Forest Service Chief Randy Moore told a Senate subcommittee last month that his agency’s staffing levels are as low as 50% percent in some areas, including Oregon, Washington state and California.
, but they had been held up as Biden administration officials studied recruitment and retention data to decide where to deliver them.
The Biden administration in the end decided on a raise for all the federal wildland firefighters over the next two years, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement. The official said the infrastructure bill offered enough money to provide across-the-board raises but the administration was looking to work with Congress to provide a long-term fix on the firefighters’ pay.
The National Federation of Federal Employees union had been urging the Biden administration to interpret the statute as broadly as possible, as firefighters across the country were struggling to make ends meet.
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