California Democrats Urge Agriculture Branch to Pause Relocation
California Democrats are pressuring the Agriculture Department to stop work on relocating thousands of employees until Congress can comprehensively review and hold hearings on the effort.
Lawmakers wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that USDA’s “projected savings appear speculative at best when weighed against the substantial disruption and potential loss of institutional knowledge” in a Tuesday letter obtained exclusively by Bloomberg Government. The California delegation also questioned why the nation’s biggest agricultural producer wasn’t selected as one of the five regional hubs where Washington, DC-area staff will be sent.
“It is a disservice to our nation to neglect the top agriculture producing and exporting state,” letter co-leads Reps. Jim Costa, Adam Gray, and Salud Carbajal wrote. Adam Schiff, California’s first Senate Agriculture Committee member in decades, also signed on.
The missive is the latest in a string of lawmaker critiques, including from Republicans, that USDA failed to properly consult Congress before rolling out a restructuring plan that would move more than 2,000 employees out of the department’s headquarters. Rollins and other officials have said the effort is intended to make the department more efficient and save costs.
USDA’s Moves From DC Risk Hobbling Farm Policy, Critics Warn
Industry groups have warned that a staff overhaul could ensnare animal health and food safety threat responses while complicating coordination with other federal agencies. When the first Trump administration asked the employees of two USDA agencies to relocate to Kansas City, almost three-quarters of them quit, creating a backlog of grant approvals and economic data analysis.
A USDA spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Officials at USDA have already twice extended the deadline for public input on the project, which is now set for the end of September.