USDA defends secretive rollout of reorganization plan

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2 days ago

The Department of Agriculture deliberately kept lawmakers in the dark about its plan to reorganize the agency for fear the information would leak out if shared with their offices, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden told a Senate committee Wednesday.
Vaden, the USDA's No. 2 official behind Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, said at a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing that officials took the secretive approach out of 'common courtesy and respect' to the department's nearly 100,000 employees whom officials wanted to inform first about the sweeping plan.
'There was a thought to that,' Vaden said, responding to complaints from Democrats and Republicans alike about the lack of prior consultation with Congress.
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'The employees are the ones who are most directly affected by the secretary's decision,' Vaden said. 'They should hear that decision from the secretary first, and not from a leak that originated from somewhere else.'
The surprise nature of the reorganization announced last Thursday was a flash point at the hearing, where a few Republicans joined Democrats in expressing displeasure that the Trump administration didn't involve them in the decision.
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said the committee learned of the plan just minutes before it was announced.
Vaden's assertion that concern for employees was the top priority fell flat with the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents USDA workers. The department didn't consult in advance with labor representatives either, although consultation is required by federal law when an agency seeks to reorganize and relocate workers, said an AFGE spokesperson, Tim Kauffman.
The USDA plan includes relocating about 2,600 of the agency's 4,600 Washington-area employees to five regional hubs to be created from North Carolina to Utah.
'The heart of USDA is in the field,' Vaden said, noting that 90 percent of agency workers are already located away from the nation's capital.
Big plans, big questions
The department's South Office Building in Washington would be closed, but the Jamie L. Whitten headquarters building with top-level management would be retained.
The USDA research station at Beltsville, Maryland, would close over the course of a yet-to-be-determined number of years, and the Forest Service would dismantle its nine regional offices and shift a yet-to-be-determined number of employees to other locations.
In all, the plan would save the department around $4 billion, Vaden said, although he didn't offer an estimate of upfront costs. A reduction in force isn't planned, the USDA has said, although Rollins projected as many as half of Washington-area employees may elect not to relocate.
Few new details about the plan emerged at the hearing, where Vaden fended off vigorous complaints from Democrats and tried to reassure a few skeptical Republicans that officials will collaborate with them from now on.
'The consultation process has just begun,' Vaden said after taking a verbal lashing from Klobuchar, who'd asked whether the agency had run its ideas past the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union, or White House Office of Management and Budget.
Vaden didn't directly answer whether the Farm Bureau — the nation's biggest lobbying group for farmers — had any input. He said the agency hadn't consulted with the NFU.
Senate Agriculture ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had sharp words for the Agriculture Department's reorganization plan. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Officials did submit a plan to OMB, Vaden said, although it wasn't clear if the submission to OMB is the same one the department announced in a news release.
'A plan was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, and they're aware of our current plan,' Vaden said.
Klobuchar called the announcement a 'half-baked plan with no notice' that would exacerbate the strain caused by the administration's push to reduce the USDA workforce — an effort that's yielded some 15,000 departures so far, mostly through deferred resignations.
Klobuchar, who like other Democrats opposed Vaden's nomination a matter of weeks ago, reminded him that he'd struck a tone of coordination with the committee at his confirmation hearing earlier this year.
'I did not vote for you,' Klobuchar said, 'but I did think that you would go in based on your experience and be able to do things that would actually help rural America.'
She added, 'I actually took you at your word when you had pledged to work with us on things that would help. That's not what happened here when we had absolutely no notice about what you were going to do.'
'Washington is cost-prohibitive'
Some Republicans took issue with not being consulted as well. Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Deb Fischer of Nebraska said they wished the agency had shared the news ahead of time, if for no other reason than to let their states make a case for becoming a hub location.
Hoeven, chair of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, added that the reorganization will have upfront costs that could be addressed in spending bills for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Those bills have already moved through congressional committees.
'It's going to change your funding needs,' Hoeven said.
Hoeven, too, pointed to the contrast between the USDA's unilateral strategy now and its approach during the first Trump administration to relocate the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture from the nation's capital to Kansas City, Missouri.
In that move — which Vaden helped craft as the USDA's chief counsel at the time — the department hired an outside consultant to conduct a competition that communities could enter.
A total of 136 parties in 35 states, and some of their elected leaders in Washington, made the case for hosting ERS or NIFA. The USDA picked Kansas City based on lower costs of living and other factors after a nearly yearlong review.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) pointed out that the reorganization would have an impact on annual appropriations. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO
'That's kind of what we're looking for this time,' Hoeven said at Wednesday's hearing, adding that the USDA would have no hub offices within 600 miles of North Dakota. 'And we're in the heart of ag country.'
Vaden said the five hub locations — Fort Collins, Colorado; Salt Lake City; Indianapolis, Raleigh, North Carolina; and Kansas City — make sense because of lower costs of living, already-in-place USDA workforces and proximity to rural areas, measures the department also cited in selecting Kansas City for the ERS and NIFA moves.
'The cost of living here in Washington is cost-prohibitive,' Vaden said, adding that officials want to encourage employees to spend their careers with the USDA and make their salaries go further.
On the merits of the plan, Vaden faced a more mixed, and often friendly, reception.
Klobuchar was the most critical, questioning why the USDA would seek to shutter and consolidate research facilities, and potentially lose researchers in the process, on the heels of deep cuts already in place or proposed.
But Vaden pushed back, saying the plan would close only four research facilities out of 94 across the country. Work now done at the Beltsville facility would continue in other locations, he said.
The reorganization and closing of buildings has solid legal grounds as well, Vaden said. Buildings need to be at least 60 percent occupied — a requirement the targeted Washington buildings don't meet — and agencies offices are supposed to be as close as possible to constituents, he said.
The 60-percent threshold, Vaden added, is in the 'Use It Act,' which was part of the Water Resources Development Act, and signed by then-President Joe Biden in January.
'That is exactly what USDA is choosing to do, follow the law this body passed,' Vaden said.
'A political calculation'
Vacating four buildings in Washington will save the USDA around $2.2 billion in deferred maintenance costs, Vaden said. He said officials don't yet know how much will be saved through less expensive rent on leased buildings in the hub areas.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they endorse the idea of having USDA employees closer to constituents and support more efficient operations.
Vaden didn't offer much detail on how specific USDA agencies will be affected. The plan is still being ironed out, he said. But he said the Salt Lake City location will be important for the Forest Service as that agency's nine-region office structure is abandoned.
The Forest Service plans won't interrupt wildfire operations, Vaden said. Officials picked the USDA hubs in part to support the Forest Service 'and especially its aviation needs,' Vaden said.
He said the department wants to build on the Forest Service's presence in locations such as Colorado and Utah, although the plan doesn't put Forest Service leadership in California or the Pacific Northwest.
California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, lamented what he said looks like an extended political swipe at his state. Vaden denied that was the case.
California faces the possible closure of a USDA research facility, has seen conservation grants for farmers canceled and was deemed ineligible for the latest round of farm disaster aid, Schiff said.
'It's hard not to perceive this as a political calculation rather than one that's in the best interest of farmers, given our dominance in agriculture,' Schiff said.
Vaden said the latest round of disaster aid was targeted at farmers with crop insurance, and that a later round will address specialty crop growers like those in California — and that politics didn't play a role.
'That's not the case at all,' Vaden said.
Contact this reporter on Signal at hellmarcman.49.