Reformatted, emphasis mine:
USDA staffers quit en masse as Trump administration eyes moving offices out of DC
Employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are quitting at a rapid clip as Secretary Sonny Perdue prepares to move forward with plans to relocate two offices far outside the Washington, D.C., Beltway. Federal employees at the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – two small but important agencies within the USDA – are unhappy with Perdue’s plan, announced last August, to move the majority of their staff from current offices in the capital to an area closer the country’s agricultural centers.
Well, it IS the US Department of Agriculture, right? And if your customers / clients are those that work in their field, why SHOULDN’T you be as co-located as possible to them? But it does seem that these Beltway denizens are making their true purposes known – it isn’t working for the USDA as it is working for some govt entity within the absolute locus of power – D.C. Heaven forbid they are removed from their warm environs of the political apparatchikness equivalent in the US. After all, isn’t DC the height of where it’s at for politicos and bureaucrats – the highest rung of wonkism? Going out to flyover country, or to the upper Midwest, or where ever the growing fields go further than the eye can see – eewwwwwweee! Yuckies!
And so come the complaints. Of course, we can’t upset our union overlords, can we? You know, those self-interested groups of people unionized for better working conditions – higher pay than what otherwise could be extracted and in this case, the ability to keep their fancy leather shoes and other accoutrements free of field dust and cowpies:
“This move does not serve a public purpose,” Peter Winch, a representative for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents ERS workers, told Fox News. “Employees don’t want to move, and it doesn’t make sense for them to move.”
It certainly does serve a public purpose – it helps to lessen the bureaucratic strangle hold on our Capital. After all, being in the nexus of some of the wealthiest counties in America, why not move them? Isn’t the Left always yammering about wealth inequality? Well, here’s their chance to actually DO that exact thing – close the wealth gap! You’ll love it in Mississippi and doing Society a big favor, too! And if you can be closer to those that you serve, well, of COURSE it makes sense to move. After all, with communications speeds nowadays, you can be anywhere – including “not in DC”.
And if you don’t want to move, well, then quit. You aren’t entitled to a job on the public’s dime. Go where your boss tells you or tell your boss where he can go – those are the two choices.
Winch added that since ERS employees joined AFGE earlier this month, six employees have already quit their jobs with the government agency in response to the planned move. He said overall staffing is down to 209 from 300 during the Obama administration. A Washington Post report cited an estimate that the ERS used to see roughly one “non-retirement” departure per month – but that pace has doubled since October. NIFA reportedly has also seen people leave.
And I call that a good start!
Perdue said in a statement to Fox News that the move was meant “to improve performance and the services these agencies provide.” The secretary of agriculture added that the planned move would bring the department’s scientists closer to “stakeholders” and “customers” such as Midwest farmers. “It’s been our goal to make USDA the most effective, efficient, and customer-focused department in the entire federal government,” Perdue said. “We don’t undertake these relocations lightly, and we are doing it to improve performance and the services these agencies provide.” Perdue added: “We will be placing important USDA resources closer to many stakeholders, most of whom live and work far from Washington, D.C. We will be saving money for the taxpayers and improving our ability to retain more employees in the long run.”
And then we come to the real nub of the #USDAResistance:
Congressional Democrats are scrambling to try and block the move.
…Critics, including former USDA officials, say the move would weaken the agencies, reduce their influence with lawmakers and provide little benefit to the farming community.
Er, sure. Sorry, anything that causes any kind of change to any kind of bureaucracy is automatically assumed to weaken an agency. Sorry, not buying it – and it isn’t the call of the employees (again, emphasis on EMPLOYEES) to make. There is a chain of command to be followed and if you don’t like it, there’s the door. I did that once myself – moved up from Massachusetts to take a job in Central New Hampshire. A year later, they said they were moving down to the border in Nashua. In that time, housing prices had risen so much, I couldn’t have afforded to buy back my old home. So, I quit and went to work for a startup (but that’s another story) – that company wasn’t entitled to my labor but I wasn’t entitled to keep their job, either.
Perdue and his staff have narrowed the list of places where the two agencies could go down to three from an original 130 — with Kansas City, the state of Indiana and North Carolina’s research triangle in the Raleigh-Durham area on the shortlist. St. Louis, Mo., and Madison, Wis., are two alternate locations. Perdue is expected to make the announcement of where the agencies will move as soon as Friday, but it remains unclear whether the two agencies will actually leave Washington.
I’m betting that the USDA employees are looking at ALL of those places as being close to Purgatory that someone can get to barring being lowered into the casket for the last time. KC or DC – they’re making their decisions known. Well, at least they won’t be on the Federal payroll anymore. Welcome (I hope) to the private sector where such nonsense is much less tolerated
And I do like this last rejoinder by Glenn Reynolds:
We should move most of the bureaucracy out of the DC area. Maybe they’ll be more willing to move when we ban air conditioning in the District.
(H/T: Fox News via Instapundit)
