With the news of the Bureau of Land Management relocating its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado WINS Executive Director Hilary Glasgow issued the following statement:

“I am pleased to see so much support from the public and our elected officials for the relocation of the BLM headquarters to Colorado. I want to welcome the dozens of public employees who are relocating here from Washington, DC, and I’m thrilled to hear that our counterparts in the federal government will call Grand Junction home.

“I also want to recognize what others, including Sen. Cory Gardner, Rep. Scott Tipton and Gov. Jared Polis, have already said: the federal employees coming to Grand Junction are going to provide a significant economic boost to the area by diversifying the economy and boosting wages. Public employees are indeed a crucial part of any local economy and Coloradans benefit from the work of public employees on all levels of government.

“That’s why we call on our elected officials to invest in our public employees, whether they are at the state, county, municipal, or federal level. People who work for the state dedicate their lives to improving our communities, providing necessary services to our most vulnerable neighbors, and making Colorado the best state in our nation. In return, we ask that the state keep its promises by allowing all employees to make a decent living, spend time with our families, and retire with dignity.

“Meanwhile, one in five state jobs in Colorado is open, the salaries of state employees are nine percent behind private sector on average, and workers have no channels to talk directly to management to improve the services they deliver. We need to appreciate our state workers the same way we appreciate the BLM employees who will soon call Colorado home: by recognizing their important work and valuing their economic and policy contributions to our society.”

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