Ag Dept.’s science agencies in limbo
A plan to move two Agriculture Department scientific agencies from Washington to the Kansas City area — Missouri or Kansas — may have run afoul of the 2018 appropriations act, according to a report released this week from the USDA’s Office of Inspector General.
In August 2018, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unveiled a plan to relocate the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which oversees $1.7 billion in scientific grants and funding, and the Economic Research Service, a federal statistical agency that publishes influential reports on agricultural trade and rural America. Both agencies lease office space in the District.
USDA selected the Kansas City region as the new home for these agencies in June 2019, in what Perdue has billed as a cost-saving decision. Two-thirds of nearly 400 employees refused the reassignment and will lose their jobs.
“This is the brain drain we all feared, possibly a destruction of the agencies,” Jack Payne, University of Florida’s vice president for agriculture and natural resources, told The Washington Post last month.
The department has the legal authority to move the agencies, per the USDA inspector general’s investigation. But USDA also needs budgetary approval from Congress to fund the moves, the inspector general’s office said, which the department did not obtain.
In the fall, USDA awarded a $340,000 contract to the accounting firm Ernst & Young to assist with the relocation. The 2018 omnibus spending bill required USDA to receive congressional approval before spending this money. “That prior approval did not appear to have been granted,” per the new report.
This expense may have also violated the Antideficiency Act, the report said, which prevents federal employees from involving the government “in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made.”
In a list of recommendations in the report, the inspector general’s office advised USDA to seek congressional approval.
USDA management refused to do so.