Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Bureaucrats Resist Change--Wash Post

This is very predictable:
"Farmers are famously resistant to change, and that goes for a recently announced
U.S. Department of Agriculture plan to close as many as 713 of the 2,351
county offices of the Farm Service Agency. "

It's an interesting case study in what some would call pork barrel politics. Some past efforts at closing and rationalizing offices have been successful, some have failed. (One of my former bosses came to DC when the plan was to consolidate state offices in the Northeast. Why do Rhode Island and Delaware need a State office to oversee a couple county offices?) As USDA moves more operations to the Internet and the number of farmers dwindles, the infrastructure needs to adjust accordingly. But from the point of view of the small country towns, the county seats, they both need the good paying federal jobs and whatever traffic the office generates by drawing farmers to the town. See the NASCOE site for a sense of what it looks like from the other side.

This irreconciliable conflict between two goods is one reason I took early retirement.

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