Overseers of Farm Aid Found to Be Recipients

Hundreds of government employees administering the nation’s $11-billion-per-year farm-subsidy program are themselves recipients of the aid they disburse, but are bound by none of the federal ethics laws that limit federal workers’ rights where conflicts of interest exist, an independent study of farm-subsidy payments has revealed.

The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based watchdog group that conducted an extensive computer-aided review of farm programs, found that 1-in-5 employees of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service receives federal farm benefits--and, on average, more of such aid than other recipients.

The watchdog group also found that 83% of those serving on locally elected county farm committees had received farm payments for at least one year of the last decade. The county committees make key decisions about who is eligible for farm subsidies and how much they are eligible for.

Suggesting that the Agriculture Department has let the fox into the henhouse, the group concluded that “virtually no objective, independent watchdogs are on duty to protect the interests of taxpayers in federal farm subsidy programs” and recommended changes. Among them, the group urged Congress to greatly restrict the participation of employees paid with Agriculture Department funds in federal subsidy programs.

The group’s report came as both House and Senate Agriculture Committees prepare to draft a five-year farm bill that will bring deep cuts in the federal programs. A recently negotiated House-Senate budget compromise called for some $13 billion to be cut from agricultural programs in the next five years.

Agriculture Department officials hotly defended the system of local control of farm subsidies, as well as the members of locally elected farm committees and county employees paid with Agriculture Department funds.

“To suggest that these officials are not bound by ethical standards is simply wrong,” said Grant Buntrock, acting administrator of the Agriculture Department’s farm service agency. “Committee members and county staff are held to similar ethical standards as federal employees,” and they are specifically barred from participating in decisions involving their own or their family’s farming operation.

Buntrock added that Congress had specifically dictated that those affected by farm programs must be involved in their administration. Local knowledge of lands, individual farming operations and weather conditions are important to such administration, he said.

But the Environmental Working Group raised several questions about how the farm programs operate.

Its study found that federally funded county office employees and farmer committee members got higher-than-average payments from the federal government. County committee members received more than twice as much money in each year they received aid as did the average recipient. And they received such aid with much greater frequency than average recipients.

The average county committee member also received more than twice the amount of disaster payments than the average recipient did. And fraud, theft and embezzlement by government employees are widespread problems in the Agriculture Department, especially in county offices, the Environmental Working Group maintained. Many of those caught were conspiring to enroll nonexistent farms in the farm-subsidy programs, send illegal payments to co-conspirators or get illegal loans for family members or business associates.