Washington, DC — One year ago, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum initiated the largest reorganization in the agency’s history to produce big savings by eliminating redundancies, but now his agency admits it has no evidence of promised efficiencies, according to a letter posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which had to sue Interior under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain that admission. Nor could Interior locate records documenting what costs were imposed on constituent bureaus to accomplish the reorganization.

On April 17, 2025, Burgum ordered approximately 5,000 administrative, information technology, and communications staff from all its constituent bureaus, such as the National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, to be transferred to the Office of the Secretary. His Secretarial Order stated that this “optimization will create significant efficiencies across the Department by improving processes [and] eliminating redundant efforts…”

On June 6, 2025, PEER submitted a FOIA request seeking information about this restructuring. During the succeeding months, Interior provided some fragmentary, highly redacted documents but would not commit to a schedule to satisfy the request. On November 17, 2025, PEER filed a federal lawsuit under FOIA to compel complete production.

For two elements of the PEER request (cost savings to taxpayers and costs assessed to individual bureaus), Interior did not provide any records at all. In a letter to PEER dated April 15, 2026, Interior indicated that it “completed [its] search of the records and [has] determined that [it does] not have any records responsive” to these two points.

“We know from employees’ anecdotal reports that this reorganization was highly disruptive, but it appears that this major dislocation may have been for no financial benefit,” stated PEER Staff Counsel Colleen Zimmerman, who filed the FOIA lawsuit. “This lack of any documentation for either costs or savings suggests a profound degree of maladministration.”

indicated that not only did the constituent bureaus lose staff positions in the reorganization but that they also had to pay a surcharge to the Secretary’s Office to cover the overhead costs for managing each new position. This double whammy of losing both staff and administrative budget has hit bureaus such as NPS, which is already shedding thousands of positions under Trump II, especially hard.

“The job of managing a national park, monument, or refuge is already hard enough without the added burden of dysfunctional, politically directed reshuffling,” added PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, pointing, as an example, to the record high number of vacancies among national park superintendents. “This episode confirms that the reorganization was not about saving money, but about inflicting trauma and greater control over public employees by people who want to dismantle our public lands system.”

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See the Burgum order with promised “significant efficiencies”

Revisit the PEER lawsuit

Read the letter from Interior admitting it does “not have any records responsive…”

PEER protects public employees who protect our environment, natural resources, and public health. We support current and former environmental and public health professionals, land managers, scientists, enforcement officers, and other civil servants dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values across federal, state, local, and tribal governments.