By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent
 
LANSING, Mich. — The final budget for the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) is significantly better than many had hoped and feared earlier this year.

The FY 2010-2011 budget for the agriculture department was signed into law Sept. 23.

“The main thing for us is it’s a stable budget for us this year compared to last year,” said Amy Epkey, budget officer for the MDA.

The budget Granholm signed did not include any line-item vetoes, which had been a worry.

The final ag budget, which took the form HB 5875, also does not have many of the cuts Granholm recommended in her budget proposal.

Points of contention between the governor and legislature included the Michigan Agricultural Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP), which Granholm wanted to defund completely and send over to MSU’s Agricultural Experiment Station. The house and senate rejected the move and added $262,000 and provided three full-time employees for the program. Still, that’s a cut of $324,500 and a cut of two full-time employees.

“Right now we have 800 farms that are MAEAP verified,” Epkey said. “We think we can service those.”

The MAEAP program is a voluntary effort, where farms agree to do certain things that benefit the environment, but in order to be meaningful the practices have to be verified once a year by state officials. That costs money. Epkey said a number of other farms have expressed an interest in becoming MAEAP verified. She’s concerned that cuts in this area will make it difficult to accommodate more farms entering the program.

“That’s one of the major concerns we have, is the staffing levels,” she said. “It really impacts all of our programs.”

Other areas of difference include the grain inspection program, which according to a senate fiscal analysis had been significantly cut last year. The legislature added $300,000 to the program for this fiscal year.

“We had to cut our staff down to two people; we’re hoping to add those back,” said Jeff Haarer, manager of the producer security services division at MDA. That area helps administer the Farm Produce Insurance Fund, which compensates participating farmers for their losses in the event a grain elevator goes bankrupt. “All plans are to bring us back to ’09, which is good.”

The migrant worker housing inspection program was another area of difference. The governor had recommended an increase in the housing inspection fee, from $5 per worker to $30 per worker to offset a proposed cut of $537,900. That proposal, too was rejected.
For the pesticide and plant pest management division, the governor and house proposed a $379,000 cut, while the senate proposed adding back $250,000 of the cut for commodity inspections.

That amounted to a cut of only $129,400, which is what made it into the final bill. The governor and house also wanted a cut of $150,000 to the Right-to-Farm program; the senate rejected that, too.

Epkey said a big concern now is the special incentive package being offered to MDA employees who might be eligible to retire.

For every two employees that take advantage of the incentive, the department can only hire one replacement.

The Michigan Farm Bureau (MFB) has been paying close attention to the ag budget issue, also. Tonia Ritter, manager of the MFB’s state governmental affairs department, said out of 450 employees at the MDA, 120 would be eligible to retire.

“They need to get to a certain amount to reach their budget requirement,” Ritter said. “We are very concerned about this.”