Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue faces 12 pointed questions from Senate Agriculture Committee leaders, including what legal authority allows him to move a research agency with 330 workers into his executive office.
Perdue said last month that he was realigning control of the Economic Research Service as part of a plan to move it and the 345-employee National Institute of Food and Agriculture out of the Washington area to save money and make it easier to recruit employees. In a letter, Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the committee, asked USDA to provide details about the decision. The Hagstrom Report first reported the letter.
Roberts and Stabenow said the 1994 USDA reorganization put ERS and NIFA in the portfolio of the undersecretary for research before asking Perdue to cite legal authority that permitted him to change the line of authority. Critics have warned of potential politicization of ERS by the move, since the agency, among its chores, analyzes the effectiveness of USDA programs.
“One of the concerns raised by stakeholders is that a large number of employees will be unable to relocate, causing a sharp loss of knowledgeable staff,” wrote Roberts and Stabenow. The proposed relocation could isolate ERS and NIFA from other federal researchers, they wrote.
Four Democrats on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USDA budget raised similar questions last week.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to hear from administration officials on Thursday about the trade war with China and other U.S. trading partners.