Trump Administration Wants To Fire 248 Forecasters At the National Weather Service (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters. The idea, which is part of the 2019 fiscal budget proposal and caught the agency by surprise, is being derided by the NWS's labor union, which says the cuts will impact the reliability of future weather forecasts and warnings. All totaled, the Weather Service faces cuts of $75 million in the initial proposal. Some or all of those cuts could be jettisoned before the bill is voted upon. "We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.

Further reading: The Washington Post

Comments

What did you expect?

[93 Escort Wagon]

After a bunch of so-called deficit hawks and fiscal conservatives were finished with their 1 trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, they had to do something they could point at in November to reclaim their conservative bona fides. So they're going to attempt gutting every non-military program in the federal budget.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of increasing military, it would be cheaper to give every country 250 gold and have 4 turns of peace.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol,when has a Republican administration ever been "deficit hawks"? If there's one pattern in politics it's that deficits shrink under the Dems and blow out under the GOP.

Re:What did you expect?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Here is an interesting take and it puts the budget into constant dollars. Might be a bit instructive...

Re:What did you expect?

[jbengt]

I bet the Military doesn't use the NWS. Neither do most news organizations.

You would lose that bet. Even if they have additional sources of data, and use their own people (more likely, their own computers) making predictions, both the military and most news organizations use NWS data.

Nah

[sexconker]

Over 5000 employees, and over a billion dollar annual budget.
248 jobs is a 5% reduction in staffing overall. $75 million is less that 7.5% of their budget. And these numbers were bandied about with the expectation that they'd be lowered after push back.
When most of the work in forecasting is increasingly automated and computerized, it makes sense to trim the fat.

But of course the labor union is going to get upset. That's what labor unions do when told the truth.

Re:Nah

[Ogive17]

If they'd trim the military fat at the same time, it would be harder to complain about cuts to domestic programs.

Re:Trump isn't going far enough

[Art Challenor]

Someone needs to mod the parent as funny. I assume it has to be a joke unless there are really people out there who think that, say weather.com, the weather channel, etc. are actually forecasting. They almost all use the NWS forecast, they may add a little to it, but the heavy lifting is done by that government agency.

Re: Adios, bureaucrats! There's an app for your jo

[Zero__Kelvin]

Somebody should create an app that shows you how fscking stupid your post is!

Re:Fastest transition to 3rd world nation?

[kamapuaa]

US is nowhere near a 3rd world nation, and a proposed plan (that will probably not pass) to fire a bunch of weathermen doesn't portend its slide into 3rd world status.

US has the world's largest economy, 9 out of the 10 best universities in the world, the world's largest entertainment & cultural industry, the world's largest companies, half the world's Nobel Prizes last year, we've won the World Series for like 23 years straight....

Do you find yourself watching Rocky 4 and rooting for Ivan Drago?

Re:Trump isn't going far enough

[gweihir]

And then you talk to an actual expert and find out that technology only provides input for the forecasters. They then take their experience and knowledge of local peculiarities a create an actual forecast from that. In the case of natural disasters, that may be the difference of a few more hours to evacuate, for example. So no, technology is (once again) not nearly as advanced as some people like to think.

Chop shop government

[GrimSavant]

They want to part out the vital functions of a modern government, and let their donor class pocket as much of money as they can get on the back end. Don't be fooled into thinking that there is a genuine ideology motivating this, only a few of these guys are true believers, and quite a few of those are genuine radicals.

Deficits are a good thing for them, if it helps them loot and destroy the government sooner. It's hard to effectively eliminate the necessary government operations and programs with a wide base of popular support unless you create a crisis first.

Re:Adios, bureaucrats! There's an app for your job

[_Sharp'r_]

The headline is a lie. The Trump Administration hasn't proposed firing anyone. If you look at the story this story is based on, it says "248 forecasting positions". Reading further, the agency currently has more open forecasting positions than that. So basically, if this 5% cut to their budget was fully implemented, they simply wouldn't get to hire as many new people. Oh, the drama!!!

You're worried about where the cuts will happen? Let's read the underlying WP article some more and see if we can figure out how they decided that:

Its justification is the 2016 Weather Service Operations and Workforce Analysis that found “there is a mismatch in some areas [of the Weather Service] between workforce and workload” and “that the current distribution of staff across the country can evolve.”

Oh, you mean they did a study back when Obama was President and looked at where stuff could get streamlined and realigned and are basing this budget proposal on that? How sinister!!!

This is much ado about nothing. The only travesty here is that they aren't proposing to cut more. Why, this proposal will take the NWS almost back down to the budget level they had in 2015, when they couldn't get anything at all done!!!