Efficiency is a concept on everyone’s mind. Prior to the inauguration, permit reform proposals looked for ways to improve permitting efficiency, often with Republicans blaming environmental laws for delaying infrastructure and energy projects. For example, Rep. Westerman opined that permitting was “holding back development of our domestic energy and mineral resources.” Building on this narrative, the Trump administration declared a “national energy emergency” on his first day in office and directed the heads of executive departments and agencies to identify and exercise “any lawful emergency authorities available to them…to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
On the same day, President Trump also established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasking it with “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Although the executive order creating DOGE focused on technology and software modernization, DOGE’s leader, Elon Musk, framed his work as a fight against the “tyranny of the bureaucracy,” with a mission to cut costs and eliminate regulations. Apparently, he also intends to destroy agencies.
On X, he bragged that DOGE “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” He has also been credited as the author of an email entitled “Fork in the Road” sent to roughly two million federal workers urging them to resign. According to a complaint filed by the American Federation of Government Employees, the email warned “the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.” According to Musk, when it comes to workforce reductions, “it is better to cut too deeply and fix any problems that arise later.” Contrary to the DOGE moniker, this approach is not efficient.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was formed in 1921 as an independent, nonpartisan agency that provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, nonpartisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently. GAO makes thousands of recommendations annually to Congress aimed at reducing government waste and improving efficiency. When it comes to permitting, it is hard to find a better source of information to understand what really causes delays. If you read GAO reports, you will quickly realize that limited agency capacity is a common cause of delay.
For example, during the first Trump Administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) workforce plummeted when its headquarters were abruptly moved from Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction, Colorado. At the time of the move, the BLM had already been subject to a five-year hiring freeze—from 2017-2021. Following the relocation announcement, only 23 percent of the existing staff accepted reassignment. The thin workforce created multiple delays that affected permitting. Staff said that they were unable to update policies or provide timely guidance. Other staff reported that without updated guidance, they relied on outdated policies to make decisions. Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Many of the staff who left were experienced, and their rapid departure left BLM without institutional knowledge about laws and regulations—a troubling situation for an institution tasked with stewarding 245 million acres and the 700 million-acre federal mineral estate.
This is only one among several examples of how insufficient agency capacity creates inefficiencies that ultimately bog down important government tasks, like issuing permits. For example, when it comes to mine permitting, the recently released report by the Interagency Working Group observed that staffing shortages “undermine efforts to coordinate across agencies, inviting inconsistency, redundancy, inefficiency, and delay.” It concluded that “inadequately staffed and under-resourced agencies are ill-equipped to swiftly process permit applications and associated environmental reviews.”
An investigation by the Office of Inspector General into the permitting process for oil and gas wells identified limited resources, poor management, and outdated technology as sources of delay in processing oil drilling permits. Another investigation into broadband deployment identified staffing issues and poor data management systems as sources of delay. In “Dispelling the Myths of Permitting Reform and Identifying Effective Pathways Forward,” published by the Environmental Law Reporter yesterday, my co-authors and I discuss the reality that unstable agency budgets, insufficient staff, and a lack of expertise all contribute to delays in the permitting process. We also identify promising practices with a demonstrated track record of improving efficiency. Unfortunately, the sweeping, indiscriminate, and disorganized staff reductions initiated by DOGE are not likely to promote efficiency.
If we truly want a more efficient government, and if we want agencies capable of responding to a “national energy emergency,” the first place we should start is by ensuring that government agencies have stable budgets and sufficient staff to accomplish the work that has been assigned to them.
Jamie Pleune is an associate professor of law (research) and a member of the Law and Policy Group in the Wallace Stegner Center.