HELENA — As the Trump administration continues its efforts to cut down the size of the federal workforce, we are starting to learn more about people in Montana who’ve been laid off.
(Watch the video to hear from a laid-off worker and from Montana's U.S. House members.)
On Monday, Democrats in the Montana Legislature held a news conference at the State Capitol, seeking to draw more attention to the impact federal workers are feeling.
“This challenge has derailed my life and my family's plans,” said Michael Maierhofer, who says he was laid off from his job with the U.S. Forest Service last week. “We were planning to buy a house, my fiancé was hoping to raise our family in the state that she has always called home. Our future is at risk.”
Maierhofer was one of six USFS employees let go from their jobs who attended the news conference. National media reports say the agency was expected to fire about 3,400 employees as part of broader federal job reductions. It’s been reported about 360 of them were in Montana.
Democratic leaders said the cuts aren’t only affecting the workers who’ve already been laid off.
“There's this excruciating waiting time of limbo, where people wake up and they check their email and they say, ‘Am I fired today? I don't know,’” said Rep. Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, the House minority leader. “And it's not fair. I feel really badly for these people.”
Maierhofer was a forestry technician with the Rocky Mountain Ranger District, based in Choteau. He said his job called for him to travel the backcountry, including the Bob Marshall Wilderness, for days at a time – maintaining trails, cleaning up waste, interacting with visitors and sometimes assisting when wildfires arise.
Maierhofer said eight members of his team have lost their jobs, leaving three people to cover that work. He said he’s worried the public will notice the impact.
“There will be impassable trails,” he said. “There will be 6-foot, 7-foot-tall piles of dead trees stopping you from crossing trails. There will be eroded sections of trail that you cannot cross safely. There are going to be unmaintained trailheads with restrooms you won't want to use.”
Maierhofer said he had been a long-term temporary employee with the Forest Service, then took a permanent job last year. That meant he was still in his probationary period – the first year or two of a federal worker’s employment, when they have fewer job protections.
Montana’s two U.S. House members, Republican Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, were in Helena Monday to address the state Legislature. MTN caught up with them to ask their opinions on the Trump administration’s handling of the federal workforce.
Zinke said he wants to make sure that reductions in the Forest Service, as well as a broader federal hiring freeze, don’t affect wildfire response. He said he wants to see changes in the hiring system, so that decisions can be made at the local level.
“Crews that have been around a while, the local superintendent or regional guy knows who's good and can hire it,” he said. “When they’ve got to go to DC for these decisions on who to hire, that's a problem.”
However, Zinke said the federal government has to get serious about finding ways to save money, particularly if they’re going to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and look at other tax reductions.
“When I was Secretary of the Interior, I stopped funding all programs until I knew where the money was going,” he said. “I think that's absolutely prudent; that's what you should be doing. And at the end of the day, the good projects stay, the great projects excel and the bad projects go away.”
Downing said the federal “DOGE” spending reduction effort, led by Elon Musk, has identified some expenditures he believes Americans should be concerned about.
“I'm not saying that you take an axe and get rid of everything,” he said. “We need to be more surgical and really decide what we don't need to do in the interest of the United States of America and really being stewards of taxpayer money, and what we do need to continue doing in the interest of America.”
Downing said some of the proposals to cut federal workers make sense, including a move by the Department of Veterans Affairs to dismiss more than 1,000 employees. He said that would allow the department to save millions of dollars on personnel costs and redirect it toward the care provided for veterans.
“I don't want to discount anybody losing a job – obviously, nobody likes that,” he said. “We do have some big issues that we need to address, and I think a lot of that is looking at whether we are overstaffing or staffing in the wrong way.”
