Federal budget cuts ordered by the Trump administration have been leading to continued layoffs at government agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency’s federal office that oversees Midwest operations has placed employees and attorneys on leave, according to labor leaders.
The layoffs may impact the office’s ability to hold polluters accountable for their actions. EPA attorneys in the Office of General Counsel bring enforcement cases against polluters. Other staff members respond to environmental emergencies in Michigan and other states.
The EPA has ten regional offices. The Region 5 federal office is based in Chicago and serves Michigan along with Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, and 37 indigenous tribes. While there is no EPA federal office in Michigan, the state is home to the EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory. The agency currently has EPA regional response teams based in Grosse Ile and Traverse City.
Nicole Cantello is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents hundreds of EPA workers at the Region 5 office. Cantello also told Planet Detroit that the layoffs were targeted at the Region 5 Office of General Counsel and that dozens of employees at the office have been placed on leave.
Media inquiries sent to the Region 5 EPA office were forwarded to the national headquarters press office. The EPA press team wrote in an email to Michigan Public that the agency made recent cuts to its workforce on February 14.
Trump administration orders
An EPA spokesperson wrote that the federal agency terminated 388 probationary employees after a “throughout review of agency functions in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders.”
“President Trump was elected with a mandate to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans, and we are doing just that,” an EPA spokesperson wrote.
Probationary employees are either employees who have been hired or promoted to a new position within the last year. They have fewer job protections. Federal employees typically serve a probationary period before becoming permanent staff.
"The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment," a spokesperson for the federal Office of Personnel Management said in a statement to NPR. "Agencies are taking independent action in light of the recent hiring freeze and in support of the President's broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to better serve the American people at the highest possible standard."
Some of the probationary employees who were terminated at the Chicago EPA office were reinstated and told Wednesday via email that they could return to work. At least six employees received the reinstatement email, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Mass layoffs for probationary employees at other government agencies have been taking place throughout the past couple of weeks. The federal government is the largest single employer in the country.
Other probationary employees have been reinstated within other federal departments after termination — sometimes within days or even hours. Employees have been rehired in the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture.
Implications of the layoffs
Nick Leonard, executive director of Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, told Michigan Public that the layoffs impact morale at the agency.
“These firings, I think, are intentionally trying to inflict trauma on federal government employees so that they essentially lose kind of their enforcement energy, they lose the energy to do their jobs,” Leonard said. “… I think the basic idea here at another level is to basically demoralize the folks that are in charge of protecting our air, our drinking water, our water, so that the industry has more free rein to do what they want.”
Jeremy Symons is a senior advisor at the Environmental Protection Network, which is a network of former EPA staff who volunteer their time to support the EPA and its mission to protect public health and the environment. He said the EPA plays a vital role in responding to emergencies like toxic spills or toxic emissions from events like fires, chemical releases, floods, and other disasters.
Symons said that the layoffs at the Region 5 office and across the country mean that there will be fewer responders when environmental emergencies occur.
“There's no superheroes in capes that are going to be flying in to do the work that EPA staff are going around to do,” Symons told Michigan Public. “EPA employees that respond to disasters are the superheroes along with first responders and everyone who mobilizes when disaster strikes.”
The layoffs at the Chicago EPA office follow other changes within the agency this month. Nearly 170 EPA employees from the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights were put on paid administrative leave on February 6.
Symons said making cuts to the agency is not an effective way to reduce government spending.
“This assault on the EPA is not about reducing spending because EPA's budget accounts for less than half of a penny of every dollar of federal spending,” Symons said. “This is about turning control over to wealthy corporate polluters that don't want to be held accountable for violating the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
Leonard said changes at the federal level open opportunities for state governments to step in to ensure that environmental initiatives don’t fall through the cracks.
“I think it's also time for states to really step up their role in not just environmental enforcement, but also in policymaking and creating new laws and regulations to basically fill the gap that's going to be left by the federal government,” Leonard said.
