A new Agriculture Department report says the agency is making strides in improving its civil rights practices, but critics say the claims aren't justified.
USDA has a long history of civil rights strife. The agency has been the subject of several class action suits filed by farmers and the department's own employees alleging discrimination against African Americans. In 1997, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman announced a new civil rights policy and a series of reforms to address the department's legacy of discrimination.
The new report, "Committment to Progress: Civil Rights at the United States Department of Agriculture," points to several areas of improvement, including: settling a class action suit filed by a group of farmers, increasing farm lending, expanding outreach efforts, improving diversity through hiring and changing USDA's organizational culture.
Glickman lauded the progress, but acknowledged USDA still has a ways to go. "This report shows our efforts are having a real impact on USDA's programs and people. However, this is not a victory lap, it is a progress report, one that we intend to build on in the coming years," he said.
Lawrence C. Lucas, president of the Coalition of Minority Employees, an organization for USDA employees that seeks to end discrimination at the agency, said the word "progress" shouldn't even be associated with the report.
"That is not an accomplishment report on civil rights, it's a public relations document that should be an embarrassment to the department to release," he said.
Lucas said a March audit by Roger C. Viadero, USDA's inspector general, casts USDA's civil rights efforts in a much different light.
Viadero reported on the accuracy of data maintained by USDA's Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for resolving complaints of discrimination in USDA programs and was targeted in 1997 for reform as part of the agency's overall civil rights improvement strategy.
The civil rights office's equal employment opportunity database "is an unreliable repository of information and its case files are in too chaotic a condition to provide an accurate clarification of the status of complaints," Viadero said.
Worse, Viadero reported, the situation is unlikely to improve. "Based on the deficiencies we found in the EEO complaints resolution process and on [the office's] poor record of responding to our past recommendations concerning program complaints, it is doubtful that any significant level of progress will occur in EEO complaint processing," he said.
USDA's progress report doesn't address the backlog of EEO complaints or inefficiencies at the civil rights office, but focuses on ways the agency has reached out to women and minorities through loan programs, education and training.
The report said USDA has stepped up efforts to discipline managers and others found guilty of discrimination, reporting that 94 disciplinary actions for civil rights violations have been taken from January 1998 to March of this year.
The number, said Lucas, is "very low in terms of the need for accountability."
The USDA report is online in PDF Format at www.usda.gov/da/cr/progress.pdf.