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Investing.com -- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced a comprehensive reorganization of the Department of Agriculture on Thursday, aimed at refocusing operations on supporting American farming, ranching, and forestry.
The plan will relocate a significant portion of USDA’s National Capital Region (NCR (NYSE:VYX)) workforce to five hub locations across the country, reducing the department’s Washington, D.C. presence from approximately 4,600 employees to no more than 2,000.
"American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support," said Secretary Rollins.
The reorganization follows findings that USDA’s workforce grew by 8% over the last four years while employee salaries increased by 14.5%, without corresponding improvements in service to agricultural constituencies. The department also identified underutilized and redundant facilities in the NCR with significant deferred maintenance costs.
The five new hub locations include Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. These locations were selected based on existing USDA employee concentrations and lower costs of living compared to Washington, D.C., which has a federal salary locality rate of 33.94%.
As part of the reorganization, USDA will vacate several facilities including the South Building, which alone has approximately $1.3 billion in deferred maintenance and operates well below capacity with less than 1,900 daily occupants in a space designed for over 6,000 employees.
The department emphasized that critical functions will continue uninterrupted, with 52 position classifications related to national security and public safety exempted from any hiring freeze. These positions include those critical to fire management, national forests, and food safety inspection systems.
The workforce reduction component of the plan has already seen 15,364 employees voluntarily elect deferred resignation through the Deferred Retirement Program.
USDA leadership will provide affected offices with more specific relocation information over the next month as part of this multi-month process.
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