The crash Wednesday that killed all 67 people on board an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter has renewed focus on the real-world implications of President Donald Trump’s push to slash the federal bureaucracy.
Read More: US Plane Crash: All 67 aboard two aircraft dead, recorders recoveredThere’s no evidence that the White House effort to downsize government played any role in the collision, with shortages of air traffic controllers long predating Trump taking office. But those who’ve worked in air safety say that those who try to dramatically shake up the federal workforce need to remember that lives are on the line.
“It concerns me that there are people who don’t want to reform or restructure institutions, they want to destroy institutions,” said James Hall, who was head of the National Transportation Safety Board under President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “The American people enjoy the safest aviation system in the world. I don’t doubt there should be changes in government, but someone should remember the old adage to look before you leap.”
On Thursday, as the investigation into the crash was well underway, FAA employees were among the federal workers who received an email telling them to quit and find more useful work.
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“The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” read the memo from OPM.
An official with OPM, which made the resignation offers, said air traffic controllers are exempt from a hiring freeze that Trump announced on taking office on Jan. 20 and they are not eligible for a buyout even though they were sent the offer. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government operations.
It was unclear if the controllers themselves have been notified by OPM whether they are exempt. After the initial offer went out, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association recommended in an email to its union members not to submit a request for the resignation until more information was available. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the union email.
NATCA President Nick Daniels said officials had not explained to the union the details of how its employees would be affected by the retirement program.
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“NATCA has not received a briefing on how or whether the deferred resignation program will be implemented in the FAA,” Daniels said in a statement provided to the AP Friday.
“It is not yet clear how this program will affect aviation safety workers represented by our Union,” he added. ”However, we are concerned about the potential effect to public safety and the efficiency and capacity of the air traffic control system if FAA were to lose experienced aviation safety personnel during a universally recognized air traffic controller staffing shortage.”
Though the new administration insists its cost-cutting will exempt public safety workers and keep citizens safe, its rhetoric and approach have been more sweeping than surgical.
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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the technology mogul Trump tapped to lead the effort, has said “bureaucracy is killing America” and repeatedly called for massive, across-the-board reductions in the federal workforce. Trump and his supporters have made personal loyalty to the president a top priority in hiring new workers or keeping existing ones.
During the campaign, Musk demanded the resignation of FAA administrator Michael Whitaker, who clashed with Musk over regulating SpaceX and stepped down the day before Trump took office. That left the FAA leaderless until Trump, at a Thursday press conference after the crash, named an acting head of the agency.
Trump blamed diversity hiring after the crash — despite no evidence about the qualifications of anyone involved in the collision — and alleged that former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama lowered standards to meet racial or other quotas. He decried an FAA diversity policy that existed during his first administration.
Though the Trump administration talks about the need to shed federal workers, the government has been desperate to hire air traffic controllers for nearly a decade. The FAA has struggled to keep up with the rapidly increasing number of commercial flights, even as there had been no fatal air accidents since 2009. Last year, Biden pushed for funding to hire 2,000 more controllers and announced the hiring of 1,800 controllers in September.
An FAA report obtained by the AP said that air traffic control staffing at the airport Wednesday “was not normal,” with one person doing the work normally assigned to two people at the time of the collision. A person familiar with the matter noted that the positions are regularly combined when controllers need to step away from the console for breaks, during shift changes or when air traffic is slow. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.
Don Kettl, an emeritus professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, warned that it is likely to become even harder to recruit those sorely needed air traffic controllers now.
“The fact that there’s so much uncertainty in such a short time period and the fact that the president personally seems to have blamed them,” Kettl said, “is bound to make it more difficult to hire more controllers.”
Kettl warned that there are many critical, demanding and high-skilled government jobs that are already tough to fill — from food safety inspectors to surgeons at Veterans Administration hospitals — and that may get even tougher now.
“The fiber of government is woven throughout our lives,” Kettl said. “If you downgrade the capacity, you downgrade what you get.”
