The Forest Service is offering separation incentives to employees ahead of an agency reorganization that will move hundreds of positions across the country.
The Forest Service told employees in a recent email that it will offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to employees impacted by the agency’s upcoming reorganization.
The Agriculture Department announced in March that the Forest Service would move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah. The agency plans to shutter its nine regional offices, and so far plans to keep 20 of its 77 research facilities.
“There is a position for each of you in the new structure, and your skills and experience are essential to the work ahead,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told staff in the email. “At the same time, we know that not all positions will look the same or be located in the same places they are today.”
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The VSIP offer is less generous than the “Fork in the Road” that the Trump administration offered federal employees last year.
The 2025 deferred resignation offer allowed eligible employees to receive about eight months of pay and benefits without working, if they agreed to leave their jobs. The maximum amount agencies can offer in a VSIP is $25,000.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously advanced a bill in February that would raise the VSIP maximum to six months of a federal employee’s pay.
A Forest Service spokesperson, who confirmed the agency’s separation incentive offers to employees, said in a statement that frontline mission work — including forest management, wildfire response, forest and watershed restoration, recreation services and coordination with states, tribes and communities — “will continue uninterrupted” during the agency reorganization.
Schultz told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee on Tuesday that the Forest Service’s decision-making “has gravitated away from local forests” as the agency has grown in size.
“What this is, first and foremost, is an attempt to move the decision-making back to the ground,” he told the committee.
Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) told Schultz that he understands “moving people closer to communities they serve” under this reorganization plan.
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Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she’s concerned the Forest Service reorganization could lead to further staffing reductions. Last year, the agency lost about 1,400 employees with “red cards.” Those employees are certified to fight wildfires but hold other full-time jobs within the Forest Service.
“If this reorganization is not well executed, it could lead to additional capacity and workforce reductions,” Klobuchar said.
Schultz told members of the House Appropriations Committee in April that about 500 employees would have to relocate under the headquarters reorganization plan — about 1.5% of the agency’s 30,000-employee workforce. Forest Service, he added, would keep a limited number of employees in Washington, D.C., but that a majority — about 260 of the 350 employees in the national capital area — would have to relocate under this plan.
The National Federation of Federal Employees, the union that represents Forest Service employees, estimates that about 6,500 agency employees would be affected by the headquarters relocation, and that 2,700 would be impacted by research center closures. Thousands of agency employees left last year by taking voluntary separation incentives.
“The intent is not to push anyone out the door,” Schultz told members of the subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies on April 16. “The intent, really, is to be thoughtful about how we do this, looking at where we don’t have enough staff to support a facility.”
The Forest Service’s FY 2027 budget request would eliminate about 800 of the Forest Service’s 1,110 research scientist positions. Schultz told House appropriators that “R&D is zeroed out in the budget,” and that impacted researchers would likely find similar jobs in the private sector or at the state level.
Schultz said the reorganization plan would shutter some facilities that have fallen into disrepair, and that it would “facilitate research and researchers over maintaining facilities and facility managers.”
The spokesperson said the agency is carrying out it reorganziation to address a $3 billion maintenance backlog for its facilities and a $37 million year-over-year decrease in its budget to maintain those facilities.
“We also owe the American people an agency that is effective and respectful of their hard-earned tax dollars, and that’s why we’re choosing to invest in our mission and our people instead of facilities we can’t afford,” the spokesperson said.
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The Agriculture Department, more broadly, is currently planning to relocate more than half of its D.C.-based workforce to five hubs across the country — Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Many USDA employees impacted by these relocations told their unions in recent internal polls that they would quit their jobs before relocating across the country.
USDA moved hundreds of positions at the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City under the first Trump administration. But about 85% of impacted staff quit their jobs or retired, rather than relocate.
The FY 2027 budget proposal also doubles down on plans to merge the wildland firefighting capabilities of the Forest Service and the Interior Department into a single agency. Congress rejected that plan in a comprehensive spending deal for fiscal 2026. The final FY 2026 Interior appropriations bill directed USDA and the Interior Department to hire an outside group to conduct a study on the feasibility of consolidation.
Schultz told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee that the Forest Service expects the study will be done by November and that Congress should have a chance to review the findings before passing a comprehensive spending deal for fiscal 2027.
“I anticipate the study will be completed before final decisions are made,” he said.
The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, but Congress hasn’t fully passed a full spending plan on time since 1997. Lawmakers have relied on stopgap spending bills to keep agencies funded — but the federal government saw a 43-day government shutdown last year, and the Department of Homeland Security faced a 76-day funding lapse this year.
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email [email protected], or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29
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