OMAHA (DTN) -- Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins lashed out at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for scrutinizing USDA's reorganization plan, calling the GAO's report partisan, politicized and incomplete, while the GAO said USDA repeatedly failed to provide information needed to evaluate the reorganization plan's costs and effects on services.

The GAO, an investigative arm of Congress, on Monday released a report examining USDA's plans to reorganize several agencies, including relocating thousands of staff to regional offices around the country. The report also broke down the 18,000-person decline in USDA employees, about 20% of the department's workforce, since the beginning of the Trump administration.

In USDA's comments back to the GAO, Rollins told the acting U.S. Comptroller General that the GAO can examine USDA's reorganization, "but it does not get to define the objective through veiled partisan shenanigans meant to maintain the status quo and ignore the realities facing USDA's mission today."

The GAO report had been requested by the ranking members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, both of whom are Democrats.

The status of USDA's reorganization plans remains tied up in federal court. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California last month granted a motion to halt the reorganization under a case led by the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO. The union argues that reorganization plans are prohibited by congressional appropriation laws. USDA and the Justice Department immediately appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing on the appeal is set for Dec. 10.

The GAO said inspectors asked USDA six times over eight months for details on USDA's analysis or planning before announcing a department-wide reorganization, but USDA did not provide those details.

"Thus, Congress and the public do not have information on the extent to which USDA examined issues such as how the reorganization could impact service delivery, the economic effects of the reorganization, or how to safeguard taxpayers' dollars in disposing of property through the reorganization."

USDA's public affairs office did not respond to questions from DTN about the GAO report being released.

Rollins' letter to the comptroller makes the case the last "holistic" USDA reorganization occurred in 1994. She cited changes in agriculture, trade, food assistance, technology and other issues that have occurred in the three decades since then. "Simply, the world the Department (USDA) operates in today is vastly different than the world of 1994."

COSTS AND STAFFING

Rollins also pointed to budget and staffing costs at the U.S. Forest Service, which has been an ongoing challenge due to rising costs for wildfires over the past decade. Since January 2025, the Forest Service has seen 10,253 people leave the agency, though 4,832 people have been hired, a net decline of 5,421 employees, or nearly 12% of its workforce.

Those Forest Service cuts were an issue in a Montana congressional race where former Forest Service firefighter Sam Forstag, a Democrat and union leader, flipped the congressional seat in last week's election. Forstag had criticized federal job cuts that left firefighters in Montana and other western states without jobs or health insurance.

USDA criticized the GAO for questioning USDA's economic analysis, but the GAO said USDA had provided no such analysis for review.

"Because USDA has not shared information about its analysis of the benefits and costs of its decision to reorganize, if it performed such analysis, Congress and the public cannot evaluate how these factors influenced USDA's decisions and choices," the GAO stated.

Rollins said the GAO was criticizing USDA for not using an economic analysis the watchdog favored. "One does not need a special Washington-bred calculator to realize expenses and salaries cannot be paid or that it is inefficient to keep aging buildings that sit empty."

Rollins' letter stated that Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden had testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee and discussed the reorganization in a closed-door roundtable with members of the House Agriculture Committee.

Rollins called on GAO to review documents "in the public domain" to examine the reorganization. The GAO continued to maintain USDA's actions and decisions don't provide any analysis about how reorganization could impact service delivery or the economic impacts of the moves and office closures.

The GAO's analysis showed USDA had eliminated roughly 18,000 employees from January 2025 through March 2026, or about 20% of all staff. Rural Development and the Food and Nutrition Administration had the biggest decreases in the percentage of their workforces.

The plans call for relocating at least 2,600 of USDA's 4,600 headquarters and Washington, D.C., regional staff to five hub locations and other cities nationally.

The GAO also raised the question about what happens to USDA real estate and other equipment.

BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH

Rollins challenged the report's scope and portrayal of events surrounding her reorganization announcement in July 2025.

"The report lays bare a politicized review of the Department's reorganization, made clear by the portrayal of events leading up to my memorandum and select events after."

Rollins criticized the GAO's draft report for not referencing the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act, dubbed the USE IT Act. That provision requires federal agencies to measure how much office space they use and reduce persistently underused space. The USE IT Act was part of the 2024 Water Resources Development Act and was one of the last pieces of legislation signed into law by former President Joe Biden in January 2025.

Rollins stated both the USDA headquarters building and the adjacent South Building were operating at less than 25% occupancy in July 2025, "far below the utilization rate required under the USE IT Act."

Rollins also cited that the GAO didn't weigh in on the "financial challenges" that have beleaguered the Beltsville (Md.) Agricultural Research Center, known as BARC. Rollins stated BARC had declined because of decades of underfunding. Moving research projects to other locations "is about preserving research as opposed to letting it languish at a complex that is crumbling."

The GAO noted the review did not examine the conditions at any particular buildings or properties.

National Public Radio (NPR) reported on the BARC closing last month. Teddi Mitchell, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees local that covers BARC employees, said in the article that researchers at BARC were concerned about the status of their projects as well as the need to transfer expensive equipment elsewhere. Mitchell said there had been millions of dollars spent over the past five years to renovate BARC. Now, some renovations have been halted.

In a report last year, USDA's Office of Inspector General also cited that the agency cut 20,306 staff from its payrolls in the first six months of the Trump administration.

See, "Trump Administration Dramatically Reduced USDA Staffing, OIG Report Highlights,"

https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Also see, "Age Catches Up to USDA South Building," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

The full GAO report: https://www.gao.gov/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

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