By ANN HINCH

Associate Editor

INDIANAPOLIS — On Friday, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Indiana was one of three states to which the agency’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) offices might potentially move.

In August 2018, the USDA sought applications for relocating these divisions, which contain approximately 600 federal employees from Washington, D.C. “We have looked critically at the way we do business, and the ultimate goal of ensuring the best service possible for our customers, and for the taxpayers,” Perdue said at the time, for the reason behind the relocation.

“This has meant realigning some of our offices and functions, or even relocating them, in order to make more logical sense or provide more streamlined and efficient services.” This would also put ERS under the independent authority of the Office of Chief Economist.

The agency informed ERS and NIFA employees none of them would be voluntarily laid off, though most would have to relocate to a new city. If they want to keep their jobs, it said it would provide them with relocation assistance and the same base pay, but workers could face a pay cut if the new locality living rate is lower than what they currently receive.

USDA received 136 applications from 35 states wanting to house the two divisions. Multiple sites in Indiana are under consideration, from applicants including Purdue University, the Indiana Economic Development Corp., and state government.

The other two finalist sites are the Research Triangle region in North Carolina and the Greater Kansas City region at the Kansas-Missouri border. Two additional sites the USDA are holding as alternatives are St. Louis, Mo., and Madison, Wis.

“This short list of locations took into consideration critical factors required to uphold the important missions of ERS and NIFA,” Perdue said. “We also considered factors important to our employees, such as quality of life.” Other factors are local costs of doing business, unemployment and labor growth rates, and logistics and IT (information tech) infrastructure.

Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office said of Friday’s news, “The Hoosier State has a rich tradition of agriculture and is well-positioned for continued growth and momentum. We're training tomorrow's workforce and developing new solutions to solve critical challenges.

“Indiana would be the perfect place for USDA to call home, and we look forward to working with them as they continue to narrow their list of potential sites.”

The move has its opponents, as well. The American Statistical Assoc. (ASA) has been vocal in its criticism of the proposed move for months. Last year it argued the move “undermines evidence-based policymaking in the food, agriculture, and rural sectors of our economy and society” and that shifting ERS from being an information-providing arm of the USDA to a policy-supporting function in the secretary’s office “jeopardizes ERS’ reputation for providing policy-neutral reports, information, and statistics.”

“If relocated, it is likely to take years for ERS to rebuild its staff and programs to the same high (level of) quality it is now,” ASA President Lisa LaVange said in December.

“Any gains that USDA asserts will result from relocating ERS and NIFA away from our nation’s research, food, and agricultural policymaking are overwhelmingly outweighed by the detrimental impacts,” said ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein on Friday. “Further, USDA has neither made a compelling case for such an upheaval nor listened to their own stakeholders, experts, and leaders.”

The Agricultural & Applied Economics Assoc. (AAEA) also weighed in, calling on the Trump administration to conduct “a rigorous benefit-cost analysis of its relocation/reorganization plans for ERS.”

In February, ASA, AAEA, and more than 50 other organizations – many related to science and/or agriculture – signed a letter to Congress containing these concerns. Two months before that, former USDA chief scientists under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama joined numerous other former federal agency officials and university agricultural deans and administrators in a letter outlining their concerns over the restructuring and relocation.

In mid-February, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) filed House Resolution 1221, the Agriculture Research Integrity Act, intended to prevent USDA from moving the authority of any of its Research, Education, and Economics mission divisions to elsewhere within the agency – and from moving their headquarters outside D.C.

Concerning location, the bill states the majority of the staff of each division needs to be in the D.C. region “to ensure maximum coordination and interaction with each other such agency.”

“Uprooting these key agencies is absolutely unnecessary and risks weakening them when our nation’s food system and agricultural economy need them most,” Pingree said at the time. “My colleagues and I have repeatedly sent this message to (Perdue). Since he’s forging ahead regardless of our feedback, or the concerns of the nation’s agriculture research scientists, this bill is a necessary step.”

The bill has 16 Democratic cosponsors – including Reps. Marcia Fudge of Ohio and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan – but so far it has only been referred to the House Ag Subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research.