USDA's cost-cutting relocations raise service disruption concerns
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says shifting thousands of D.C.-based staff to regional offices will save money without interrupting critical services. Others aren't so sure.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says shifting thousands of D.C.-based staff to regional offices will save money without interrupting critical services. Others aren't so sure.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says shifting thousands of D.C.-based staff to regional offices will save money without interrupting critical services. Others aren't so sure.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing for a major shakeup that involves shifting thousands of employees from the nation's capital to regional hubs spread out across the country.
The reorganization plan aims to save taxpayer dollars, but critics fear it will slow down the delivery of services, during President Donald Trump's first term.
The administration is also facing pushback from one top Republican for not looping in Congress about the plan sooner. A Senate Agriculture Committee
"The best way to serve our agriculture community is by working together, so it’s disappointing USDA didn’t share its plans in advance of this announcement," said Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas.
Thursday's says USDA's footprint in the National Capital Region is "redundant" and "plagued by rampant overspending." It says several buildings are underutilized and have lengthy backlogs of costly deferred maintenance.
That's why USDA wants to vacate several office spaces and move roughly 2,600 staff members ― more than half of the Washington, D.C.-based workforce ― to five regional hubs. Those locations include Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah.
"Ninety percent of our employees are already located outside of the DC area, and this move continues to best position USDA closer to our core constituents," said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a "We will carry out this re-organization through a transparent, common-sense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services that the American public relies on."
USDA didn't respond to an interview request for Rollins on Friday.
Chad Hart, a professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State University, said the plan could lead to a loss of senior staff.
"We will likely see a brain drain out of USDA. Not everybody is going to just want to pick up and move to some of these regional centers," Hart said.
A suggests that's what happened during President Donald Trump's first term. In 2019, USDA relocated two research agencies ― the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) ― to Kansas City.
"ERS's and NIFA's workforce size and productivity temporarily declined," the report said. "Coinciding with the loss of staff in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, ERS produced fewer key reports, and NIFA took longer to process grants."
The report said operations largely recovered by the end of fiscal year 2021, though the workforce was composed mostly of new employees with less experience after the transition.
Asked about the new reorganization plan, the American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement, "It is very important that USDA ensure the delivery of essential services and programs for farmers is not disrupted."
That's the likely outcome, according to Gbenga Ajilore, who served under the Biden administration as a senior advisor for rural development at USDA. He's also concerned about more than 15,000 employees who opted to leave their jobs voluntarily in response to the Trump administration's incentives to slim down the federal government.
"A lot of these jobs were in these small, rural towns that were close to the farmers. So now we have these conflicting aims, where you're moving people out of Washington, D.C., to these large metro regions and not actually getting to the smaller towns," Ajilore said.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said there is value in having agency staff based in D.C.
"It facilitates needed coordination between senior leadership and field offices and ensures agencies are at the seat of the table when decisions are made at the White House and in Congress," Kelley said.
Rollins said this is only the first phase of a multi-month process. Over the next month, USDA senior leadership will notify offices with more information on relocation to one of the regional hubs.
