By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. auto safety agency is shedding more than 25% of its employees under financial incentive programs to depart the government offered by the Trump administration, according to data provided to Congress seen by Reuters.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Transportation Department, is shrinking from 772 employees as of May 31 to 555 under the program. The Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration are also both losing more than 25% of their staff.
Representative Rick Larsen, top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, expressed concerns about the cuts, questioning how USDOT can “expedite project delivery and advance safety with a decimated workforce.”
Overall, USDOT is losing just over 4,100 employees dropping from nearly 57,000 to 52,862, with the Federal Aviation Administration shedding 2,137 and falling from about 46,250 to 44,208.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that the department did not cut any safety-critical employees and is actively seeking to add air traffic controllers.
USDOT and NHTSA did not immediately comment. It is unclear if the Transportation Department still plans to conduct a layoff program on top of the early retirement departures.
NHTSA has a number of ongoing investigations into advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicles involving Tesla, Alphabet’s Waymo and other companies.
Consumer advocacy groups on Thursday urged lawmakers to drop proposed cuts to NHTSA’s budget, including cutting its operations and research account by over $10 million “harming the agency’s ability to conduct rulemaking, enforcement actions, and research and analysis.”
It would also cut nearly $78 million of supplemental funds from the $1 billion 2021 infrastructure law. Groups said they were “particularly concerned that such funding cuts may lead to further firings or forced retirements, which have decimated NHTSA.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Aurora Ellis)
