USDA to slash headquarters, other staff and relocate some to new 'hubs' around the country

The Agriculture Department is planning to dismantle its presence in Washington, D.C., according to several officials briefed on the plans, and will relocate those it does not lay off to three hubs around the country. 

The locations for those new offices have not yet been determined, senior officials throughout the department have told employees in recent days, but the shakeup will impact thousands of headquarters staff. USDA is expected to offload one of its two Washington headquarters buildings, according to two employees familiar with the matter. 

The relocations will accompany widespread layoffs at the department, according to four officials made aware of the plans, though the exact number is not yet clear. Those cuts are expected in late April or early May. Some employees have been told to expect the department to cut back to fiscal 2019 staffing levels—which would lead to USDA slashing around 9,000 of its 98,000 employees—while others have been told there is a an overall federal workforce reduction number the administration has developed and the department will do its part proportionally to meet that target. 

The department did not respond to a request for comment but previewed these types of changes on Secretary Brooke Rollins’ first day in office. 

“USDA is pursuing an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary, bringing its workforce back to the office, and relocating employees out of the National Capital region into our nation’s heartland to allow our rural communities to flourish,” it said at the time. 

Rollins reiterated that threat when USDA offered a second round of “deferred resignations” to employees, a program that will allow volunteers to take paid leave through September when they must leave government. 

In the coming weeks, USDA will be “optimizing and reducing the size of the workforce to become more efficient,” the secretary said. She made clear the department cannot offer “full assurance regarding which positions will remain—or where they will be located—after USDA’s restructuring.” 

The elimination of duplicative functions will focus on business support roles, the secretary said, and eradicating “unnecessary management layers.” The department will relocate employees away from Washington to be “closer to the farmers, ranchers, foresters and consumers we serve,” she added. 

USDA told employees that would lead to closing department facilities to minimize its footprint in the capital region, as well as some other parts of the country.

Department employees have been told they will no longer be able to work remotely, so any worker who survives the upcoming RIFs and lives more than 50 miles from one of the new hubs will have to relocate. USDA plans to consolidate mission areas and administrative functions currently spread throughout the department and employees in those programs will report to the hubs, senior executives have told employees in messages reviewed by Government Executive.

The department will not renew many of its leases in the field and impacted staff will also have to relocate to the hubs. Other employees who work in functions being eliminated or consolidated may have the opportunity to apply to openings in the new hubs, officials said. 

One Agricultural Research Service executive told employees in a recent meeting that some employees will “lose their jobs” and “there are going to be consolidations,” but he did not have details on the scope of those changes. He criticized the administration’s approach to the cuts. 

“Their view of what efficiency looks like is not one that takes into account how we really do work in the real world and the federal government writ large,” the executive said. “They think that creating hubs where everybody has exactly the same thing that they do is great.” 

The official added that while the administration believes those things, “We all know that's not true, so they're not looking at facts. They're just making decisions based on their preconceived ideas about how things should be.”