
The Post said that while the president and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill have put a high premium on downsizing the federal government, lawmakers facing re-election campaigns next year were loath to sacrifice jobs and budgets – however small — back home.
In a rare break with the administration, The Post said, Republicans joined Democrats in fighting not just the shutdowns but the effort to hand over operations to private companies.
The opponents included Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., whose timber-producing district on the Canadian border already is losing jobs, and Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., whose district in Appalachian coal country has yet to see the fruits of Trump’s promises to revive the industry.
With centers in Kentucky on the closure or transfer list, McConnell wrote Perdue and Acosta a letter of protest, citing the loss to “distressed Kentucky counties with unemployment rates above the national average,” which “need more support, not less.”
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., was the most vocal Democratic critic of the plan, introducing legislation co-sponsored with Merkley to stop the closures from moving forward.
“Suddenly, without any real reason or justification, the President pulled the plug on one of the most successful initiatives in rural America and my office was flooded with stories and objections from Montanans,” Tester said in a statement Wednesday night.
Merkley said Thursday that he too received lots of comments from Lincoln, Clackamas and Douglas counties asking to help save the Job Corps programs.
“Many people raised their voices on this,” he said.
Unlike contract centers, Merkley said, the Forest Service programs provide valuable links and service to rural communities by helping during fire seasons and training disadvantaged youth in trades.
“There’s great importance to young people,” he said. “These programs often give them a path to success.”
The path forward
This won’t be the last of reviews or possible troubles for the Forest Service’s centers.
Perdue’s still wants his agency to focus on forests, not necessarily job training.
Their statement Wednesday said the two agencies “will conduct a robust organizational review to determine the appropriate course of action keeping in mind the USFS mission, the students we serve, and the American taxpayers. As USDA looks to the future, it is imperative the USFS focuses on and prioritizes its core natural resource mission to improve the condition and resilience of our nation’s forests.”
Merkley and Wilson said supporters in and outside Congress will put together reports on graduation rates, training, success stories and community partnerships to make the case for continued funding.
But Job Corps veterans like Mikell Sumerau, a standards officer and union leader at Angell, know the fight to save programs will resume during the next federal budget cycle.
“I don’t they anticipated the pushback,” Sumerau said. “Everybody’s breathing a sigh of relief now, but those of us who know better know the fight is not over.”
