Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991 TAG: 9104210064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A GAO report in January said the Agriculture Department could save millions of dollars by revamping its massive, archaic organization of county offices.
Across the nation, the Agriculture Department operates more than 11,000 field offices for its four major farm agencies: The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, the Soil Conservation Service, the Farmers Home Administration and the Extension Service.
State directors of federal farm agencies in Virginia agree that money could be saved by merging or bringing together in one location more local farm offices. However, they say they are already on the lookout for opportunities to save and doubt GAO claims about the size of potential savings.
Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke, who represents Virginia's largest farming counties in Congress and is a member of the House Agriculture Committee, also discounted the GAO's findings. "I didn't think there was much there" is the way Olin characterized the January report.
The study is the 10th since 1973 aimed at finding ways to streamline the department's field structure, which was created during President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The myriad of county offices was established when both bad roads and poor communications were a problem for farmers.
"Today's massive federal debt makes it even more imperative that [federal] departments and agencies provide services and programs in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible," the GAO said.
\ Motivated by budget pressures, the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service is studying a possible restructuring of its field offices, said Jim Johnson, the state director of extension at Virginia Tech.
Johnson said extension managers will meet with local governments and county and city extension agents to develop a reorganization plan.
The planning of the new field structure is under way and will take 12 to 18 months to complete, he said. Extension is looking at a possible system in which agents would be centrally located and serve farmers in surrounding counties.
Also influenced by a tight budget, the Soil Conservation Service is studying ways to reorganize its field structure in the state. The SCS has sent out a draft proposal to local soil and water conservation districts outlining proposals for consolidation of offices, said Steve Black, deputy state conservationist.
The reaction has been mixed, Black said. Some of the elected district representatives want the offices kept in every county, he said. But if all the offices are kept, something else will have to be cut, he said.
\ Making its case for potential savings, the GAO reported that several hundred offices of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service - including many in Virginia - spend abnormally large amounts of money on overhead compared with the benefits they distribute to farmers.
In Wise County, a coal-mining area in Virginia's far Southwest, where there is little farming, the ASCS spends $2.30 for each $1 in benefits distributed to farmers, the GAO found. The primary reason for that high operating expense is the lack of participation in federal programs by the county's farmers, said Chris Cantrell, the county executive director.
The Giles County ASCS office - at $2.20 for each $1 in benefits - is the second-most expensive to operate in Virginia.
According to the GAO, the ASCS's cost of administering a dollar's worth of benefits for other Western Virginia counties includes: $1.20 in Alleghany County and Scott counties, 95 cents in Roanoke County, 83 cents in Henry County, 76 cents in Franklin County, 69 cents in Floyd County and 44 cents in Botetourt and Tazewell counties.
At least part of Roanoke County's high operating cost may be explained by the fact that Craig County's ASCS office has been merged with the Roanoke office. The agency has to rent office space in both counties.
ASCS officials criticized the accounting methods the congressional agency used to draw conclusions about the efficiency of some Virginia offices. They pointed out that the price-support programs for tobacco and peanuts, two big crops in Virginia, are self-supporting and don't involve the payout of taxpayer dollars.
"In this state, we do not dispense that high volume of money for loans and program benefits," said Mahlon Rudy, state director of the ASCS. The programs essentially pay for themselves through assessments on farmers, and yet the agency has to administer them, he said.
ASCS offices in tobacco-growing counties - such as Franklin, Henry and Scott - are responsible for administering the tobacco-support program. They have a heavy workload but they don't pay out benefits, officials said. The same is true for the peanut program.
The amount of work an office does would be a better measure of its usefulness than the money it pays out, Rudy and others said.
\ In Giles County, offices of the Extension Service and the ASCS are in the same building in free space provided by the county. Local farmers and politicians probably would fight a move to do away with the Giles ASCS office, said Phillip Perry, the office's director for the past year.
Richard Townsend, the county extension agent and an ex-officio member of the ASCS board, said there has been talk of merging Giles' with another ASCS office. Townsend believes that fewer Giles farmers would participate in ASCS programs if the office is moved from the county.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, who represents Giles and other Western Virginia counties, said the deciding factor for him on USDA reorganization would be whether it would result in less service for farmers. He said he would not like to see the travel time for farmers increased.
Perry said the Giles office helps a large number of farmers but doesn't pay out many dollars in benefits. Giles farmers take part in a broad range of ASCS programs, including livestock feed, burley tobacco, honey loan and wool price-support programs, he said.
Roughly 90 farmers participate each year in conservation programs that provide cost-sharing money for improving grass stands, planting trees and building ponds and water troughs, he said.
Giles County is primarily a livestock farming county, and the government does not provide price support programs to livestock farmers, except indirectly through feed grain programs.
\ Nationwide, in 1989, the four major farm agencies spent roughly $2.4 billion and 63,000 staff years to administer their programs in the 11,000 county offices, the GAO said. The office expense translates into about $1,100 per farm, using the Agriculture Department's definition of a farm as having sales of $1,000 or more.
The GAO believes much money could be saved if agencies did a better job of sharing resources - such as telephone and computer systems and office supplies and equipment.
Farm agencies operate out of the same or an adjacent building in 2,040 counties across the nation. That represents 74 percent of the counties where the Agriculture Department has at least two agencies, the GAO said. The congressional researchers criticized the department, however, for not having a system in place to track savings at the joint offices.
Beyond merging some county offices and bringing the offices of different agencies together, the ultimate answer to improving the USDA's field structure might be creating one master field agency that would administer all farm programs, the GAO said.
The congressional researchers noted that the Agriculture Department had recommended a move toward a central integrated farm agency in its studies in 1973 and 1985.
The GAO has raised points that are worth looking into, Olin said, but it's not clear there would be a big opportunity for saving by creating a single agency because each of the current agencies has a different job.
The master-agency suggestion is rejected as unworkable by the USDA's agency chiefs in Virginia. The loan officers of the FmHA would not be a good cross with the soil scientists of the SCS, they said.
A master agency "doesn't even come close to a reasonable approach," said Lloyd A. Jones, state director for the Farmers Home Administration.
FmHA recently merged its Greensville County office in Emporia with its Brunswick County office in Lawrenceville because the Emporia office wasn't generating much business. The FmHA has roughly 60 other offices around the state. "We feel comfortable they are needed," Jones said.
The ASCS recently consolidated six county offices (James City, York, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent and Charles City) into a single office in New Kent, Rudy said. The Albermarle and Greene County offices have also been merged within the past 18 months.
One of the biggest obstacles to more consolidations is opposition of local farmers and politicians.
There was strong opposition when the FmHA merged the Greensville and Brunswick County offices, Jones said. The agency overcame that by keeping Rep. Norman Sisisky and Sens. John Warner and Charles Robb and local farmers informed about the agency's plans.
Still, Jones said, the city of Emporia and the Greensville Board of Supervisors fought the move. And since the merger, the FmHA has continued to operate a part-time office in Emporia two days a week.
It's only natural for farmers to complain about changes in their county farm offices, said Jim Pease, an agricultural economist and farm management specialist at Virginia Tech. "Everybody wants the service right on their doorstep."
Traveling back and forth to conduct business at farm offices can amount to a significant expense for farmers. If you're spending your time visiting farm offices, you're taking time from something that's makes you some money, Pease said.
In that situation, "it's a shifting of cost from the government to farmers who are having to travel more."
by CNB