A bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Friday would make it harder to fire most employees of the National Weather Service and give the agency’s director the authority to hire new staff directly, months after it lost nearly 600 employees to layoffs and retirements as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal work force.
The Weather Workforce Improvement Act would designate certain positions within the agency as critical to public safety. The bill’s sponsors say it would have protected meteorologists, as well as other roles within the agency, from the cuts this year.
Those jobs include the people who specialize in hurricane forecasts and issue warnings about tornadoes and flash floods, as well as the employees who physically maintain things like weather models or launch weather balloons.
“Weather forecasting is not partisan,” said Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska, one of the bill’s sponsors. “Everyone supports the National Weather Service. Everyone relies on them, whether they realize it or not.”
The Weather Service has suffered from short staffing for years, long before the Trump administration’s cuts, but that became more severe this spring, as hundreds more employees began retiring or were forced out.
At the same time, the country has faced a nonstop pace of deadly and expensive weather disasters, including the California wildfires, several tornado outbreaks and severe hailstorms. For the first time in the agency’s history, some forecasting offices no longer had enough staff members to operate overnight, and others had to curtail the twice-daily launches of weather balloons, which collect data on atmospheric conditions that feed into forecast models.
The bill comes at the start of an Atlantic hurricane season that is predicted to bring more storms than usual. Some observers have expressed concerns about understaffed offices and worker fatigue affecting forecasts.
Mr. Flood said he hoped granting the National Weather Service the authority to hire directly would ensure that shortages could be addressed quickly.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Weather Service’s parent agency, declined to comment on the pending legislation.
The bill may pave the way for the agency’s director, Ken Graham, to implement a-planned restructuring. Mr. Flood said he hoped the legislation would give Mr. Graham “some latitude” to modernize.
Also this week, NOAA said the Weather Service had been granted an exemption to Mr. Trump’s governmentwide hiring freeze, which would allow it to hire 126 people in positions around the country in an effort to “stabilize” the agency. The Weather Service has also been shuffling forecasters and other employees between offices on short-term assignments to fill staffing gaps.
The bill’s other sponsors include Representative Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, as well as Democratic Representatives Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Jimmy Panetta of California, and Eric Sorensen of Illinois. All represent states that have been hit by severe weather this year.
“Severe weather affects both blue states and red states, and ensuring Americans have access to reliable and accurate weather forecasting is something everyone should support regardless of their political affiliation,” said Mr. Sorensen, who is the only meteorologist in Congress. “I’m grateful for Congressman Flood’s partnership on bipartisan legislation that will help fully staff National Weather Service offices across the country during severe weather and hurricane season.”
Judson Jones is a meteorologist and reporter for The Times who forecasts and covers extreme weather.
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