FSA Goes Back to Work?

Only in part.  Here's the Politico piece on Perdue's telling 2,500 employees to return on Jan 17, 18, and 22.

And here's the USDA press release.

And here's the list of offices which will open.  (My impression is that a smaller share of offices in the Northeast are being reopened than in the rest of the country.  They may have given preference to locations with heavy MFP activity?)

I wonder how they determined the employees to call back?  All CED's of offices they're reopening?  Might not be the best employees to have. 

I wonder what happens after Monday?

Will be interesting to see how this works out.

And here's a NASCOE explainer from yesterday.  (Thumbs up to NASCOE for the post.)

USDA Reorganization and Comments: Where Was NASCOE?

Well, the period for commenting on the proposed reorganization of USDA is over, and OFR received 94 comments.  Scrolling through I can't identify any comments from NASCOE.  There were several by different state soil and water district associations.  It's possible I'm unfair to NASCOE--many comments are identified by individual, others by organization, so it's possible that the NASCOE comments are under an individual's name.

I'm skeptical of the request for comment process, although this reorganization is the sort of thing it should be good for. It's quite possible that NASCOE is doing a better job of lobbying behind the scenes than it appears they are doing in the open.

Attention NASCOE: Congress and Show Me the Money

The Post's Wonkblog has a piece reporting on research on Congress.  Seems that if one approaches a Congressional office with a request for a meeting, when the participants are "constituents", you are much less likely to have the request granted than if the participants are "campaign donors".  This is, of course, a totally surprising result; news which will be buried by the media.

[Update:  A modification--the key point is not that the participants donated to the member of Congress, but that they had donated to some campaign.  So they could be seen as more active and committed participants in the legislative process.  See this interview with the researchers.]

NASCOE has changed its representative on the Hill recently, as they struggle to present their point of view in the budget and legislative battles.  Perhaps it's time for them to set up a PAC to make contributions, as money seems to talk much louder than the soft voice of logic.

NASCOE--A Friend at AEI?

After this beginning, I'm surprised that this guest at the American Enterprise Institute comes out somewhat friendly to NASCOE:

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency (FSA) is often described as overstaffed and inefficiently structured for its mission, which is to deliver and monitor a variety of federal subsidy and conservation programs"

 Hint: he likes crop insurance just as little.

NASCOE Versus Crop Insurance II

A followup to my Feb. 10 post: NASCOE has had their legislative position on crop insurance posted for several days.  They refer to a couple of GAO reports on crop insurance.  Essentially NASCOE is pressing the servicing end, not the sales end, of crop insurance.

How Can You Fight Miss America? NASCOE Loses

Technically she's an ex-Miss America, but I don't see NASCOE as being able to counter her.  See this Des Moines Register piece.

Crop Insurance Versus NASCOE

Via Farm Policy, the crop insurance industry counters NASCOE arguments:

Those who call for greater Farm Service Agency involvement in claims adjustment as a way of saving Federal jobs in the countryside do not have the interests of farmers at heart. The “modern” crop insurance program started out in the 1980s with a dual system of delivery in which farmers were given the choice of buying policies sold by private agents who contracted with the government and had the government service claims, or they could buy policies from private companies who would both sell policies and service claims. Because the private sector outperformed the government, especially in terms of quality of
farmer services, timeliness and accuracy of claims processing and cost (1989 Arthur Andersen study reported government cost was more than twice that of the private sector), all program delivery was assigned to the private sector by the end of the 1980s.

I wonder about the context of the 1989 study.  That would FCIC representing government delivery and probably a mostly manual process.  I doubt the Reagan administration would have supported a fair test.  Myself, I don't believe FSA could sell insurance effectively; they just don't have the incentives to do so, but servicing the policies ought to be within their capability.

The AACI statement goes on to bemoan the fact that crop insurance isn't available everywhere, which makes me laugh since FSA's involvement with CAT was ended because it was available everywhere.

NASCOE Versus Crop Insurance

NASCOE has asked Congress to de-privatize crop insurance according to DTN's Jerry Hagstrom.  DTN editorial opposes.

Some random comments:

I didn't see this position on the NASCOE site until I doublechecked and found this consultants report.  Don't understand why the report was dated in September but, unless I have been missing it consistently, which is possible, not posted until recently. The report seems impressive enough (that's what consultants do--impress) that it should be up front in NASCOE's pitch. The DTN editorial rightly says this is FSA trying to preserve jobs, but without mention of the data in the report.  If NASCOE is serious they should be highlighting the dollar savings in short talking points.

Having gone through the process of parallel sales and servicing of CAT policies in 1994-6, I've some wisdom thoughts to offer. I think we ended up doing a pretty good job with CAT and I think GAO was reasonably positive about our work, though that may be an old man's rosy memories.  But the point is it was a real battle of sweat and tears to get to where we ended up.  There was a very big learning curve.  It's easy to assume crop insurance is simple, just another program to administer.  But it's not, particularly because the differences are subtle.  I've posted before about the different acreage reporting dates of ASCS/FSA and RMA--there's good reasons for many of them, reasons which someone raised in the crop insurance world understands automatically (as regards crop insurance) and someone raised in the FSA world understands automatically (as regards farm programs). 

I've posted before about the 80/20 rules: it's those subtle differences and the odd-ball (to an FSA person) crops which would cause 80 percent of the work.  

So I'd fault the consultants for not recognizing transition costs and learning curves, which would be major.   If Congress really wanted to explore saving a billion or so (which I doubt they will--just look at the map of crop insurance agents in the report and remember those people have influence) I'd suggest they haul some branch chiefs and division directors from FSA and RMA up before their committees to thrash out the proposal.

I was struck by the statement in the report that most crop insurance acreage reports are rekeyings from FSA acreage reports.  By now I would have hoped that offices could have been working directly from GIS-based reports, but I guess not.