Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue aims to announce the new homes for two USDA research agencies in early 2019, potentially relocating them as far away as California to save money and make it easier to recruit workers. The inspector general, however, will review whether Perdue can act on his own, announced two lawmakers.
Perdue was unprecedented in his decision to relocate the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture “without going through normal procedures and omitting required considerations, such as a robust cost-benefit analysis,” said Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton in announcing the review. “The Administration’s motivations for the proposed relocations appear suspicious because of the absence of an adequate explanation for the proposed relocation or where to move the agencies … We are also concerned about the harm this proposal would cause to the USDA’s mission and its impact on over 700 federal employees.”
The USDA says the relocation would save money on rent and salaries, reduce staff turnover due to high living costs in the Washington area and put analysts closer to the food and ag sector. As part of the “re-alignment,” Perdue would take direct control of the ERS, whose work includes analysis of USDA programs. NIFA awards more than $1 billion a year in research grants.
In a letter to Phyllis Fong, inspector general of USDA, Hoyer and Norton said USDA has provided little information to explain the proposed relocation. They also said USDA is obliged to obtain approval from Congress before it can spend money on a relocation. They questioned why USDA acted on its own rather than seeking office space through the General Services Administration. Perdue told senators that the relocation is “an internal operational decision.”
The USDA has received 136 “expressions of interest” from 35 states, with sites ranging from the Central Valley of California to college towns in the Farm Belt and locations just outside the Washington Beltway.
“We have to move quickly,” said Perdue a week ago, in order to complete the move as planned by the end of 2019. Critics say there is no compelling need to move the agencies, that USDA over-stated staff turnover at ERS and NIFA, and that relocation would unduly separate USDA researchers from colleagues in other federal departments.