The Agriculture Department is planning to move significantly more of its employees out of the D.C. metro area than it did under the first Trump administration \u2014 and officials expect this relocation to go smoother than the last one.<\/p>\n
USDA announced last week<\/a> that it will relocate more than half of its employees in the national capital region to five hubs across the country: Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah.<\/p>\n Under the first Trump administration, USDA tried moving hundreds of employees at its two research bureaus to Kansas City. But\u00a0more than half of the employees<\/a> at the Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture who received relocation notices left the agency rather than move to Kansas City.<\/p>\n USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden said he expects \u201cmore than a majority\u201d of employees who receive relocation notices this time around will agree to move \u2014 in part because mass layoffs across the federal workforce are making the job search much more challenging in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cI think many of them will choose to come, because given cuts made by other federal agencies here in Washington, D.C., the job market isn\u2019t what it once was here,\u201d Vaden on Wednesday told the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. \u201cI think that the exciting opportunity these new hubs provide [is] for them to actually be able to own a home affordably and grow and expand their family with a lower cost of living.\u201d<\/p>\n The USDA is also letting go more than 15,000 employees from the agency later this year, after they accepted deferred resignation and early retirement offers.<\/p>\n USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told employees the agency is \u201cnot conducting a large-scale workforce reduction\u201d of nonvoluntary layoffs. But in a memo, she wrote that \u201cfocused and limited reductions in force will be implemented only if needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Vaden told lawmakers he doesn\u2019t expect the upcoming relocations will lead to appreciably more employees leaving the agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWe made a commitment that if employees go with us to these new locations, they\u2019ve got a job, and we\u2019re planning to have an office for them there. That\u2019s what we\u2019re planning for now. Whether every employee will voluntarily decide to come with us, I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The department\u2019s relocation plans are much broader in scope than what happened under the first Trump administration. But Vaden said USDA \u201clearned some lessons\u201d from the ERS-NIFA relocation effort in the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the most important lessons that we learned was, instead of looking all over the map, literally for where we should go if we\u2019re looking to relocate, the first thing we should do is see where we already are and where we already have office space available and a core set of employees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n Vaden said the reorganization plan will allow USDA to recruit the next generation of its workforce, adding that the \u201cprohibitive\u201d cost of living in the D.C. makes it hard to keep employees.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment employees cannot afford to start a quality life in Washington, D.C., but they most certainly can in Indianapolis, Indiana,\u201d Vaden said.<\/p>\n Trump promised to relocate as many as 100,000 federal employees<\/a> out of D.C. during his reelection campaign, and relocate them \u201cto places filled with patriots who love America.\u201d<\/p>\n Other agencies, however, face a steep bill to relocate relatively few employees. The Office of Personnel Management, for example, expects to spend $42 million to relocate about 250 employees, <\/a>spending about $166,000 to relocate each employee.<\/p>\n Vaden said USDA will cover relocation expenses for employees \u201cwithin the bounds set by Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe heart of USDA is in the field, and the maximum number of people possible should report to work there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) said USDA employees are often the \u201cmost visible face of the federal government in rural America,\u201d and that their presence in these communities \u201cneeds to be preserved and empowered.\u201d<\/p>\n Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) dismissed the reorganization as a \u201chalf-baked plan\u201d that USDA leadership released without consultation from Congress.<\/p>\n The USDA inspector general\u2019s office found that the agency may have broken the law<\/a> by not getting congressional approval before relocating NIFA and ERS employees to Kansas City.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n The Government Accountability Office found<\/a> that ERS and NIFA were less productive after the move to Kansas City, and took longer to produce economic forecasts and process grants.<\/p>\n \u201cThis means farmers didn\u2019t get timely economic information, and researchers were left waiting for critical research funding. This reorganization plan would create similar chaos, but on a much grander scale,\u201d Klobuchar said.<\/p>\n Vaden said criticism of the USDA reorganization is overblown. About 90% of USDA employees already work outside of the D.C. area. Vaden said about 2,200 USDA employees in the D.C. area left or retired from the agency under the Biden administration, but said there was no \u201coutcry\u201d from Congress about those departures.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is insulting to suggest that the more than 90% of USDA employees who clock in every day outside of Washington, D.C. are somehow less important than the people who do the same in Washington, D.C,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Vaden said lawmakers found out about USDA\u2019s reorganization plans when the agency shared them with employees last week. USDA, he added, is gathering feedback from lawmakers following the release of the plan.<\/p>\n \u201cThe employees are the ones who are most directly affected by the Secretary\u2019s decision. Out of common courtesy and respect, they should hear that decision from the secretary first, and not from a leak that originates from somewhere else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Vaden said USDA still has broad authority to carry out its reorganization, based on legislation Congress passed more than 70 years ago.<\/p>\n