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February 27, 2025 11:21 AM UTC

Republican State Senator Sounds Alarm Over Forest Service Layoffs

  • 25 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Sen. Marc Catlin (R).

As Ali Longwell reports for Grand County’s Sky-Hi News, the current and prospect of many more layoffs as part of the Trump administration’s Elon Musk–engineered reduction in force of federal employees, many of them seemingly without regard to the important responsibilities of these workers leading in some cases to their rehiring, continues to cause alarm in Colorado’s backcountry where the loss of dozens of local Forest Service workers is causing major anxiety ahead of summer’s tourism and fire seasons:

“It is reckless. It is shortsighted and ultimately could prove dangerous for our communities in the Western Slope and every corner of our state,” said Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Colorado’s 2nd District.

The cuts to the Forest Service labor force were among broad layoffs ordered of probationary employees. Employees were let go en masse at federal land management agencies, including others under the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several under the Department of the Interior. This included at least 2,300 cuts from the Interior’s National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management as well as around 1,200 from the Agriculture Department’s National Resources Conservation Service…

On Feb. 14, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis reported that at least 90 Forest Service employees in Colorado were impacted by the layoffs. Reportedly, the cuts were mostly to the agency’s recreation and timber positions but also hit other positions relating to fuels, public affairs, wildlife and more.

In response to all inquiries about these layoffs across the nation, the USDA released this canned statement:

“Secretary Rollins fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people. We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.

As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service. To be clear, none of these individuals were operational firefighters. Released employees were probationary in status, many of whom were compensated by temporary IRA funding. It’s unfortunate that the Biden administration hired thousands of people with no plan in place to pay them long term. [Pols emphasis] Secretary Rollins is committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”

Either downplaying the importance of the workers who lost their jobs or blaming Joe Biden for hiring them to begin with is certain to offend a large cross-section of stakeholders. Despite this, almost all of the elected officials quoted in this extensive report pushing back against the administration are Democrats like Rep. Joe Neguse and Sen. Michael Bennet. The sole exception, at least among those willing to go on the record for this story, is Republican state Sen. Marc Catlin of Montrose:

State Sen. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose, said the Forest Service is already understaffed at a time when public lands visitation is at record levels. Officials for the White River National Forest — the most popular in the country — saw visitation rise from 12.5 million in 2017 to 18.4 million in 2022, representing a roughly 50% increase.

“We’re public land heavy, so I don’t want to see us get cut back to the point where we’re not able to take care of the local community and all different forms of our economy,” Catlin said. “The pressures are getting bigger, so I’m worried about being understaffed.”

Who should we believe? Republicans in Washington who say these workers were superfluous Biden hires, or the Republican in Montrose who says the Forest Service was already understaffed before the Trump administration’s mass layoffs? Given the administration’s zealous policing of the Republican ranks for the slightest hint of dissent, it took courage for Sen. Catlin to speak up about the true effects of these layoffs. But Catlin’s courage springs from urgent need: far from being redundant help brought on with “no plan in place to pay them,” these workers were backfilling an already severely stretched federal workforce. Musk’s philosophy of “cut until it breaks and then fix it” is set to leave our state vulnerable to disaster while that process plays out–and depending on how successful Musk is chainsawing his way through the career civil service, for many years to come.

In the meantime, we’ll stop calling Sen. Catlin “MAGA Marc,” a nickname he earned on the campaign trail last year. That is, unless he’d rather us keep using it for his own good.

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25 thoughts on “Republican State Senator Sounds Alarm Over Forest Service Layoffs”

  1. I would be sympathetic to Catlin's expressed concerns if he hadn't supported and championed the election of the very people who are wreaking havoc.  

     

  3. Any voice of dissent or even questioning in the ranks of the Republicans is a good thing. 

    They are not allies in the conventional sense, with agreement on goals and mutual efforts.  But independent thinking, a voice recognizing the benefit of federal workers, and someone connecting Musk-cause with coming effects is useful.

  5. fuck all republicans, magas, and anyone who supports trump…these people want to hurt us…this is beyond politics, this is personal…any and all republicans must be confronted with the truth…they need to be held accountable for all their nasty deeds…republicans are not law abiding citizens…and need to be treated as such…republicans can leave Colorado at any time…for any reason…

    1. It is very hard to disagree with your sentiment, and I particularly appreciate the truth of “Republicans are not law-abiding citizens.” Much of it is couched in their religion that encourages them to believe the earth is 6,000 years old and charlatans who relentlessly grift for money using the name, but not the teachings, of their savior.

  6. The part of this whole debacle that I don't get is why he's ceding so much power to Musty-boy. I know the Yam is lazy, but this isn't just work, it's power on the world stage.

    1. I sometimes think Musk is Trump's Rasputin.  Or his off-leash Doberman.  Trump lets him run wild revelling in the chaos and destruction, not really interested in the details.

      1. Think back to Trump’s performance in his one campaign debate with Harris. Remember how lost he was; how much he was bumbling and fumbling? Trump’s dementia is sadly as bad as Biden’s (I don’t wish that situation on anyone). The mother of a good friend of mine is in hospice care now due primarily to dementia. I remain glad that Alzheimer’s and related don’t run in my family on either side.

        1. It could be that Trump is 25th Amendmented due to irreversible medical issues, but the prospect of JD Vance becoming POTUS worries me just as much.  Even a simple "Best of a bad lot" is far beyond reach in what has become today's GOP.

          1. But who among his sycophantic cabinet would dare suggest that 25 be invoked? We can see that he’s crazy and dangerous, but who, in a position to affect the situation, will say aloud that the emperor has no clothes?

            1. JD Vance would leap at the opportunity.

              It's not so much the slow progression of dementia piece that would cause the cabinet to invoke that process (unless he was unable to give a speech or read a teleprompter).  I'm thinking more of a sudden heart attack or stroke that are permanently disabling, and unlike in Woodrow Wilson's time, impossible to cover up. 

    2. Musk offers resources, both hard goods and intangibles. Obviously money. Tech-sector and anarcho-libertarian connections. International and outer space business experience. A public face that's younger than his. A famous personality for media exposure. Personal energy, no matter how it's been obtained. Willingness to be the bad guy, 'cause ends justify means. Willingness to test or break laws and norms. Lack of allegiance to the way things have always been done. Stuff like that.

      I'm definitely not saying I like any of this, but if I could put myself in donold's shoes, I guess I'd use elonia too, even if it means he's also getting used by him in the process.

      1. Good points.  Here's an interesting column from Dana Milbank debunking his boss, Jeff Bezos' claim about protecting "personal liberties and free markets" from an actual Libertarian.

        The twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets are the hallmarks of the libertarian worldview. So I called a leading voice of that ideology, Ilya Somin, the B. Kenneth Simon chair in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. I asked him for his assessment of the current administration.

        “I think, and many of us (libertarians) think, that the Trump administration is very bad on these metrics of both economic and personal liberty,” he told me. “The massive trade wars that he’s starting right and left go against Econ 101 as well as any libertarian principle. There’s the mass deportation and immigration restrictions, which restrict both economic and personal liberty on a massive scale. There’s his attacks on the freedom of the press, which are also troubling,” as is Trump’s “kissing the rear end of dictators like Vladimir Putin.”

        And Somin was just getting started…

        1. Thanks doby, that sort of made my day (doesn't take much right now)! I definitely try to distinguish libertarian from anarcho-libertarian. Maybe there's a better nickname for the kind of Yarvin-Thiel approach I was trying to allude to anyway.

          1. I just consider Musk, Thiel, et all, narcissistic oligarchs with an insatiable appetite for wealth and power.  Libertarianism merely provides a convenient label for their self-centered lust for domination.  Yarvin is their court jester.

  7. The cynic in me believes that Catlin only cares because he realized he represents a somewhat competitive district and many of his constituent are mad about what's going on. But I'm also willing to admit that Catlin might be one of the few responsible and moral Republicans left so he genuinely cares. Whatever the case, we need more people like Catlin to say something.

    1. We do need them to speak out.  But at the same time, they should not be let off the hook for supporting trump.  Instead, we can say "thanks, but you made this possible.  How are you going to undo the damage you've caused?  Because you're partly to blame."

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