by USDA

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins July 24 announced the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), refocusing its core operations to better align with its founding mission of supporting American farming, ranching and forestry.

During the last four years, USDA’s workforce grew by 8%, employees’ salaries increased by 14.5%, and the department hired thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them. This occurred without any tangible increase in service to USDA’s core constituencies across the ag sector. USDA’s footprint in the National Capital Region (NCR) is underutilized and redundant, plagued by rampant overspending and decades of mismanagement and costly deferred maintenance, Rollins explained. President Trump has made it clear government needs to be scrutinized, and after this thorough review of USDA, the results show a bloated, expensive and unsustainable organization.

To be clear, all critical functions of the Department will continue uninterrupted, she said. For example, we are at the height of fire season, and, to date, have not only exceeded hiring goals, but have preserved the ability to continue to hire.

Earlier this year, Secretary Rollins issued a Secretarial Memorandum exempting National Security and Public Safety positions from the federal hiring freeze. These 52 position classifications carry out functions critical to the safety and security of the American people, national forests, and the inspection and safety of the nation’s agriculture and food supply system. These positions will not be eliminated. However, employees may be subject to relocation.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers and producers we are mandated to support. President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” said Secretary Rollins. “We will do so through a transparent and commonsense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services the American public relies on. We will do right by the great American people who we serve and with respect to the thousands of hardworking USDA employees who so nobly serve their country.”

The details of reorganization

The reorganization consists of four pillars:

• Ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with available financial resources and agricultural priorities.
• Bring USDA closer to its customers.
• Eliminate management layers and bureaucracy.
• Consolidate redundant support functions.

To bring USDA closer to the people it serves while also providing a more affordable cost of living for USDA employees, USDA has developed a phased plan to relocate much of its Agency headquarters and NCR staff out of the Washington, D.C., area to five hub locations.

The Department currently has approximately 4,600 employees within the NCR, which has one of the highest costs of living in the country, with a federal salary locality rate of 33.94%. The federal salary locality rate is a geographic-based adjustment to a base salary designed to account for differences in cost of living.

In selecting its hub locations, USDA considered where existing concentrations of USDA employees are located and factored in the cost of living. Washington, D.C., will still hold functions for every mission area of USDA at the conclusion of this reorganization, but USDA expects no more than 2,000 employees will remain in the NCR.

USDA will vacate and return to the General Services Administration the South Building, Braddock Place and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. It will revisit utilization and functions in the USDA Whitten Building, Yates Building and the National Agricultural Library. The George Washington Carver Center will be utilized until space optimization activities are completed.

These buildings have a backlog of costly deferred maintenance and currently are occupied below the minimum set by law. For example, the South Building has approximately $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance and has an average daily occupancy of less than 1,900 individuals for a building that can house more than 6,000 employees.

USDA’s five hub locations and current federal locality rates are:

1. Raleigh, N.C. (22.24%)
2. Kansas City, Mo. (18.97%)
3. Indianapolis, Ind. (18.15%)
4. Fort Collins, Colo. (30.52%)
5. Salt Lake City, Utah (17.06%)

In addition to these hubs, USDA will maintain administrative support locations in Albuquerque, N.M, and Minneapolis, Minn.; as well as service centers in Saint Louis, Mo.; Lincoln, Neb.; and Missoula, Mont.