Last Friday, more than 4,000 federal employees at seven different government agencies received layoff notices. This comes about two weeks after the Trump Administration directed agencies to “consider” reducing their workforce by discharging employees whose jobs did not align with the president’s priorities, as part of the government shutdown. The shutdown started on October 1, with Republican and Democratic lawmakers gridlocked on how to fund the federal government. The sticking point was whether to extend healthcare subsidies and benefits for millions of Americans.
Representative Salud Carbajal (D), whose 24th Congressional District includes Santa Barbara County, called the layoffs needless.
“Rather than coming to the table to protect Americans’ health care and reopen the federal government, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are moving forward with more needless federal layoffs that will only add to the damage and undermine the public services the American people rely on,” he said in a statement to the Independent.
The number of federal employees in Santa Barbara is small — only about 2.5 percent of civilians are federal employees in Carbajal’s district. But the layoffs may still impact people here at home.
Take folks who live in public affordable housing units or people from the approximately 5,600 households that use Section 8 vouchers in the county. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) laid off hundreds of workers on Friday afternoon, concentrating those layoffs in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. There are no more fair housing employees in the San Francisco field office, which serves all of California, Nevada, and Arizona, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity ensures that complaints of housing discrimination are addressed, and runs fair housing initiatives.
The web page for the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity now yields a 404 notice and quickly reroutes to the main HUD page, where a large red banner blames the “radical left” for shutting down the government. This banner is uniform across several government websites.
The Department of the Treasury let go of more than 1,400 people. Most of these layoffs were concentrated in the Internal Revenue Service. Almost half of the IRS’s staff was furloughed last week. The IRS taxpayer assistance center in Carpinteria is listed as closed on its website. It is unclear how the layoffs will impact tax services at this time. The October 15 tax extension deadline remains.
The Department of Education issued 466 layoff notices last week (less than 20 percent of its staff), mostly concentrated in special education and civil rights enforcement, according to the Associated Press, while the Department of Health and Human Services has laid off 600 people, largely those involved in addressing mental health, disease outbreak, and disaster preparedness.
Reporting from CNN states that in the Department of Energy, along with laying off 187 people, a memo informed the Office of Minority Economic Impact that it would be restructured, as the office does not conform to the administration’s priorities. This office assesses how energy policies and programs affect minority communities. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Commerce also saw layoffs.
On Tuesday, the Office of Management and Budget announced on X that more layoffs will come — saying the agency was prepared to “batten down the hatches.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to correct the number of households that use Section 8 vouchers in the county, which is 5,600 not 6,400.
You must be logged in to post a comment.