USDA Research Agencies ‘Decimated’ By Forced Move. Undoing The Damage Won’t Be Eas
USDA Research Agencies ‘Decimated’ By Forced Move. Undoing The Damage Won’t Be EasySome of you may recall me railing last year about the casuistry of Perdue’s USDA treatment of career civil servants when he ordered that two of its most important research arms be peremptorily moved half a continent away from Washington D.C. to Kansas City. It was asking career scientists to give up their D.C. area homes, transfer their children to new schools, disrupt not only their careers but those of their spouses.And you know what? One heckuvalot of them quit. But that was the original intention of the Trump Administration with its distaste for both professional government and science. … more than half of agency employees decided to quit rather than uproot their families and move. Despite aggressive recruiting in Kansas City and making many new hires, both USDA research agencies are now roughly half the size they were before the move.“The agencies have been decimated. Their ability to perform the functions they were created to perform – it doesn’t exist anymore,” Evans says.The number of economic reports published by ERS has dropped by half. NIFA administered university research isn’t getting the guidance or scrutiny it once did. Experienced staffers like Desiree Rucker at NIFA say they are running on fumes.“I’ve gone from running two or three programs to five, six, seven programs. We’re two years behind. I can’t keep up. In a situation where I’m just not happy anymore,” Rucker says.And those of us who follow those USDA reports have noticed. -- source link
#sonny perdue#trump administration#frank morris