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EPA offers job buyouts, cuts to programs funding
By JIM RUTLEDGE
D.C. Correspondent
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As thousands of supporters participated in the nation’s “March for Science” rally last weekend, federal officials were meeting behind closed doors at U.S. EPA headquarters to cut more than 3,100 agency jobs, a third of which will be top government scientists.
 
Officials were acting on two-week-old orders from the White House to cut the agency’s budget by several billion dollars and eliminate 56 programs, many vital to science research. Ahead of Congressional oversight, the EPA had ordered its regional administrators to take “immediate actions” to reduce their workforce as the agency begins to strip programs and jobs – some that may dramatically affect the agricultural industry.
 
As Congress returned this week from a two-week break, members were hit with news that the EPA’s Acting Deputy Administrator Mike Flynn had ordered agency heads to “begin the steps necessary to initiate an early-out/buyout … program,” targeting about 1 in 5 positions, or 20 percent of its 15,000 employees.
 
The buyout, called a “voluntary incentive payment” or VSIP, offers a per-person $25,000 cash maximum payment to entice a federal employee to leave voluntarily. John O’Grady, a career EPA employee who heads the national council of EPA unions, told the Washington Post that President Trump’s plan to get rid of thousands of employees will prove to be “exorbitantly expensive” and would amount to “the utter destruction of the U.S. EPA.”
 
In 2014, the agency paid out $11.3 million in incentives to “encourage” 436 employees to voluntarily leave their jobs.
 
Among the top White House priorities, EPA heads intend to slash the agency’s science office that employs some of the top scientists in government with 1,700 EPA researchers and assistants – reducing the office by 40 percent, from $510 million to $290 million, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
 
Flynn’s directive followed a report from the previous week that laid out new details for scrapping 56 agency programs, part of a massive plan cutting the budget to its lowest level in 40 years. Trump has proposed a 31 percent reduction to the EPA’s $8.2 billion budget, which many members of Congress have said they will oppose.
 
Cuts affect farming
 
In an early April memo to the EPA, the OMB outlined nearly $500 million in cuts that in several ways will affect the nation’s farmers. The cuts include:
 
•Climate, air and energy research programs would lose $46 million, down to $45.7 million from $91.7 million
 
•Chemical safety and sustainability research down $27.4 million to $61.8 million from $89.2 million
 
•Critical water-related science programs cut to $70.1 million from $107.2 million
 
•Programs labeled “sustainable healthy communities” chops $63.9 million from $139.7 million to $75.8 million Among the hardest hit is one that helps farmers manage agricultural runoff. Former head of the EPA’s Office of Water in 2014-15 Ken Kopocis told the Post that the $165 million in proposed cuts to the pollution preventing Nonpoint Source Pollution (NPS) program will deprive farmers of critical funds needed to protect water quality.
 
The most prevalent source of agricultural water pollution is soil mixed with fertilizers and pesticides that is washed off farm fields and dumped into nearby streams and lakes.
 
Another target of cuts affecting farmers is a plan to cut funding and jobs at the Office of Pesticide Programs.
 
“We’re very concerned” about the cuts, a spokesman for the 40,000-member National Corn Growers Assoc. said. Ethan Mathews, director of Public Policy, told an industry publication, Environment and Energy, “They do serve a very important role,” and he’s worried that cutbacks will delay approvals and the monitoring of new pesticides.
 
The EPA also says it wants to increase user fees to offset the cuts. CropLife America spokesman Beau Greenwood said, “Extra fees on top of extra fees is something that we would oppose.”
 
While the EPA has begun job reductions and program cuts, Congressional staffs have been reviewing Trump’s proposed $5.7 billion budget and preparing arguments to oppose the cuts. Many Congressional leaders are at odds with Trump and say they will prepare their own budget that could block further cuts and restore what may have been eliminated.
 
Among other sweeping cuts, the agency has nearly wiped out the EPA Science Advisory Board by cutting its budget 84 percent, claiming the board’s scientists would not need much money due to “an anticipated lower number of peer reviews.” Research funds also will be eliminated from programs on climate change, chemical safety and safe and sustainable water resources.
 
S. William Becker, executive director of the National Assoc. of Clean Air Agencies, told Science magazine the reductions of the advisory boards “will totally undermine the ability of the EPA and its research arm to set standards at a level that science can rightfully be confident is protective of public health.”
 
Organizers for the weekend March for Science said the gathering was “the first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies and governments.”
 
Rallies were staged in more than 600 cities around the world to celebrate the 47th annual Earth Day on April 22. Among the D.C. March speakers was National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson, urging Congress to recognize the importance of science and “the critical role of science in our society and (on) government policy. “We need science especially in light of the threat of climate change, which is already drastically altering in the way we produce your food,” Johnson told the crowd, speaking on behalf of 200,000 NFU family farmers and ranchers.
 
Coming up on April 29 is the “People’s Climate March,” also in D.C., to address the dramatic changes to the environment.
 
Lawmakers hope to have their answer to Trump’s 2018 budget cuts by mid-summer. Among the White House cuts to 19 government agencies is a 21 percent slice off the USDA’s $22.6 billion budget.
 
Trump has proposed a spending plan of $4.091 trillion, 73 percent earmarked as mandatory spending for Medicaid, Medicare, interest on the debt and other entitlement programs. He is pushing agency cuts to offset his increase in defense spending by $54 billion and another $2.4 billion as a down payment on building the border wall with Mexico. 
4/26/2017