Two high-ranking officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with a connection to the likely incoming NOAA administrator were placed on administrative leave Thursday, according to two former NOAA employees familiar with the situation and one current agency official.
While the reasoning behind the move is not clear, the two officials affected — Steve Volz, who heads NOAA’s satellites division, and Jeff Dillen, deputy NOAA general counsel — led the investigation into whether NOAA’s scientific integrity policies were violated during the so-called Sharpiegate scandal of President Donald Trump’s first term.
“It’s an interesting coincidence that less than a week before Neil Jacob’s senate committee vote, the two dedicated career civil servants who investigated him for scientific integrity violations around Sharpiegate were dismissed from service,” one former NOAA official told CNN.
The inquiry found then-acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs and another NOAA official violated the agency’s scientific integrity policy by backing Trump’s hand-drawn version of the forecast for 2019’s Hurricane Dorian. Trump’s modification to the National Weather Service’s forecast, drawn in a Sharpie, suggested the storm would hit Alabama.
Hurricane Dorian did not strike Alabama, instead making landfall in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on its northward track along the East Coast.
A copy of a letter informing Volz he was being placed on leave references an “investigation” into his “recent conduct,” though NOAA sources did not know what that may refer to. The letter came from acting NOAA administrator Laura Grimm.
It is not clear if Dillen’s letter also references an investigation. The Sharpiegate scandal appears to be the only significant event that links the two men, though the personnel moves could be coincidental.
“Mr. Dillen was placed on administrative leave by the department’s senior career attorney pending a review of performance issues over the past several weeks,” NOAA communications director Kim Doster told CNN. “Separately, Dr. Volz was placed on administrative leave on an unrelated matter.”
Jacobs has been nominated to become NOAA administrator in Trump’s current term, with a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee vote on his nomination scheduled to take place July 30.
Volz, who is the second-highest ranking civilian at NOAA and its longest-serving assistant administrator, has also been involved in responding to Trump’s “Gold Standard Science” executive order that may cause NOAA to change its scientific integrity policies.
He has also been steering the development of a multibillion-dollar next-generation series of NOAA weather satellites.
NOAA’s satellites division is at the center of debates over how much to rely on the private sector for space-based weather observations versus building often more expensive public satellite constellations. Volz has been a major proponent of continuing to rely mainly on NOAA operated satellites, while entering into data purchase agreements with private companies as well.
That work will now fall to his replacement, Irene Parker, the satellite division’s third-in-command and a close confidante of Jacobs, according to a former NOAA official.
Volz and Dillen’s personnel moves come at a precarious time for NOAA, when staff cuts and the proposal for steep budget reductions have lowered morale and led to questions about agency readiness for predicting and responding to extreme weather events. Some of these questions came to the forefront during the recent Texas flooding disaster due to reductions in National Weather Service personnel.
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