By JIM RUTLEDGE

D.C. Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The USDA is expected next month to name the new sites to house an estimated 700 federal employees from the agency’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – moving the critical operations out of the nation’s capital.

In the plan announced in August and in the months since, the USDA has met widespread protests and outrage from former top USDA officials and hundreds of agricultural community leaders, farm and industry organizations and academics.

The move, the USDA reaffirmed in an email to Farm World, said the relocation “will place important USDA resources closer to the many stakeholders, (like farmers), most of whom live and work far from the Washington, D.C., area.” Additionally the agency said: “Taxpayers will realize significant savings on employment costs and rent, which will allow more employees to be retained in the long run.”

Since the announcement, the USDA has received 136 proposals to house the ERS and NIFA from 35 states, many from cities and universities throughout the Midwest. Helping the agency to examine the proposals and select the new locations is the accounting firm Ernst & Young. The proposals came from localities from Maryland to California, North Dakota to Texas.

The USDA did not respond to repeated inquiries seeking a status on the site selections and who were the finalists to house the relocated departments. The government said it hopes to complete the moves by the end of 2019.

Dozens of letters of protest have been sent to members of Congress and to the USDA questioning the planned move, the latest dated November and signed by 60 major organization urging Congressional appropriation committee members prohibit USDA from using fiscal year 2019 funding for the relocation.

None of the lawmakers in leadership committee posts on the Senate or House appropriation subcommittees responded to inquiries from Farm World about the matter.

In the letter last month, a former ERS administrator under presidents George W. Bush and Obama, Katherine Smith Evans, said, “USDA’s justification for this upheaval of evidence-based policymaking is completely lacking.”

Susan Offutt, another ERS administrator under presidents Bush and before him, Clinton, said, “The USDA’s evidence-lite justification for USDA to so radically uproot its world-class research, economics and statistical agencies is the reason the ERS should be kept in Washington, D.C., and in the USDA research arm. We need its objective and respected analysis to support evidence-based policymaking in our $1 trillion food, agriculture and rural economy.”

And another former ERS administrator, John Lee, of the Reagan-Bush years, said, “Major relocation of a significant portion of the staff will result in many separations and a disastrous loss of expertise, which could take years to recover.”

A month earlier, nearly 50 organizations and farm groups, including the 200,000-member National Farmers Union, sent a similar letter to the leaders of the House and Senate finance committees asking for an investigation to examine the plan.

Two major farm associations that did not sign the letter were the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc. In replies to inquiries, spokesmen from each said their groups had not taken a position on the USDA’s plans, although the AFBF said there were various opinions among its staff members.

If the USDA moves ahead with the moves, the department said no current USDA employees would be involuntarily laid off. Employees will be offered relocation assistance and will receive the same base pay as before; the locality will pay for the new location. About 91 percent of the entire agency’s 108,000 employees currently work outside of the Washington, D.C., region, the USDA stated.