Carr Updates Lawmakers on FCC Staffing and DOGE Involvement
The FCC hasn’t experienced a large-scale workforce reduction and can still operate despite a roughly 6% decrease in staff between October and May, Chairman Brendan Carr said in letters to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Sent at the beginning of May, the letters were posted Thursday by the FCC. Carr was replying to March letters from Cantwell and Hoyer expressing concern about the effects of staff cuts and the involvement of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the FCC.
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“Given the lack of publicly available information regarding the governance, oversight, or operational structure of the DOGE, I am compelled to conduct rigorous oversight to determine the extent to which Federal agencies may be engaging with this entity,” wrote Cantwell in March.
Carr said in his response that the FCC’s reduction in staff can be “attributed to many factors,” including employees taking early retirement, the deferred resignation program created by the White House, and natural turnover. “I agree with President Trump: in order to effectively serve the American people, government agencies must operate more efficiently,” he said.
According to numbers Carr sent to Hoyer, 69 FCC employees opted for deferred resignation as of April 28, while 33 took early retirement, 42 took regular retirement, and 54 were “natural agency employment turnover.” There have also been 44 new hires since the start of FY 2025, the letter said, putting the employee count at 1,426 employees on April 28. Carr told Cantwell that he's drawing on his 12 years of experience at the agency to find ways to make it operate more efficiently, but he also invited two DOGE employees to the FCC “to get a fresh set of eyes on the way we operate.”