The Jamie L. Whitten federal building of the US Agricultural Ministry in Washington, DC, shown on December 18, 2017 (USDA photo from Preston Keres)
The US Agriculture Ministry plans to lower its presence in Washington, DC, by sending employees to five regional hubs, said secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday.
The department would like to reduce its workforce in the Columbia, Maryland and Virginia district from 4,600 to less than 2,000 and add workers to regional offices in Raleigh, North Carolina. Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; And Salt Lake City.
The department will also maintain administrative support locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Minneapolis and Agency Service Centers in St. Louis. Lincoln, Nebraska; and Missoula, Montana, according to A memorandum Signed by Rollins.
The efforts that the memo reads is expected to take years, the USDA will geographically get closer to its voters of farmers, livestocks and forums, said Rollins in one Press release.
“American agriculture feeds, clothing and fuels in this nation and the world, and it is for a long time that the department serve the big and patriotic farmers, cattle breeders and producers who support,” said Rollins.
“President Trump was chosen to make real changes in Washington, and we do exactly that by postponing our most important services outside of Beltway and to large American cities across the country. We will do this through a transparent and reasonable process in which USDA’s American public relations work preserves the critical health and public security services.”
The US Senator Todd Young, a Republican of Indiana, described the announcement “very exciting news for Hoosiers”.
“It is great to see how these services move outside of DC to places like Indiana that feed our nation”, he ” wrote on x.
TOP AG Democrat critical critical
The US MP Angie Craig, the top democrat in the House Agriculture Committee, struck the plan and said that he would reduce the department of the department and Rollins should have turned with the congress first.
The move of President Donald Trump’s first government to move the USDA’s economic research service and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture from Washington, DC, led to a “brain drainage” in the agencies, since 75% of the employees affected, said Craig.
“It is stupid and naive for the rest of USDA,” she said on Thursday. “Unfortunately, farmers pay the price by reducing the quality and amount of service that they already receive from the department.
She demanded a hearing on this topic, the chairman of the committee, the Republican of Pennsylvania, Glenn “GT” Thompson.
“The fact that the administration was not consulted with the congress about a planned restructuring of this size was unacceptable,” added Craig. “I ask the chairman Thompson to keep a hearing on this topic as soon as possible in order to receive answers. We have to hear from the affected stakeholders and know what data and analysis decisions are used to plan this reorganization.”
Wage prices
The USDA publication also appealed to the cost efficiency of the plan. If the department from the costly area of Washington, DC, is moved from the DC area from the area of additional payments in the region, they are entitled to, said the department.
Federal employees are entitled to a higher salary based on the cost of living in the city in which they are employed.
Washington has at the highest prices and increases payment for employees in this region by 33%. Apart from Fort Collins, whose workers also earn more than 30% more than their basic payment, the other Hub cities are in Raleigh in Salt Lake City in Salt Lake City.
The plan includes clearing several DC area office buildings that are overdue for vast maintenance projects, the department said.
The department plans to presence at the (*5*)Jamie L. Whitten federal building And Yates buildingBoth in DC and the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland.
It will be the rooms South building In DC, Braddock Place in Alexandria, Virginia, and Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland. The George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville is used as an additional office location during the restructuring, but also sold or transferred as soon as the reorganization is completed, the memo says.
According to the publication, each of USDA’s mission areas will still be present in the capital of the nation.
However, the plan includes the consolidation of several functions in regional offices to “eliminate management layers and bureaucracy,” said the memo.
Forestry
The US forest service, an essential USDA agency, will mainly run its nine regional offices in a single location in Fort Collins. According to Memo, the agency will keep a miniature civil office in Alaska and an eastern office in Athens, Georgia.
The agricultural research service will also consolidate 12 offices to the five regional hubs.
And a number of support functions would be centralized according to the memo.
