The Dept. of Government Efficiency has set its sights on a federal lease in Schuylkill County.
DOGE, according to its official website, says it is terminating 748 federal leases and saving about $468 million. In Schuylkill County, there’s one site on the list, the Mine Safety and Health Administration Field Office at Mall Rd., New Castle Township.
The total cost of the annual lease for the MSHA office here is $132,547. Terminating the lease would save the federal government $55,228. The DOGE website says the lease was terminated “via Mass Mod” or Mass Modification.
An MSHA district office in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, and a Field Office in Waynesburg, Greene County, are also on DOGE’s list of Pennsylvania leases to be terminated. That leaves MSHA Field Offices in Clearfield, Clearfield County, and Indiana, Indiana County, as the only two such facilities untouched by DOGE in the state.
MSHA’s mission, according to its website, is to prevent death, illness, and injury as a result of mining. It “develops and enforces safety and health rules for all US mines.”
To date, DOGE claims to have saved about $105 billion through a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions, according to the agency’s official site. That savings equates to $652.17 per taxpayer.
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E.A.Kelly
March 14, 2025 at 1:09 pm
OH my MSHA closing offices, thats all fine and dandy to save money. Now the question remains, what happens when things go side ways in Washington Greene and Westmorland counties, when something at Bailey or one of the extensions, has a fire or injury or fatality? Most of my adult life has been underground and 34 years of that as an MSHA inspector. I have no doubt this will resolve it self, but for now this is bad JuJu.