The U.S. Department of Energy will allow the Bonneville Power Administration to reinstate 89 “probationary” employees and could provide the federal power agency exemptions from the Office of Personnel Management’s reductions in force (RIF) order, a BPA representative has confirmed to RTO Insider.

“We are working to get more exemptions from the RIF,” the representative said March 6.

The representative said they believed the 89 reinstatements would be in addition to the 40 probationary staffers already restored to their positions.

The move comes after OPM updated its guidance to department heads, saying that it was up to them whether to fire such workers.

Despite BPA’s status as a self-funding federal agency, its staff in January received the same “deferred resignation” buyout offer from President Donald Trump’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, immediately setting off alarms in the electricity sector about the impact on the region’s grid reliability. (See BPA Employees Confront Trump’s ‘Fork in the Road’.)

During a quarterly business review call Feb. 13, BPA Administrator John Hairston said about 200 agency employees — or 6% of the workforce — had accepted the Trump administration’s buyout offer, while 90 job offers had been rescinded following a federal hiring freeze announced Jan. 20.

Last month, Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both Democrats of Oregon, called on the Trump administration to justify what they called “reckless” and “financially ludicrous” cutbacks that could compromise BPA’s ability to maintain grid reliability. (See Ore. Senators Ask Trump to Justify ‘Reckless’ Job Cuts at BPA.)

Scott Simms, executive director of the Portland, Ore.-based Public Power Council, previously told RTO Insider that he estimated BPA faced a loss of about 400 staff, which included resignations and the firing of probationary employees. Simms also warned about massive cutbacks of vital technical positions at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that physically operates most of the hydroelectric dams in the Northwest. (See 2 Top BPA Execs to Depart; Army Corps of Engineers also Faces Massive Cutbacks.)

Asked what might have turned the tide for BPA, Simms said: “While I have no direct knowledge of how a potential RIF may or not be considered for BPA, I am certain that the extensive industry and congressional outreach about the critical nature of the work BPA does — and the fact that it is a ratepayer-funded and not taxpayer-funded federal agency — really moved the needle on the probationary employee reinstatement.”

Simms added that the PPC is “incredibly grateful to DOE for hearing that message and for taking action to restore these critical workers to their jobs, and we are hopeful that as government-wide RIFs are considered, BPA and its federal generating agency partners can be exempted because of their important missions.”