Acting the Part

On September 16, in a gleaming ground-floor conference room at the headquarters of Booz Allen in Washington, D.C., several hundred attendees arrived for the first annual Technology and Innovation Summit organized by the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable. The event's mission was to explore how public-private partnerships and tech innovations can help strengthen land and water management, and it attracted a who’s who of industry and government leaders. In attendance that afternoon (in addition to the esteemed founder of RE:PUBLIC, yours truly) were representatives from the Outdoor Industry Association; tech companies AllTrails, OnX, and HipCamp; advocacy groups including the Foundation for America’s Public Lands and the Theodore Rosevelt Conservation Partnership; and, the star of the show, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Many novel and positive ideas emerged from the event’s panel discussions and presentations. Still, I can't help but write about a more mundane observation I was struck by as I sat in the audience: the bizarre titles of some of the government agency representatives on stage. In addition to Secretary Doug Burgum, there was:

• Bill Groffy, Acting Director, Bureau of Land Management
• Jessica Bowron, Comptroller, exercising the delegated authority of the Director of National Park Service
• Laura Grimm, Chief of Staff performing the duties of Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere an NOAA Administrator
• Kevin Lilly, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife and Parks. 

Let's drill down and review:

• “Acting...” 
• “Exercising the delegated authority...” 
• “Performing the duties of...” 
• "Acting..."

What exactly is going on here? In short, all four of these people are currently serving, without Congressional oversight, in temporary roles in consequential government positions that, by law, require Senate confirmation. 

It is not necessarily unusual, especially in the first few months of a new administration when turnover is high, for presidents to fill important roles with people working in an acting capacity. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) of 1998 is the main U.S. law that governs how the President can temporarily fill executive branch positions while their official nominees endure the glacial pace of Senate confirmation hearings. Acting officials keep agencies running even when positions are vacant, and presidents of both parties have used these temporary appointments quite liberally since the law was passed. 

But President Trump has used this power to extreme and concerning levels. At one point during the third year of his first administration, there were seven acting Cabinet secretaries. Critics—including some in Congress and government watchdog groups—argue that relying too heavily on “acting” leaders undermines democratic accountability. Senate confirmation is meant to provide scrutiny and legitimacy for people wielding major federal power. Without that process, agencies can appear more politicized and less stable, with shifting leadership and unclear mandates. And in this current climate, with unprecedented threats to public lands, the title trend at Interior should disturb anyone who cares about transparent policymaking.

In his first term, President Trump’s approach to filling leadership roles with acting officials was much more aggressive and prolonged than that of the Obama and Bush administrations that preceded his (or, for that matter, of the Biden administration that followed). Rather than treating the FVRA’s acting provisions as a temporary stopgap until the Senate could weigh in, Trump leaned on them as a governing strategy. Across Interior, Homeland Security, and other agencies, he often left positions unfilled for months or even years, preferring to install “acting” leaders or give them "delegated authority" instead of sending up formal nominations. In some cases, he publicly admitted that he liked acting officials because they gave him more “flexibility” and allowed him to avoid drawn-out confirmation fights.

One case in particular illustrates the dangers of his approach. In 2019, the Trump administration placed William Perry Pendley, a long-time critic of federal land ownership—and an advocate for transferring public lands to states—in charge of the Bureau of Land Management. Rather than formally nominating him for the Senate-confirmed role of Director, the Interior Department gave Pendley the title of Deputy Director for Policy and Programs and then delegated him the authority of the Director. This maneuver was designed to allow him to run the agency without going through the constitutionally required confirmation process. He stayed in that position for more than a year, and critics argued this arrangement was a deliberate end-run around the law.

They weren't delusional. The FVRA sets a strict 210-day limit for acting service unless a formal nomination is pending. By avoiding the word “acting” and using “delegated authority” instead, the administration tried to sidestep those restrictions. In practice, Pendley wielded the full power of a Senate-confirmed Director, making policy decisions on oil-and-gas leasing, land use planning, and conservation priorities that affected millions of acres of public land.

In 2020, a federal judge in Montana ruled that Pendley had served unlawfully and barred him from continuing in the role, finding that the "delegation tactic" violated the FVRA. The ruling highlighted the dangers of stretching or ignoring vacancy laws: it allowed a powerful official to lead an agency of national importance without Senate confirmation, raising serious questions about the legitimacy of his decisions. The Pendley episode became a textbook example of how abusing “acting” designations can weaken checks and balances and erode public trust.

After the Montana court found William Perry Pendley’s service unlawful, the big question became: what about all the decisions he signed while effectively operating as BLM Director? The ruling left many of them vulnerable. Judge Brian Morris’s order specifically barred Pendley from continuing in office. It also opened the door to challenges of his prior actions.

Montana’s governor at the time, Steve Bullock, and conservation groups argued that Pendley’s decisions were invalid because he had no legal authority to make them. Pendley had approved revisions to resource management plans in Montana and Wyoming that opened millions of acres of sage grouse habitat to drilling. Environmental groups moved quickly to ask courts to strike down those plans. Some of those cases are still winding their way through litigation, while in others the Interior Department tried to insulate the decisions by having different officials re-sign them.

In practice, not every action Pendley took was nullified. Courts tend to avoid wholesale invalidation of government decisions, and the Interior Department under both Trump and Biden tried to limit the fallout. Still, his tenure left a legal cloud over years of BLM policymaking. The episode illustrates how flouting the FVRA creates a constitutional problem. It also introduces deep uncertainty into the functioning of an agency, leaving land management decisions vulnerable to being unraveled in court years later.

Which brings us back to those officials I saw on stage at the conference last week. It's too early in the Trump administration to conclude how aggressively the president plans to use "acting" appointments for his second go-round. Currently, all of his Cabinet secretaries are Senate-confirmed. But the trend lines are ominous when you look one level below. His temporary appointments at Interior indicate that he is willing to install officials who either lack the requisite experience to run their departments or have deep ties to extractive industries—sometimes both. Let's look at the Interior positions in turn.

Jessica Bowron, Comptroller, exercising the delegated authority of the Director of National Park Service

Bowman has been with the NPS since 2007, and during her tenure she advanced methodically through important financial and budgetary roles. Her background is firmly in fiscal management rather than, say, field operations or scientific resource management, but on paper, she's not unqualified for the role.

What's more concerning is her current title and the amount of time that has lapsed since she was installed. Appointed on January 20, she has now been serving for 248 days, already putting her in violation of the FVRA limit of 210 days. What's more, as in the case of Pendley, her conspicuous title—exercising the authority rather than acting—can only be interpreted as a way to once again sidestep FVRA limits. Though courts have increasingly scrutinized the loophole, the fact that Trump has not put forward an official nominee for NPS director signals he may not ever intend to. That means no public hearings, no hard hitting questions, and no opportunity for the public to understand the policy positions of the person charged with guiding future management of the NPS.

Bill Groffy, Acting Director, Bureau of Land Management

Goffy was appointed in June, after the nomination of Kathleen Sgamma, head of the Western Energy Alliance, was withdrawn in April. (The withdrawal was reportedly because a memo surfaced where Sgamma was critical of Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.) Goffy came from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, where he was Senior Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs. He brings deep industry and regulatory experience, which will be beneficial to an administration prioritizing increased energy development and streamlined permitting.

Beyond that, there is limited publicly-available information on Goffy's experience in scientific resource management, ecology, conservation biology, or ecosystem restoration work. It is also unclear how much experience he has managing field operations of public lands versus policy and regulation. These are all things we could—and should—learn in a Senate hearing. Goffy has only been serving for 90 days, so he has not yet run up against FVRA term limits—but neither has Trump offered an official nominee.

Kevin Lilly, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife and Parks

Lilly, appointed in July, immediately had veteran Interiorologists scratching their heads given his total lack of experience in conservation or public-land management. Prior to his current role, Lilly was a private wealth manager in Texas (🤦‍♂️). He has held leadership positions in public service, including serving as the chair of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission from 2017 to 2021. And he’s a lieutenant colonel in the Texas State Guard.

How does this qualify him for a senior leadership role at the Interior Department, one tasked with overseeing Bowron, who has nearly two decades of experience at the National Park Service? Since he is also sidestepping a confirmation hearing, we'll likely never know.

Earlier this month, Lilly announced a public input initiative aimed at improving visitor services across the National Park System, inviting feedback from park visitors to enhance operations. I guess that’s a fancy way of saying “a suggestion box?”

If that’s the case, as a frequent park visitor myself, I'll offer my own feedback here: hire experts to lead the National Park Service and hire back all the Rangers we lost during the DOGE cuts last winter.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Every Friday, our team shares critical stories about public lands from around the internet. This list could be exhaustive and exhausting, but our intent is to inform, not overwhelm. Instead, we choose three to five important stories you should be aware of—including at least one piece of good news.

The Good: Launch of the Power of Nature initiative. "The North Face today announced the launch of a new global impact platform dedicated to reconnecting the next generation with the outdoors. In the U.S., the initiative launches with a $1 million investment in the National Park Foundation, in partnership with The VF Foundation, to support youth in exploring national parks and enriching outdoor education experiences."

The Bad: The Interior Department is taking steps to implement layoffs "The Interior Department is moving toward conducting layoffs across its workforce in the coming weeks, looking to further slash its staffing levels after already pushing a large proportion of its employees out the door. Human resources personnel began meeting to finalize reduction in force plans last week, according to documents reviewed by Government Executive and employees familiar with those talks, which continued throughout the weekend and into this week."

The Ugly: The dismantling of the Forest Service "The goal, it seems, is to cripple the agency with both direct and indirect blows. The result, if the administration succeeds, will be a diminished Forest Service that would be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot."