BROOKINGS – What’s open? What’s closed? At this time of the shutdown of some federal offices, there’s a hark back to the old days of baseball when vendors outside the ballpark hawked their wares, yelling, “You can’t tell the players without a program!”
It’s a bit like that in Brookings: tough to tell what’s open and what’s closed – and which workers are without a paycheck – without a look at spending programs.
Step through the door at 205 Sixth St., into an outer office. Turn left, and the door to the darkened and unstaffed offices of the Brookings County USDA Farm Service Agency is locked. There are two signs on the door.
One reads: “This U.S. Department of Agriculture office is currently closed due to the lapse in federal government funding. The office will reopen once funding is restored.”
The second reads: “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, FSA employees have been furloughed. If you want to make a farm loan payment that is credited in tax year 2018, the check or money order should be postmarked no later than Dec. 31, 2018, for the payment to be credited in tax year 2018. Checks or money orders should be mailed to your local FSA county office.”
Turn right and the Brookings County office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture is well lighted, staffed and open for business as usual.
So too, a stone’s throw away at 520 Third Ave., is the Brookings Field Support Office, Natural Resource Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture, which is open for business.
“Yes, we are. Different agencies function differently,” explained Michelle Burke, assistant state conservationist for field operations, when asked why her office is still open. “We have a combination of mandatory funding as well as some discretionary funding from prior years that was able to be carried forward and managed.”
“We provide one-on-one assistance to farmers and ranchers to work on improvement for their farms and ranches,” she added. “That is the basic part of it.”
However, her office, while located in Brookings does not per se serve Brookings County. That’s the job of the USDA NRCS office at 205 Sixth St., which is under the umbrella of Burke’s office.
“We are what you might call a regional office or an area office,” Burke explained. All the NRCS offices nationwide are in a USDA chain of command with a laundry list of multiple agencies that reaches all the way to our nation’s capital.
“We provide support to 21 different counties,” she added.
Meanwhile, in the same building, at 520B Third Ave., the Brookings Wildlife Habitat Office, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, a service of the U.S. Department of the Interior, is closed and locked, but there is no sign explaining why.
The office phone is answered and the caller is advised to leave a message that will be responded to – but when?
Finally, on the list of local Brookings area shutdowns is the North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, of the USDA Agricultural Research Service at 2923 Medary Ave., referred to affectionately by area residents as “the bug lab.”
A Register inquiry as to the status of the laboratory was referred to a “spokesman for facilities affected by the shutdown.”
“There is an official shutdown plan for (Research, Education and Economics), which is the umbrella that ARS is under,” J.D. Wyllie, director of communications for the ARS, told the Register on Tuesday.
In a follow-up email, he referenced the ARS Shutdown Plan, a piece of the much bigger USDA Contingency Plan. Bottom line in simple terms: “ARS research and operational activities will be suspended during a shutdown.”
Further on in the plan are steps for the transition from “shutdown to full operational status” when the shutdown ends.
Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.
