Oregon U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley were among a dozen other lawmakers recently calling on the Trump administration to exempt seasonal firefighters from its temporary federal hiring freeze.
Soon after being inaugurated in January, President Donald Trump issued a 90-day hiring freeze for federal agencies with some exceptions.
The senators wrote that the January 20 executive order “explicitly exempted” public safety personnel and allowed for the director of the Office of Personnel Management, the human resources agency for the federal government, to carve out further exemptions.
According to the senators, reports have come in from federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, that the hiring of seasonal firefighters has stopped due to the federal hiring freeze.
McLaurine Pinover, head of communications for the Office of Personnel Management, said in a Wednesday, Feb. 12, email that seasonal firefighters are exempt from the hiring freeze under the management office’s public safety exemption outlined in its January 20 guidance to federal agencies.
According to the guidance, federal agencies are permitted to hire “seasonal employees and short-term temporary employees necessary to meet traditionally recurring seasonal workloads, provided that the agency informs its OMB Resource Management Office in writing in advance of its hiring plans.”
Pinover said if jobs are listed on the federal hiring portal, they are not part of the freeze.
As of Friday, Feb. 14, the website listed a job post for an unspecified number of wildland firefighters in “multiple locations” in Oregon. The federal agencies listed the permanent positions at the BLM, the federal Interior Department and the National Park Service. It appears the freeze does not apply to the full-time jobs listed on the website.
In a Wednesday, Feb. 12 email, Wyden said he was skeptical of the personnel management office’s “claim.”
“If true, that would be welcome news,” Wyden said. “But given the chaos and confusion inflicted by this administration less than a month into its tenure, I’d like to see verifiable evidence of this claim, such as the actual hiring of a seasonal firefighter in Oregon or anywhere else in America.”
A call to Larisa Bogardus, the Vale Bureau of Land Management public relations officer, prompted an automatic response that she was out of the office. The agency’s regional office in Portland didn’t respond to the Enterprise’s requests for comment.
Record-setting wildfires have become more common. In Malheur County, the Cow Valley and Durkee blazes in 2024 burned about 400,000 acres of public and private range critical to feeding thousands of cows.
The senators pointed out that fire crews also carry out hazardous fuels management, considered critical to preventing and mitigating the effects of future fires.
At the end of January, Bogardus said that reseeding below the Owyhee Dam was completed by a Vale BLM helitack crew. She added that rehabilitation work for the Cow Valley and Durkee fires continues.
Congressman Cliff Bentz, a Republican from Vale, didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding how he expects the Vale Bureau of Land Management to prepare for wildfire season.
Idaho U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and James Risch also didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding whether they had concerns about the confusion surrounding the hiring freeze. The national center for managing wildfires is in Boise.
The National Federation of Federal Employees, the union for federal wildland firefighters, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In a statement from the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit advocacy group, the messaging from the personnel management office and the ongoing hiring freeze are not just “administrative missteps – they appear intentional.”
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated from its original version to reflect that a call to the Vale Bureau of Land Management public relations officer, Larisa Bogardus, prompted an automatic response that she was out of the office.
News tip? Send your information to Steven Mitchell at [email protected].
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