The U.S. Department of Agriculture will move most of its Washington, D.C., employees out of the capital and closer to farmers, ranchers, and producers.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made the announcement on Thursday, which noted that the USDA’s workforce increased by 8% over the last four years, with salaries raised by 14.5%, resulting in “hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them,” according to the department.
“This all occurred without any tangible increase in service to USDA’s core constituencies across the agricultural 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.”
The USDA’s announcement also said that its critical functions will continue to be uninterrupted.
The department has 4,600 employees in the capital region, but is looking to keep no more than 2,000 in the area.
Moving the staff to five hub locations around the country will also decrease costs for USDA, as the federal salary locality rate for the D.C. area is nearly 34%. The other locations have federal salary locality rates that range from 17% to nearly 31%.
The five hub locations that most of the staff in the capital region will move to are Fort Collins, Colorado; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Salt Lake City.
USDA said that it will also vacate the South Building, Braddock Place, and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in D.C.
The department will also “revisit utilization and functions in the USDA Whitten Building, Yates Building, and the National Agricultural Library. The George Washington Carver Center will also be utilized until space optimization activities are completed.”
“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,” Rollins said in a statement on Thursday.
“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. We will do so through a transparent and common-sense 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.”
