(Maryland Matters) — Democratic lawmakers and former agency officials said Friday that more than 600 layoffs this week at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would affect services ranging from emergency preparedness to agricultural forecasting, in Maryland and across the nation.
The cuts Thursday to NOAA, which is headquartered in Silver Spring, were just the latest in a string of federal firings by the Trump Administration under the direction of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has terminated thousands of jobs in an effort to cut down of federal spending.
NOAA has a wide range of responsibilities, including oversight of the National Weather Service, which tracks dangerous weather and provides information for the public and for emergency management teams bracing for them.
“NOAA is our first line of defense against extreme weather events,” said U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in a virtual press conference Friday. “They are our eyes and ears, and so when you close your eyes and plug your ears, people will get hurt.
“Without the warnings of severe weather events – hurricanes, tsunamis, other things — people will die and others will suffer greatly, including huge property loss,” Van Hollen said. “That is why this is such an assault on our public safety.”
Van Hollen was joined U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, and former NOAA officials to stress the importance of the agency’s role not only in weather communications and emergency preparedness, but also warn of the potential economic and agricultural impacts that the layoffs could bring. They charged that the layoffs are the start of efforts to privatize the services provided by the National Weather Service and NOAA.
“These are the people who conduct critical scientific and regulatory work that protects American families’ safety,” Huffman said. “NOAA’s weather forecasts are used by aviation experts to prevent airline disasters and keep our skies safe for the millions that travel the country everyday. These cuts will put people in danger.”
Van Hollen said some 650 people at NOAA were laid off Thursday, although he was not able to say how many of those jobs were at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring and how many were scatterred in offices across the country.
But the Maryland economy, with its heavy reliance on the federal government, has already felt an outsized impact from the Trump administration’s effort to cut government agencies and workers. The state is home to roughly 160,000 federal jobs, a number that does not include workers at intelligence agencies in the state, or the countless contractors who do business with the federal government.
State officials said this week that about 1,300 federal workers in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties have already lost their jobs, and 450 former federal workers have applied for unemployment benefits in recent weeks.
Van Hollen joined Gov. Wes Moore (D) in Annapolis Friday afternoon to announce an effort to streamline hiring laid-off federal workers to fill positions in state agencies. He also joined Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) Thursday for a town hall on the recent firings.
Richard Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator and secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, noted that the layoffs come when tornado and hurricane seasons are just around the corner. He also noted that the layoffs could impact commercial shipping operations and agriculture.
“Weather forecasting – obviously we’re coming into tornado season. Hurricane season isn’t too far behind,” he said during the virtual press conference. “We’re still going to have winter storms. We’re going to have floods, droughts.
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“And it’s not just the immediate weather products. It’s the seasonal outlooks. Farmers are looking to have no precipitation outlooks to make decisions right now about their spring planting season,” he said. “Let’s talk about navigation charts for commercial shipping — think of how quickly we were able to reopen the Port of Baltimore after the Francis Scott Key disaster with the bridge. That’s a functionality that will be compromised.”
Another potential impact includes the work NOAA does that benefits the commercial fishing industry.
“That’s a $320 billion annual industry. And it’s hard to be the best in the world in an industry like that if you can’t support the industry with things as fundamental as stock assessments, how many fish are out there,” Spinrad said, noting that millions of jobs are tied to the commercial fishing industry.
Huffman added that shellfish operations could see some hits, too, adding that, “You got some shellfish operations in Chesapeake Bay.”
“I was just meeting with the shellfish industry. These folks are absolutely apoplectic,” he said. “They’re a highly regulated industry that depends on not only NOAA for mission-critical science, because of things like ocean acidification, which is being driven by climate change, are going to determine whether they can even grow shellfish – whether the water conditions are such that the shellfish can even form shells.”
But Huffman emphasized that the impact “is bigger than Maryland.”
“Some of those impacts you’re going to feel in Maryland are going to be felt all over the East and West coast, on the Gulf Coast,” he said.
“This isn’t some game, this isn’t a little stunt to trim the fat or save taxpayers money, purging the government of scientists, experts and career civil servants and entire programs that do critically important things,” Huffman said. “They simply have no idea what they are doing and how it’s hurting people.”
