The WV-DEP Secretary Randy Huffman told legislators Tuesday he fears a brain drain at the regulatory agency, as many longtime employees are reaching retirement age. Many of those employees joined the DEP in the 1970s and early 1980s, as environmental regulations were being enacted, and devoted themselves to careers in public service.
However, Huffman told a Joint Government Organization interim committee meeting that the new generation of employees does not have the same level of commitment. “That sense of loyalty, that sense of public service that caused my generation to stay, they don’t have that,” he said of younger employees. He said younger employees today are much more likely to leave the DEP for private-sector jobs in regulated industries, something that rarely happened in the past, despite higher salaries in the private sector.
Huffman stressed that the Office of Oil and Gas needs to hire more inspectors, with the anticipated growth in Marcellus Shale drilling. Currently, the office is budgeted for 17 inspectors and has one vacancy. However, he said the shortage of inspectors is not as severe as critics claim. (He reported earlier this year of the need to revise the State laws that govern such inspectors.)
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Why should the current generation have the same committment at DEP? DEP leadership from Huffman down to Casto has created an agency with the lowest morale of any state agency in the state. Plus the Division of Personnel is partly to blame because they actually tell the DeP who they can and cannot interview. Get rid of DOP and employment will be better. But Huffman, McClung and Casto needs to treat their employees alot better and quit making them quit or firing them for things that other employees are doing with nothing being done to them. Selectively picking employees out to fire or dicipline is totally wrong and Huffman and Casto knows that . DEP will continue to suffer until they start treating their employees fairly and apologize to other employees who were “let go” selectively. The Huffman regime needs replaced and soon.