A large crowd of employees welcomed Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Interior headquarters on Jan. 21, a day after his Senate confirmation. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar promised them he would bring positive change to what he called the “Department of America.”
Secretary Salazar then joined
President Obama and Vice President Biden at a formal White House swearing-in
ceremony and, later in the day, met with the acting leadership of the
department.
"Together, all of us in this department, in its agencies and in its
bureaus are going to be part of changing the world for the better,"
Salazar told Interior employees. “Fundamentally, the branding of this
department will change because this is the Department of America, not the
Department of the West,” he said.
Salazar noted the change would be evident in what the department does in
historic preservation, in parks and conservation and in helping build the
nation’s clean-energy economy.
Salazar then met with senior departmental career employees and acting assistant secretaries. He introduced his chief of staff, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado Tom Strickland.
“This is a particularly special moment for me,” Salazar said in a memo to all employees later in the day. Noting his family’s ranch in the rural San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, Salazar wrote, “My parents taught me and my seven brothers and sisters the values of hard work, service and stewardship. Through four centuries in New Mexico and Colorado, my ancestors taught us that to preserve the balance that allowed us to farm and ranch, generation after generation, we had to serve as good stewards of the water, soil, and wildlife around us.”
Salazar complimented Interior employees for helping the Inauguration run smoothly on the Mall and on their public service.
The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Salazar to become the 50th secretary of Interior on Jan. 20. Salazar previously served as Colorado’s U.S. senator, attorney general and director of Natural Resources.