New FWS Director - Dale Hall  

 

SAY WHO?

by Jim Beers

Last Friday, 15 July 2005, the Administration announced their nomination of
Dale Hall as the new Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
Since that time, I was asked by several people in Nevada (where I was
participating in a Freedom 21 Conference) and I have also received quite a
few e-mails asking, "who is this fellow" and "what do you know about him"?
To save me from having to respond individually to the e-mails and to share
my response to the folks I spoke to in Nevada with others that may be
interested in this topic, I have put down what I know about this relatively
important and little understood event and its' central character.  This is
best explained in four parts.

  1.. The Individual.  Mr. Hall is a "27 year veteran of the Service".  My
recollection of Mr. Hall from the years I worked at FWS was that he was an
earnest bureaucrat.  He advanced steadily and rapidly.  He, as his career
attests, was responsive to direction.  He did not distinguish himself by any
courageous contribution to resolving controversial matters to my knowledge.
When the Clinton appointees and their "Directorate" attempted to switch the
FWS, and Refuges in particular, from the management and use of wildlife
(especially waterfowl) to "Ecosystem Management" (a Rube Goldberg "smoke and
mirrors" smokescreen for their hidden agenda of protectionism, rural
tradition destruction, and natural resource lock-ups) a team of evaluators
said it (Ecosystem Management) was illegal, unwise, and unsupportable.  So
the Clinton "Directorate" put together their own team to soft-pedal the
"Ecosystem Management" critique.  They then proceeded with their agendas of
private property taking, public land use closures, and resource and
management use elimination as planned.  Mr. Hall was a key player on the
"Ecosystem Management is good" team.  I am sure (and I don't say this to be
snide) that he supports "women and minorities" and has a record of "working
well" (as certain children in daycare "get along well") with stakeholders
and peers.  Since my retirement, I have neither heard nor seen anything that
distinguished Mr. Hall from his peers on the FWS Directorate.

  2.. The Job.  The FWS Director is a powerful position.  It has been held
by an interesting cross-section of the American public.  The early Directors
(30's and 40's) were nationally recognized "conservationists" like Ding
Darling and Al Day.  When I was hired in the late 60's I listened to tales
of a "terrible" Director from the Army Corps of Engineers under Eisenhower.
Several of my early career coffee breaks related the organizational history
of how that "Republican" gave away sloughs and generally abused (the modern
term) national natural resources at the behest of "business".  Since then a
procession of "career" people and State fish and wildlife Directors have
held the job.  Only one or two (to my knowledge) tried to "trim" the agency
while nearly all others made no bones about "growing" it and expanding its'
reach.  The most dramatic changes, in my opinion, came under the Clinton
Administration.  To be fair, they and their "team" merely reflected the
growing power of environmental and animal rights organizations, an
increasingly detached (from fish and wildlife and plants) public, and the
ripening of the environmental and animal rights laws of the late 60's and
early 70's.  The result has been that the FWS today is vastly more powerful,
richer, and more influential in American Society from politics to legal
authorities and our way of life than was imaginable just 20 years ago.  The
Director job is very powerful.  For many years now, the Directors have
either been avowed Federal agency expanders or simply along for the ride.
Demand to rein in Federal power under the last three Administrations have
consisted of little more than new organization charts.

  3.. The Bureaucratic "Ecosystem".  The Carter Administration eliminated
the top 3 management levels for government employees (GS-16, 17, & 18) and
made them Senior Executive Service (SES) positions throughout the Federal
government.  This meant their pay went up significantly, was tied to
Congressional pay, that they were allowed to accrue all their unused annual
leave (many retire with 2 and even 3 years of salary retirement checks as
pay for such leave), and they receive anywhere from 5 or 10 to $50,000 per
year in "bonuses".  The reason for all this largesse was that they were to
be "managers" no longer "agency advocates".  They were to be frequently
moved from agency to agency where they would be responsive to and work for
the "Administration" and not the agency employees or agency "stakeholders".
Today the FWS SES "Directorate" is no longer made up of 50 to 60 year old
career employees that hold the Directorate jobs for 3 to 4 years before
retiring.  Today the "Directorate" is made up of young people that lost
their job with Congress or are related to powerful people and many were
"selected" by the Clinton Administration (they oversaw lots of vacancies
that they caused).  They (today's FWS SES Directorate) are advocates of
Federal growth, Federal power, UN entanglements, State agency dependence on
Federal dollars, and the subjugation of private property owners and natural
resource users and public land users.  They are very tight with the
environmental and animal rights outfits and the politicians that support
them.  They come into these jobs at ever-younger ages and never leave FWS
until they retire so that 10 to 20 to even 30 years in their FWS Directorate
roles are now underway.  This harmful (to numerous sections of the American
public and the American way of life) cabal is ostensibly under the "control"
of the Director but in fact "controls" any Director that is not doing what
they want.  Like "Carnack", I predict that the new Director will do things
like increase the number of SES in FWS by making GS-15 "Deputies" SES level
positions, thereby ingratiating himself by the illusion of more "career"
"opportunities" for the career workforce.  In truth the "new" SES positions
like their current counterparts will, as they are vacated, go to political
folks in need of a job or people that are "connected".

  4.. FWS Implications.  The career employees, most of whom are not fans of
the Administration or its' policies, will be glad.  The environmental and
animal rights organizations will be relieved because he is no advocate for
anything but bureaucracy and they will be able to scream that the
Administration is "muzzling sound science" if they bother him and if he is
let go howls of scientific insensitivity can be generated.  The current
Directorate can expect him to defend them when they call Congressional
staffs to "leak" information that embarrasses the Administration and they
will not have to come up with trip after trip for him to cut ribbons or make
awards to keep him out of their hair.  In short he will be the Directorate's
man and not the Administration's man.  The Washington "conservation" lobby
will smile because he is a known entity and has given no indication of being
capable of rocking any boats.

Is the Director job an "appointed" position or a "career" position?  For
whatever reason, and there are many, it is an "appointed" position that
nearly always implements a "career" agenda.  Whether it is a Director
constantly on the road to be kept out of "the loop" or one that doesn't
realize when he is lied to or one that is telling the Directorate what they
want to hear about bigger budgets, more power, and growing bonus potentials
the results are the same.  Like the Endangered Species Act or the Marine
Mammal Protection Act or the Wilderness Act or Refuge administration or Law
Enforcement powers, the FWS may grow in spurts but always grows.  Our
choices for leadership, like our choices for redress from these bad laws
that grow like weeds in our midst seem to always be amongst choices best
characterized as pale reflections of each other and the "best" choice is
only the least harmful and never helpful.

The Directorate, working with the alphabet soup of future stakeholders from
the NRDC to the TNC to PETA, will assure that nothing changes.  The new
Director will see to it and the politicians will see to it.  The new
Director will assure the Congress (that will confirm him) how he won't
surprise anyone and will "work with" them (meaning give them what they want
when they want it without any complications or mention of reality) and "all
groups" (meaning those in favor at the moment).

So we finally come to the "pony" beneath all this horse (you know the stuff
that accumulates in a barn).  The FWS Directorate will grow in size and new
slots will eventually go  (like Supreme Court nominees) to those who can
"grow" into the job.  No reforms will emerge anywhere and strengthening
business-as-usual will be expanded at every opportunity.  New legislation
(like Invasive Species) will be heralded as both necessary and
non-interfering to the general public.  Endangered Species reform will
continue to emphasize the need for strengthening the Act and more money and
power for bureaucracy.  Refuges will continue growing restrictions like the
recent shot shell limit at Upper Mississippi Refuge and area closures and
permits will proliferate as will "Critical" Endangered Species "needs".
Challengers in future political elections will not be reluctant to tender
secret offers of reward for cooperation if they "win" as they would be if
this were a strictly "appointed" Director instead of a quasi-"career
professional".  So like Casey at the bat, there will be joy in Mudville from
State agencies hoping for more Federal money to the radicals to the
"conservation" organizations that will hide behind the smoke of a "career
professional" because their staffs are "career-professionals" too and most
hope to interchange with FWS at the Directorate level someday.  Besides,
going along to get along is what it has always been about.


Jim Beers
18 July 2005

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks.


This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://www.allianceforamerica.org/bb/viewforum.php?f=91


Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak.  Contact:
JimBeers7@earthlink.net