by MICHAEL DOYLE
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Lawmakers now have buyer's remorse over their treatment of agricultural border inspectors.
Five years ago, farmers warned about transferring Agriculture Department employees into the vast new Department of Homeland Security. Congress went ahead anyway. Now, plans to shift some 1,800 unarmed but pest-wise inspectors back into the Agriculture Department are blooming like mad.
"These agents are the front lines of working to keep plant pests and diseases from entering the country," Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual, advised the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee on Wednesday.
Based in the San Joaquin Valley town of Exeter, California Citrus Mutual has been particularly vocal in pressing for the inspectors' bureaucratic realignment. The voices resonate on Capitol Hill, but whether they persuade is another question.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein already has introduced one bill to transfer the agricultural inspectors, and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, included a transfer in a larger specialty crop bill introduced this week. Next week, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, will introduce his own bill to transfer the inspectors.
"They're not doing an adequate job now of protecting us from pests and other things that could hurt our ag industry," Nunes said Wednesday.
In surveys and private conversations, the agricultural border inspectors likewise grumble about their treatment under the Department of Homeland Security. They have warned, as well, that diminishing border inspections at the nation's 125 ports of entry could threaten U.S. crops and consumers.
Federal auditors found low morale and "potential vulnerability" in the new organization, with high turnover at ports like San Francisco. Pest inspection rates in some ports also declined after the reorganization, Government Accountability Office auditors found last year.
In the three years before the reorganization, for instance, San Francisco-based Agriculture Department workers inspected 40 percent of the international passengers and pieces of cargo. In the three years after the reorganization, the inspection rate fell to 19 percent.
"The original misgivings about the transfer were well-founded," Nelsen testified Wednesday.
Nonetheless, lawmakers and congressional staffers anticipate Bush administration resistance. Although Department of Homeland Security officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, bureaucracies traditionally seek to expand rather than contract their turf.
Reorganization could "have a negative impact on our security" and amount to "rearranging the deck chairs yet again," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke told Government Executive magazine this week.
The congressional debate turns the clock back to 2002, when after months of resistance the Bush administration abruptly endorsed a new Department of Homeland Security. The department now has roughly 180,000 employees, drawn from other federal agencies.
"America needs a unified homeland security structure that will improve protection against today's threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the future," President Bush declared at the time.
The big reorganization raised red flags among some Central Valley farm organizations, and the Bush administration backed off a little from its original proposal. Ultimately, the Agriculture Department retained some of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, although the port and border inspectors were transferred.
Still, in 2002, any challenge to the underlying idea of the border inspector transfer was muted at best. Approximately 70 amendments were offered in committee and on the House floor during the original Department of Homeland Security debate, congressional records show. None of the amendments would have blocked the inspectors' transfer, and only one even touched on food safety concerns.
"The specialty crop industry," Nelsen noted, by contrast, "(has) always questioned the reassignment."
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