Each of the USDA agencies had about 325 employees before the moves and in both cases about half resigned, retired or took other jobs within the government in the Washington, D.C. area rather than relocate. Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
Loss of employees due to the relocations of two Agriculture Department agencies out of the national capital area to the Kansas City, Mo., area in 2019 reduced their productivity, the GAO has said in a report that echoes prior IG reports that also cited high turnover due to the moves.
The relocations of the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture were part of what the Trump administration had planned as wide-scale relocations that it said would put employees closer to the people they serve and save money. However, that effort stalled after the then-OMB director called turnover a desirable side-effect; that supported the arguments of federal employee unions and other critics that the main motivation was to weaken the agencies.
Each of the USDA agencies had about 325 employees before the moves and in both cases about half resigned, retired or took other jobs within the government in the Washington, D.C. area rather than relocate. “Coinciding with the loss of staff in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, ERS produced fewer key reports, and NIFA took longer to process grants,” the GAO said.
The ERS produced only about half the number of research reports and journal articles in 2020 compared with the years just before the move, while NIFA’s average time to process a grant rose from about 200 days to 235 days in 2019, although it then returned to the prior level, said the report.
It said that while staffing of both has largely recovered, employees overall have less experience. Before the move, about 80 percent of employees at each had been there more than two years, but by the end of fiscal 2021 about the same percentage had been there less than two years. In addition, the workforces are now less diverse, for example with those identifying Black or African American declining by about half in each.
“USDA minimally involved employees, Congress, and other key stakeholders in relocating the agencies. In addition, both agencies partially followed, or did not generally follow, many of the leading practices related to strategic workforce planning, training and development, and diversity management—practices that can help agencies meet their missions and strategic goals,” it added.
The relocation of some 250 Bureau of Land Management headquarters employees, mostly to Colorado, was the only other major move carried out under the Trump administration’s initiative. More than half of those affected employees did not relocate.
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