This bill adds a new section to federal personnel law giving the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior authority to make direct hires for federal wildland firefighting and firefighting support jobs in the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. It lists specific occupational series (for example, forestry technicians, aircraft operators, dispatchers, equipment specialists, and certain administrative and natural resource series) that qualify. The bill also requires the two agencies, in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management, to adopt streamlined hiring policies within one year. Those policies must aim to reduce hiring time, remove redundancies, make it easier to rehire people who worked for the agencies before, and lower barriers for firefighters transferring between the agencies.
The bill requires each Secretary to send an annual report to certain Congressional committees (by February 1 each year) with details including: how many firefighters and support staff the agency expects to need by position; planned hiring events; current staffing by position; vacancies by State; barriers to meeting hiring goals; how the new direct hire authority is being used; progress on streamlining hiring; and recommendations for Congress. The reports must also be posted on a public website. The bill includes a short clerical amendment to add the new section to the chapter table of contents.
No publicly available information.
The bill’s sponsors provide authority and deadline-driven steps that are intended to speed hiring, reduce redundancies, and improve recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters and related support staff by allowing direct hires and requiring streamlined processes and reporting.
No publicly available information.