“I took a $20,000-a-year pay cut to leave a contractor’s position and return to civil service because I felt that was where I could make a bigger difference,” Risenhoover-Peterson told the Dayton Daily News.
Her termination was so abrupt that when she visited a VA office to return her work identification card, that office wasn’t aware that anyone would be doing that. “They were completely nonplussed,” she said.
Risenhoover-Peterson is caught up in President Donald Trump’s effort, with help from billionaire Elon Musk, to quickly and dramatically downsize the federal workforce — a major part of the region’s economy.
“I think this is probably the single largest mass layoff event we’ve ever had in U.S. history,” Andrew Stettner, former director of unemployment insurance modernization for the U.S. Department of Labor under former President Joe Biden, told this news outlet. “You have one employer laying all these people off within a three-month period. That’s what we call a mass layoff.”
A federal judge in Northern California in late February ordered the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to temporarily halt the mass firings of federal probationary employees, like Risenhoover-Peterson, saying such firings may be illegal.
“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said.
An evidentiary hearing in the case is set for March 13 — the same day President Trump has directed agencies to submit plans for a reduction in force.
But Alsup’s order was too late for Risenhoover-Peterson and one former Dayton-area IRS worker who also spoke with this news outlet.
Fed jobs major part of local economy
The local economy is more dependent on federal employment than any other part of Ohio.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has doubled its workforce in the past two decades and now employs 38,000 or so military and civilian employees.
According to numbers provided by the Economic Policy Institute, Ohio has nearly 81,000 workers employed by the federal government, based on U.S. Census and other data.
According to the state’s private job creation arm, JobsOhio, Ohio ranks third in the nation for Air Force civilian employees, fourth for Department of Defense civilian employees, and is home to 62,000 Department of Defense personnel, earning $3.3 billion in payroll.
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, said he’s confident Wright-Patterson, the largest employer of federal workers in the state — indeed, the largest single-site concentration of employment anywhere in Ohio —will emerge stronger from the administration’s recent cuts.
“As a community, we have been through BRAC (the Base Realignment and Closure process), we have been through (budgetary) sequestration, and now we are faced with probationary employee reductions,” Turner said in an interview at the Dayton Engineers' Club. “We have come out stronger, our base has grown because our missions are essential and our employees are quality and contributing to overall national security.”
According to a Congressional Research Service look at Census estimates, there are about 22,100-plus federal workers living in Turner’s congressional District 10, close to 6% of the overall workforce. (District 10 is Montgomery and Greene counties, plus part of Clark County.) This is higher than any other district in Ohio.
“In the end, I believe these impacts will be minimal,” Turner said. “And the net effect to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base will be long-term growth. The Trump administration projects, of the next four years, substantial increases in defense spending in all of the priority areas that impact Wright-Patterson.”
‘It really was bigger than me.’
Kettering resident Risenhoover-Peterson said she had had positive in-house performance appraisals at three, six and 10 months of employment with the Dayton VA, where she worked in nutrition and food services. She said she received a fiscal year performance review that rated her performance as “outstanding.”
Yet on Feb. 24, she received a memo saying her performance “had not met the burden to demonstrate that my further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.”
Risenhoover-Peterson said her initial feelings were “Worry for my service, worry for the veterans we serve. At nutrition and food services, we had a vacancy rate such that people were already covering additional duties and keeping plates spinning and were under a lot of pressure.”
She added, “It really was bigger than me.”
Her job title was “program support assistant.” She handled timecards for up to 90 people, tracked schedules and attendance, handled digitization of files, handled access and receptionist duties. She ordered bread so patients could have sandwiches, assisted with hiring and more.
“It was a lot. I loved that job. I loved doing the kind of work I felt made a difference,” she said. “There’s a saying — everyone wants to save the world but no one wants to help mom with the dishes. I felt I had a job where I could go in every day and help mom with the dishes.”
Today, she’s concerned about services to veterans, though she’s confident her former colleagues will step up.
The recent federal layoffs process feels like it’s “being done with no consideration of the reality of what people do. It’s happening so fast.”
“I just know it’s going to get harder and harder,” she said.
A former probationary IRS revenue agent laid off from a Dayton office in February spoke with this news outlet on condition of anonymity, saying she had heard what she called “rumors” of the incoming Trump administration’s priorities in November.
She said she was “hopeful” employees like her — whose work consists in securing revenue — might be spared.
“It didn’t really hit, I know for me, until that one moment when they said they’re doing all probationary employees, and your name is on the list,” she added.
“It left a little sour taste in your mouth for sure,” she said.
Neither she nor Risenhoover-Peterson signed non-disclosure agreements. Neither expects severance pay. Both were looking for new jobs, they said in recent interviews.
DOD priorities
Turner and others take some comfort in a memo leaked from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The memo, in part, outlined areas of emphasis for the Trump Department of Defense, areas that can be expected to be ripe for investment and exempt from cuts.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
According to Bloomberg, which first reported the leaked memo, the areas to be exempted from cuts include: border enforcement, the Virginia-class submarine, surface ship programs, homeland missile defense, the Air Force’s new Collaborative Combat Aircraft, one-way attack drones, cybersecurity, munitions and United States Indo-Pacific Command construction projects as well as private sector medical care.
Turner and others think some of those areas of exemption might coincide with Wright-Patterson’s areas of expertise.
“There are few of those that could be done at Wright-Patterson and some which aren’t clear,” said Michael Gessel, vice president of federal government programs for the Dayton Development Coalition.
“We’re also trying to follow programmatic decisions by the Air Force on weapons systems and broad categories of spending,” he added. “There are not clear answers to that.”
‘Impacts people’s lives and careers'
How the Air Force spends money will matter to Wright-Patterson.
Jamar King, a Dayton attorney practicing in the areas of business litigation and government contracts with Thompson Hine, said some of Trump’s recent executive orders may prove to be a boon to the Dayton area — the executive order mandating progress toward an “Iron Dome”-type missile defense system, for example. Or work toward leadership in the realm of artificial intelligence.
“There are going to be a ton of set-asides and sole-sources (contracts) for the smaller companies and even for those large players, even for the majors (companies),” King said. “They are going to have sub-contractors. There are a lot of Dayton-based companies that will be in a supply chain on those contracts, those large contracts.”
But no one is downplaying the seriousness of planned cuts.
“Obviously this review process is serious, and as a community, we have to be very concerned because it impacts people’s lives and careers,” Turner said. “I do believe that overall, as we look to the opportunities at Wright-Patterson ... we will see growth and long-term stability.”
Air Force process ‘more deliberative’
Gessel sought to make a broad distinction between defense and non-defense positions.
“From what I can tell, the cuts in the Defense Department are being approached more strategically,” Gessel said. “And there’s more opportunity for discussion. This is what I’m seeing.”
While the VA and the IRS, among other agencies, have seen cuts, reductions to defense positions (at this writing) appear to have been largely held off. Gessel’s impression is that Air Force leaders seem to be proceeding with care.
“I can just attest that the process that’s going on within the Air Force appears to be more deliberative,” he said.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
When it comes to Wright-Patterson itself, a representative of Air Force Materiel Command told the Dayton Daily News recently that, as of Feb. 21, no probationary termination notices have been sent to Air Force employees at Wright-Patt.
On that same day, the Department of Defense said it expected about 5,400 probationary workers to be released in the near term, a number that is less than 1% of the DOD workforce.
“We have not heard that cuts have taken place at Wright-Patterson yet,” Gessel said. “And we are in touch with Wright-Patterson officials.”
Gessel notes that while there is the Trump administration and its plans, there is also Congress, which is in the process of moving a budget bill that could add up to $150 billion to the DOD.
If the top budget line for the Air Force falls, there will be fewer growth opportunities for Wright-Patt, Gessel said. But if the top line stays steady, that could spell opportunity for the base.
“There is always change in the Defense Department and at Wright-Patterson,” Gessel said. “But what we’re seeing is greater change, and it’s taking place at a faster pace.”
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