Mass firing of federal workers hits Petersburg Ranger District

Federal employees across Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest received termination notices over Presidents Day weekend, part of what union leaders are calling an "intentionally dishonest" nationwide purge of civil service workers that has hit Alaska's rural communities particularly hard.

In Petersburg, as of Sunday evening, at least nine Forest Service probationary employees were terminated, with seven more terminated in Wrangell. Most of those affected were early-career professionals hired through local preference programs within the past two years.

"These aren't just jobs being lost," said Alyssa Eden, a fish technician in Petersburg who received her termination notice on Sunday. "They're tearing apart people's entire lives and the communities they're intertwined with."

Eden, who was pursuing a fisheries science degree while working for the Forest Service, said her termination letter cited poor performance despite positive reviews from her supervisor. "I was implementing new projects, including environmental education programs with local schools," she said. "My supervisor had nothing negative to say about my work ... I've lived in Petersburg the last couple of years, and I love it here."

The terminations specifically targeted employees still in probationary status – those not yet covered by long standing Civil Service Protections.

Most of Petersburg's terminated USFS employees were hired in 2023 when the Petersburg Ranger District pushed to hire through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Utilizing the local hiring preference through ANILCA helped alleviate the challenges faced by hiring supervisors who couldn't supply housing for the positions they needed to fill.

There was a two-year probationary period for all those hired under ANILCA, as opposed to the one-year probation for most federal workers hired through USAJobs.gov.

Local young people saw the Forest Service job opportunity through ANILCA as a chance to establish themselves in Petersburg, to plant roots, grow families, and make long term contributions in the community.

2019 Petersburg High School graduate Tiare Simbahon was one of the ANILCA hires in 2023.

"Many of us ANILCA hires saw futures within the Forest Service and even went as far as joking about taking over the programs we were hired into once our supervisors moved on because we loved it," Simbahon told the Pilot. "We loved what we were doing and we loved working with each other."

Simbahon received word over the weekend that her forestry tech job was chopped. "The idea that it would all end so soon was never a thought." She had purchased a home in Petersburg last month.

Nathan Ajax, formerly a commercial fisherman and wildlands firefighter, was notified on Sunday of the termination of his fisheries technician job. He and his wife, Jane Fuqua, who was born and raised in Petersburg, recently bought a home in town and also just had a baby.

Having good insurance for the family through his USFS job "was one of the reasons we felt it was the right time to have a baby," Fuqua told the Pilot. The couple and their children are now uninsured.

"I can respect a decision being made ... when new people come into power and decide that we're spending too much on government and they want to downsize," reflected Ajax. "However, just indiscriminately firing as many as possible with no plan, with no communication, trying to trick people into leaving..."

The people being fired are among the lowest paid full time workers in the federal government. "These cuts are clearly not about saving the taxpayer money," said Ajax.

Thanks to the hiring freeze imposed last year by the Biden administration, understaffing was already affecting the Petersburg District.

"I'm doing much more work than I'm being paid for already, and a lot of the work that we're doing is to ensure safety and the health of the forest which all of us rely on," said Ajax. "Fisheries and every private sector around here directly benefit ... I used to be a commercial fisherman. Fishermen rely on the wellbeing of the ecosystem. The work we are doing is to help everyone and we're not getting rich off this ... it is going to cost so much more to fix what they're doing right now than they would ever save."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) criticized the terminations, warning they would "do more harm than good, stunting opportunities in Alaska and leaving holes in our communities."

"We can't realize our potential for responsible energy and mineral development if we can't permit projects. We will be less prepared to manage summer wildfires if we can't support those on the front lines," Murkowski said.

When asked to estimate what impacts to the local economy would be, Petersburg Borough Community Development Director Liz Cabrera noted, "In general, Forest Service jobs are on the higher end of the wage scale for salaried positions in town. They are also often year-round positions, and they generally offer stability and diversification of our economy because they are independent of whether there was a good fishing season or whether it was a good tourism season. And because these are generally good paying jobs, most of the folks invest in the community, through houses, or have kids in the school. These job losses reflect probably around $800,000 a year in spending power that the local economy is losing from the positions ... but the other thing that makes our town go is human capital ... we want young families in our town."

The mass terminations followed a January 28 email titled "Fork in the Road" that offered federal employees the option to resign with pay through September 2025. Multiple follow up emails reiterated the offer. A message sent on January 31 to local Forest Service workers signed by the USDA Chief of Staff emphasized in underlined bold, "I am informing you that the offer is valid, lawful, and will be honored by USDA. If you accept the offer you will receive pay and benefits through September 30, 2025."

Several days after the window for accepting the deferred resignation closed, word came that OPM would not be honoring the Deferred Resignation Program for probationary employees.

One of Petersburg's Forest Service probationary employees had accepted the offer for deferred resignation, and that employee later confirmed to the Pilot "the financial promise had been broken."

The termination letters the employees received mention that the employees have the right to appeal their termination with the Merit Systems Protections Board within 30 days of receiving the letter.

However, terminated employees report being blocked from accessing copies of their recent personnel records and performance reviews, complicating potential appeals.

The timing and manner of the terminations have raised concerns about due process.

American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union president, Everett Kelley, said, "these firings are not about poor performance - there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants," Kelley said.

Employees report receiving identical form letters identifying performance as the reason for termination, despite having received positive performance reviews.

"My supervisor called me yesterday to inform me that I was being let go, and she made it clear she didn't want to," Eden said.

Like the others, Eden's termination letter stated the termination was "based on your performance," a characterization which Eden firmly describes as untrue. "My performance review was glowing." After receiving the letter, she was called on the phone by a supervisor in the district who explained they did not want to let her go and, if it was up to the local staff, it would not be happening.

The letter distorting the reason for termination "is adding insult to injury," said Eden. "On top of being disappointed that I no longer get to do this amazing job ... if I were to apply for another federal job on paper it would state that I got fired for unsatisfactory work ... so it is hindering my employment opportunities."

"I think there's going to be a lot of appeals happening ... but, yeah, not gonna hold my breath for it," said Eden.

Anna Tollfeldt, a biological technician in fisheries also terminated on Sunday from her job in Wrangell, expressed frustration at the process. "In my performance evaluation, I was told by my supervisor, 'Great job! I'm really happy that we hired you'," says Tollfeldt. "And now, for the letter to say 'based on your performance, it is in the public interest to terminate you' – those are two very, very different messages."

Tollfeldt said, speaking with the others who received the letters, "the letters all look exactly the same ... It's an injustice."

A key component of Tollfeldt's work involved mapping the forest to identify where streams with fish are and where wildlife buffer zones are needed to ensure that, when they do a timber sale, the areas crucial for fish and wildlife don't sustain too much damage.

"In Southeast Alaska, a lot of people like to hunt, a lot of people like to fish ... that's our way of life that doesn't really have a lot to do with politics ... if we care at all about being responsible and making use of these natural resources, we need to keep these positions around ... if we just wipe out everything, we are not going to have the foraging, the hunting, and the fishing opportunities that we all love," said Tollfeldt.

An employee, who asked not to be named, told the Pilot, "It saves the government money to do this work in house. If they terminate everybody who's going to do this work? They're going to have to contract it out, trails, cabins, if they even want to keep that stuff."

"Why are these people being terminated? How is this efficient?" that employee added. "The community needs to think about that. These cuts are not uncovering fraud or inefficiencies ... We are just being terminated because the probationary employees are the easiest ones to get rid of because we're not fully vested and protected yet." In Wrangell, it sounds like the recreation crew is reduced down to one individual worker, "he won't even have time to go around and clean out the outhouses, let alone go and fix leaks in cabins and maintain trails."

Another terminated employee who asked not be named, told the Pilot, "It kills me that some of the best and brightest of the younger workforce in this community, that are just out of college, trained to do these specialized jobs, just got fired."

Union representatives say they are preparing legal challenges to the terminations, arguing they violate civil service protections and merit system principles. However, the targeted nature of the cuts – focusing on probationary employees with fewer protections – may complicate legal efforts.

Many of the local employees terminated over the weekend had only a handful of weeks or months left of their probations.

A significant outpouring of community support materialized over the weekend, with around 240 people rallying at the courthouse in downtown Petersburg on Monday to express support for the indiscriminately terminated federal workers.

Some of those attending the rally also carried homemade signs protesting the freezing of federal grants and funding and the scapegoating of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" programs.

In what has been dubbed the Valentine's Day Massacre, probationary workers in pretty much every federal agency in the country experienced similar indiscriminate mass firing over the weekend -­ a thousand workers at NOAA, another thousand at the VA where a shortage of VA doctors and nurses is already creating severe backlogs for medical service for US military veterans. Doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists working for the Indian Health Service, thousands of workers at National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, health inspectors at poultry and dairy farms, hundreds of staffers providing loans and grants through Rural Development for drinking water and affordable housing services, and tens of thousands more were instantly cut.

As of Tuesday, an estimated 92 Forest Service employees in the Tongass National Forest have been fired. On Wednesday, the Thorne Bay Ranger District on Prince of Wales Island announced that, with approximately a third of the district's employees suddenly terminated, the district's office would be closed to the public indefinitely.