This story was originally published on YachatsNews.com and is used with permission.
Three U.S. Bureau of Land Management park rangers at Yaquina Head? Gone.
U.S. Department of Agriculture temporary, probationary or seasonal workers in the Siuslaw National Forest? Let go.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff in Newport? Told to clean out their desks Thursday.
Those are just three local examples of the firing of seasonal, temporary or probationary federal employees as President Trump and Elon Musk take the first steps to purge the federal workforce of what they consider waste and fraud.
The central Oregon coast is infused with federal money, has branches of many federal agencies and is home to its hundreds of its employees.
Federal funds also account for almost 11 percent of the Lincoln County School District’s $107 million budget, is needed to maintain the Port of Newport’s facilities, and helps run Lincoln County’s public health programs.
The result so far is fewer hours at the BLM’s Yaquina Head Interpretive Center, bare bone summer programs at the Cape Perpetua visitors center, and stalled ocean research projects at the multi-agency Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.
“There’s a lot of fear and no answers,” said one employee based at Hatfield. “Uncertainty is the biggest thing we’re dealing with right now.”
But as sudden and random as those firings might be, local and state officials are waiting for a bigger shoe to drop as the Trump administration promises to eliminate whole federal agencies or begin slashing their budgets.
With Trump’s pledge to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and no clear idea by state officials as to what’s in the future, the countywide school district has ordered a freeze on all spending.
A lot of the uncertainty and confusion is because few people – including laid off workers, Oregon’s congressional delegation and the media – aren’t getting much in the way of explanation about what is going on and what might be next.
Federal employees are afraid of being targeted if they talk. Local and regional public information officers for the federal agencies, normally eager to share word of what their organizations are doing, have been told not to speak to reporters. Requests for information or comments, whether from Oregon politicians or the press, are mostly ignored or responded to with banal statements.
But a sampling of federal employees in Lincoln County did agree to talk to YachatsNews on the condition their identity remain anonymous out of fear they would be fired.
“Employees have been told to keep quiet about what is going on but they have a First Amendment right to free speech,” said one person with knowledge of conditions at the BLM’s Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area in Newport. “But of course, everyone is afraid of getting fired.”
Hatfield Marine Science Center
What is now known as the Hatfield Marine Science Center grew from a small Oregon State University-run lab that moved to 49 acres of land in South Beach in 1965.
Sixty years later it is the second-largest marine science research facility on the West Coast and is home to 450 OSU faculty, staff and personnel from seven state and federal agencies involved in ocean research.
All told, the center and related agencies have a financial footprint of $56 million a year – and brings as many as 550 OSU students and faculty to Newport each term.
Now, federal employees at Hatfield worry their jobs and much of their work are in jeopardy and that more layoffs and grant cancellations are coming. Based on sources there, here’s a partial list of layoffs so far:
- The staff at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife office has been cut from nine positions to 4.5.
- Three positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s agriculture experiment station and the lead oyster researcher on the Oregon coast were fired last week and USDA funding for an OSU student/researcher was cut. The oyster researcher’s dismissal was rescinded this week.
- There are four branch offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the center, including three research ships. Termination notices to 880 of 12,000 NOAA employees across the country went out Thursday – sure to impact the nearly 100 working in Newport.
- Three people at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research facility at Hatfield were terminated.
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that the NOAA layoff notices hit Newport late Thursday, including staff at the marine operations center, which provides logistical support and maintenance for NOAA’s Pacific fleet. The notices targeted probationary employees. A NOAA worker who spoke to OPB was stunned by the job losses.
“I’m just outraged. We don’t even know how many people are gone. We’ve asked our managers to tell us, and they say they can’t. It’s a personnel matter,” said a NOAA employee who has worked with people the science center and spoke to OPB on the condition of anonymity because the agency has prohibited its staff from speaking to reporters.
“Individuals can tell us they’ve been fired, but as soon as they’re gone they’re cut off from their NOAA accounts,” the employee said. “It’s cold. These are our colleagues and their lives are being completely upended. Years of work are going down the drain and for what?”
Many of the university, state and federal researchers on the Hatfield campus are funded through grants from NOAA, the USDA and the National Science Foundation.
There is also the fate of OSU’s newest ocean research vessel, the $390 million R/V Taani that is being finished in Louisiana and expected to arrive in Newport next year. Its construction is funded by the National Science Foundation – and researchers who eventually use it will need NSF grants to fund their work.
And, there are major worries the nearly-complete $80 million PacWave wave-energy testing project taking place north of Waldport will be shuttered if the U.S. Department of Energy which has funded much of the project turns its focus to oil and natural gas production — as Trump has asked.
Many of the Hatfield-based people terminated so far or are under threat of losing their jobs or funding are scientists that OSU and federal agencies have recruited and who have invested years in their education and research.
“Research centers want the best and the brightest,” said one employee. “You build programs off of rock stars … so you want to recruit rock stars. And how can you do that if their funding is in jeopardy?”
OSU, state and federal researchers at Hatfield may also be threatened because much of their work examines changing ocean conditions caused by climate change – a scientific certainty the Trump administration rejects.
“Most scientists feel the urgency of climate change,” a Hatfield source said. “It’s more personally devastating than the paycheck. It’s ‘Oh no. The patient is going to bleed out’.”
Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area
Three of its fulltime park rangers — half of its “front facing workforce” — were terminated Feb. 18 and a seasonal ranger who was supposed to return to work this week had his position rescinded.
“Everybody, to a person, is very angry at these cuts because they serve no useful purpose to the public,” said the Yaquina source. “Everybody is very sad and depressed about the co-workers that we lost because they were such good people doing good work for the public trust – protecting the resources, giving interpretive programming, educating people and being the friendly, smiling public face that gives you answers, help and assistance when you need it. We’re all fearful that we could be next.”
“It’s crippling operations,” said the source.
Tours of the lighthouse have been eliminated and hours for the park and interpretive center were cut by two hours. Employees expect cuts to interpretive or visitor services and access to Cobble Beach and the tidepool area might close “because there will not be rangers to provide public safety or protect the resource.”
One of the terminated rangers came to Newport after doing a stint with the National Park Service in Virginia. Another worked three or four years as a seasonal before being hired as a permanent employee last year. The third moved to Oregon from California to take the job.
“So, they uprooted their lives to have the opportunity to work at Yaquina,” the source said. “The common characteristics about those three is that they were all in their probationary period in their current position. And they all chose to come to Newport because they loved the facility. It was an excellent career opportunity for them. It was something they were very passionate about. It’s a life’s dream for a lot of rangers to get that first permanent ranger job.”
For people who support cuts to the federal workforce, the source would remind them that Yaquina Head is one of five protected marine reserves on the Oregon Coast and that it takes rangers to enforce policies and rules to protect not only its environment and wildlife but also its visitors.
The seasonal worker who lost his job said he was a bit shocked and at a loss for what to do next.
“It was an opportunity to do exactly what I love, outdoor education and talking to people about interpreting our natural resources here,” he said. “I worked at the aquarium before moving to the park service. I was excited to get back out interacting with people and just sharing the awesome nature that we have here.”
When asked what his message to the public was, he began by saying “We are better than this.
“Once we lose these sites we lose them forever,” he said. “And my personal fear is that they are going to try to turn them private. And these are public lands and public resources. They belong to us. We should be out there fighting to keep them because I think it’s one of the best things Americans have ever done — to create the national parks and federal parklands — it is our history, our heritage and our national resource that belongs to all of us. We should invest in it. We should take care of it.”
U.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has a substantial footprint in Lincoln County, which includes the Central Coast Ranger district headquartered in Waldport, the Angell Job Corps Center near Tillicum Beach and the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center, just south of Yachats.
Local and regional Forest Service spokeswomen would not respond to questions about layoffs, cuts, number of employees and annual operating budgets.
Regional spokeswoman Kristin Carver did supply a statement attributed to USDA secretary Brooke Rollins which said Rollins “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government” and “eliminate inefficiencies.”
“As part of this effort, USDA has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service,” the statement said. “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.”
Local Forest Service sources who were told to stay quiet did tell YachatsNews that some employees were asked to retire and did so.
“Bottom line, it’s so fluid nobody really knows anything,” said one Forest Service employee. “Every time you think you know something everything changes and that’s why they don’t want to say anything because there isn’t anything really to say because it’s so fluid.”
Cape Perpetua Visitor Center will no longer have any temporary or permanent seasonal staffing for interpretation. That means very limited education programs and guided hikes this summer season.
While seasonal staff was let go in the fall, the center’s single permanent seasonal staffer was let go this month, leaving a lone director, volunteers and interns to run the center.
Angell Job Corps has 143 students, about 51 staff members, many of which are not Forest Service employees, and an annual budget between $4.5 million and $6 million.
Job Corps is the nation’s largest free residential career and education program for low-income people age 16-24. There are 117 job corps centers across the country, 24 of which — like Angell — are operated by the U.S. Forest Service in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor.
There was no official response from the USDA about possible cuts to the nationwide program or its funding, but Trump had proposed cuts and closures within the program during his first term in office.
Lincoln County School District
Federal funds represent nearly 11 percent of the Lincoln County School District’s $107 million operating budget.
The money is used for programs such as special education, food services, college and career readiness, and professional development for staff, the district said.
Because it is classified as a low-income or Title 1 district, it uses $16,000 a day in federal funds to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. Through Medicaid reimbursement, the district is able to support nursing services, speech and language therapy, and health programs for students and their families.
That Title 1 designation also brings the district federally-funded programs designed to help low-income students meet academic standards. Those programs are facing a potential 25 percent reduction in funding, the district said. Additional programs such as Indian education, homeless education, English language acquisition, federal school improvement programs and long-term care and treatment support are also federally funded.
“When initial freeze orders were declared at the federal level, the district claimed any outstanding reimbursements,” said superintendent Majalise Tolan. “The district also instituted a building and district-level freeze on spending until federal funding clarity is provided.”
The federal funding uncertainty comes as the district begins preparing a budget for fiscal 2025-26.
“As an administrative team, we are working at the district and building level to run multiple funding scenarios when planning for next year’s budget,” Tolan said. “This requires close evaluation of programs, outcomes, and specific needs across our county …”
Lincoln County
Lincoln County Health and Human Services director Jayne Romero said her department receives $18 million in federal funds that come either directly from the federal government, are passed to the county from the state, or earned by providing health care to individuals under the Oregon Health Plan, Medicaid and Medicare.
“At this point, we are awaiting direction from the Oregon Health Authority with regard to whether we are to implement any of the elements included in the many executive orders coming out of the federal administration,” Romero said.
Some examples of how federal funds augment the county budget include $1.2 million for the county’s bus system, $74,913 for emergency services, and $780,000 for its community justice fund.
“The county has little clarity from state or federal agencies how that funding might be affected, and developments in the courts make the situation even less certain,” county spokesman Kenneth Lipp said in an email. “Not all federal funds appear to be implicated in executive orders issued thus far, but future executive action is, clearly, entirely unpredictable.”
Port of Newport
The Port of Newport is seeking about $28 million in federal grants from both the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Maritime Administration’s port infrastructure development plan to replace its Port Dock 7. Only one of the grants would be needed if both were approved.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty just like with everybody else,” said Paula Miranda, the ports executive director. “But we are very reliant on federal grants for sure.”
The port is seeking nearly $35 million in overall funding to replace the dock, which was built in 1971 and which engineers say needs to be replaced by 2026.
The port collects about $125,000 in property taxes and relies on fees and grants to maintain its $79 million budget.
“What port’s collect from fees in general, it’s not sufficient to maintain long-term infrastructure,” Miranda said. “No matter how much we charged in fees it would not be enough to maintain all the infrastructure. That’s the case for every port in the state of Oregon because we collect very little taxes.”
The port also asked for $3 million to rebuild a recreational dock from a congressional earmark process, Miranda said, but chances are that money will be eliminated.
The port employs about 30 people, most of whom work in maintenance.
“We are probably one of the least affected by (federal employee cuts) of all the people I talk with,” Miranda said. “We will not be directly affected by those. But I know a lot of special districts that have a lot of programs that have lost a lot of money because of all these federal cuts.
“Not only necessarily because of employee cuts but because their grants just went away, completely. So a lot of small special districts are being affected. We have not so far but it does mean we may not get projects completed for a while because of it.”
City of Newport
A spokesman for the city said it has ongoing federal grants for urban renewal, its airport, and pool and public works projects worth about $17.5 million. “…in a lot of the cases we have received portions of the funding already,” said spokesman John Fuller.
Newport has received $14 million in state funds to begin the plans and designs to replace its Big Creek dams, which supplies the city with drinking water. The design should be completed next year, said Fuller, and then the city will seek federal and state help to replace the dams which is expected to cost more than $120 million.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
