Staff shortages and new layers of bureaucracy are suffocating NOAA and threatening its ability to accurately predict extreme weather events, ensure U.S. ports stay open and safeguard the nation’s commercial and recreational fisheries, say current and former agency officials.
The coil around NOAA squeezes in two ways, they say. The first is personnel. More than 1,000 NOAA employees have left the agency since the start of the Trump administration, and the empty desks have led to staffing issues in key weather service offices — just as hurricane season approaches.
For example, NOAA’s Global Forecast System — which governments and industries worldwide rely upon — has “measurably declined” in recent weeks because staff cuts have meant fewer weather balloon launches, said Tim Gallaudet, who served as acting NOAA administrator in the first Trump administration.
“You’re talking about a degradation and a measurable impact already,” Gallaudet said. “It’s not sustainable at all.”
The second issue is the slow pace of approval for outside contracts and grants.
Though NOAA has long enjoyed its reputation as the nation’s premier climate, fisheries and weather agency, much of its work depends on an external network of contractors and grantees.
But fewer than 20 percent of outstanding grants have been approved, and more than 1,000 are in the queue with more added every day, according to a current NOAA official who was granted anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal.
And that’s on top of a growing backlog of contracts that are still waiting for a decision, POLITICO’s E&E News previously has reported. As of last week, more than 200 contracts were in limbo and it’s estimated that nearly 6,000 more contracts are set to expire this year.
Much of the slowdown is by design. Senior NOAA officials must justify complex scientific programs in a few sentences to inexperienced political staffers as a first step in a new bureaucratic process that has ground some operations to a halt, say current and former agency officials.
The linchpin of this approach is a new policy implemented by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes NOAA. Lutnick wants to personally approve every contract worth more than $100,000, but staffers say he only makes time to look at a few dozen, at most, every week.
Craig McLean, the agency’s former top scientist, pins much of the blame on Lutnick.
“The strangling of NOAA by Lutnick is slowly asphyxiating the agency, even though he claimed in his congressional testimony that he didn’t want to break up NOAA,” McLean said. “His lack of trust, and his choice of reviewing all of these grants and contracts is grinding the agency’s work to a halt.”
McLean said NOAA’s troubles are just beginning and that he expects it to get far worse absent major changes from the Trump administration. Hurricane season begins June 1.
NOAA and Commerce Department officials did not respond to requests for comment.
NOAA’s slowdown of funding has raised bipartisan concerns in Congress, including from Republican lawmakers loyal to President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) brought up the issue of delayed and expiring contracts in a recent congressional hearing. Other Republicans also have more quietly reached out to NOAA officials to inquire about missing or delayed funding, according to internal documents obtained by E&E News.
The offices of Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, along with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), are among those that have raised concerns in recent months about missing or delayed funding.
None of the lawmakers responded to a request for comment.
A current NOAA official, granted anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal, said the agency’s political leadership is generally responsive to funding approval or disbursement requests made by Republican lawmakers.
There’s another issue holding back the agency too, say former and current NOAA officials. Even though Congress has not approved the severe budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration, NOAA political appointees now appear to be enacting them, according to four current NOAA officials granted anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal.
The White House has proposed cutting about a quarter of NOAA’s budget, from the current $6.1 billion down to $4.5 billion next year, E&E News has reported. It would eliminate NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — the very core of the agency’s climate, weather and oceans science mission.
Meanwhile, morale at the agency is at an all-time low — fueled by the sweeping cuts and changes, as well as lingering distrust of the political appointees assigned to the agency by the White House.
The four current NOAA employees say the political appointees don’t appear to have much interest in learning about NOAA’s work or mission. And they say they worry about what it all means for NOAA’s future.
“I think we have lost most of our autonomy and now all our ‘normal’ operations and processes are just being micromanaged by the political appointees,” one current NOAA official said. “I really think their goal is to make us so ineffective, the public ends up hating us too.”
Reach Scott Waldman on Signal at Waldman.04
