Obama's Former BLM Chief Lending A Hand W. Biden Transition On Public Lands, Including Relocation

[hatrack]

President-elect Joe Biden's transition team is tapping a former Obama-era Bureau of Land Management director to help reset the bureau's priorities under the new administration.

Neil Kornze, BLM's director during the last three years of President Obama's second term, is described by multiple sources as the "go-to guy" on all things BLM as the Biden administration is expected to make major organizational and policy changes at the federal government's largest landowner.

And almost everything is on the table during the transition — including moving BLM's headquarters back to Washington from its new location in Grand Junction, Colo., sources said. BLM completed the controversial headquarters move this summer. While the new administration would probably keep the office building in Grand Junction, which is now under lease for five years, it likely would become a regional office, with senior leadership moving back to Washington, sources said.

EDIT

Kornze joined BLM in January 2011 as senior adviser to Director Bob Abbey, working to promote commercial solar energy projects on federal lands. Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in February 2013 named Kornze acting BLM director after Abbey retired. Obama nominated Kornze for BLM director less than a year later. The Senate confirmed his nomination in April 2014, making the 35-year-old Kornze the youngest BLM director in agency history (E&E Daily, April 9, 2014).

EDIT

https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2020/11/09/stories/1063718079?utm_campaign=edition&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eenews%3Agreenwire

[halfulglas]

1. Thank goodness this is a priority, too.

There has been so much damage done with Trump's executive orders it will be good to have some of those from the Obama years to get a handle on what has to be undone so we can move forward. Trump did so much of this crap out of meanness, some just to get them out of DC so they aren't the center of federal government action. That also put them out of the eye of the public so Trump could more easily treat them like his own property (like he wasn't treating the whole country like that this past 4 years). We have to try to reverse much of the damage before we can move forward. January 20 can't come too soon for me.