Flynn has had experience putting out more than one kind of fire, it seems. In July 2022, she issued a memo to NPS superintendents and chief rangers describing changes that would have to be made in the Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch, necessary, she wrote, because of the erosion of funding for that program. “Nearly flat budgets,” Flynn wrote, meant the ISB had been unable to fund even cost-of-living increases for staff. They were dealing with “a 45 percent decrease in staffing,” she wrote, paired with “an expansion of 1,692 percent” in responsibility.
The losses and the resulting “streamlined service model,” which would focus the reduced number of investigators on “serious crimes against people” (crimes of violence and where use of force was involved) and let go of “crimes against society” (including property crimes and drug-related investigations), was criticized by the advocacy organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
