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S. HRG. 106–1012

USDA CIVIL RIGHTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 12, 2000

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.agriculture.senate.gov

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

JESSE HELMS, North Carolina

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

CHARLES E. GRASSELEY, Iowa

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho

RICK SANTORIUM, Pennsylvania

GORDON SMITH, Oregon

TOM HARKIN, Iowa,

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota

THOMAS A. DASCHLE, South Dakota

MAX BAUCUS, Montana

J. ROBERT KERREY, Nebraska

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas

ZELL MILLER, Georgia

KEITH LUSE, Staff Director/Chief Counsel

DAVID L. JOHNSON, Chief Counsel for the Minority

ROBERT E. STURM, Chief Clerk for the Minority

MARK HALVERSON, Staff Director

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C O N T E N T S

Page

HEARING(S):

USDA Civil Rights ................................................................................................... 01

Tuesday, September 12, 2000

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., a U.S. Senator from Indiana, Chairman, Committee

on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ............................................................. 01

Harkin, Hon. Tom, a U.S. Senator from Iowa, Ranking Member, Committee

on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ............................................................. 29

Baucus, Hon. Max, a U.S. Senator from Montana ................................................ 09

Cochran, Hon. Thad, a U.S. Senator from Mississippi ......................................... 03

Conrad, Hon. Kent, a U.S. Senator from North Dakota ...................................... 05

Lincoln, Hon. Blanche L., a U.S. Senator from Arkansas .................................... 26

Miller, Hon. Zell, a U.S. Senator from Georgia ..................................................... 02

Smith, Hon. Gordon, a U.S. Senator from Oregon ................................................ 04

WITNESSES

Panel I

Robertson, Bob, Associate Director, General Accounting

Office, Washington, DC, accompanied by Jerilynn B. Hoy, Assistant

Director, Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division,

General Accounting Office ................................................................................... 07

Viadero, Richard, Inspector General, USDA, Washington, DC, accompanied

by James R. Ebbitt, Assistant Inspector General, USDA ................................. 05

Panel II

Fiddick, Paul, USDA Assistant Secretary for Administration, Washington,

DC, accompanied by Rosalind Gray, Director, Office of Civil Rights, and

David Winningham, Chief Operating Officer, Office of Civil Rights ............... 19

Rawls, Charles R., General Counsel, USDA, Washington, DC ............................ 20

Panel III

Boyd, John, President, National Black Farmers Association, Baskerville,

Virginia ................................................................................................................. 34

Carranza, Juanita, Lambert, Montana .................................................................. 41

Connor, Harold, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, accompanied by Joseph D.

Gebhardt, Esq. ...................................................................................................... 44

Lucas, Lawrence, USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, Washington, DC .... 39

Pires, Alexander, Esq., Conlon, Frantz, Phelan and Pires, Washington, DC ..... 48

Page

IV

Zippert, John, Director of Operations, Federation of Southern Cooperatives,

and Chairman of the Board, the Rural Coalition, Epes, Alabama .................. 37

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Lugar, Hon. Richard, G. ................................................................................... 62

Harkin, Hon. Tom ............................................................................................ 64

Baucus, Hon. Max ............................................................................................ 68

Smith, Hon. Gordon, H. ................................................................................... 66

Boyd, John ......................................................................................................... 138

Carranza, Juanita ............................................................................................ 212

Connor, Harold ................................................................................................. 216

Fiddick, Paul ..................................................................................................... 124

Lucas, Lawrence ............................................................................................... 188

Pires, Alexander ............................................................................................... 229

Robertson, Bob .................................................................................................. 114

Viadero, Roger C. .............................................................................................. 072

Zippert, John ..................................................................................................... 141

DOCUMENT(S) SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Robb, Hon. Charles ........................................................................................... 234

Letters, Affidavits, and Complaints ................................................................ 236

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

From Sen. Charles Robb to Mr. Fiddick and Mr. Rawls ............................... 540

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USDA CIVIL RIGHTS

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2000

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., in room SR–

328A, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar,

chairman of the committee, presiding.

Present or submitting a statement: Senators Lugar, Cochran,

Smith, Harkin, Conrad, Baucus, Lincoln, and Miller.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD LUGAR, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

INDIANA

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Senate Agriculture Committee is called to order. The committee strives to continue its work

this morning to help solve the problem of discrimination at the

United States Department of Agriculture. We have held meetings

with USDA officials and we have enlisted the help of the General

Accounting Office. When I met with Secretary Glickman in October

last year, I told him that this issue was of the utmost importance

to me personally and I received his word that he was doing all he

could to address the situation.

As part of this committee’s oversight responsibility, we have consistently looked at the management of USDA programs and made

suggestions on how to better manage the department’s resources.

The problem of systemic discrimination, however, does not lend

itself easily to a management critique. The troubles at the USDA

require more than a new computer system or a business process.

Many of these problems will be discussed today and they stem

from personal behavior that is difficult to eliminate in a department of more than 100,000 employees. However, it is the duty of

this committee to ensure that all laws and policies are strictly followed and that those who believe that they have been discriminated against receive appropriate and speedy resolution of their

grievances.

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of class action lawsuits and administrative complaints against USDA alleging

discrimination. These lawsuits and complaints are of two types:

program complaints and employment discrimination complaints.

The program complaints are those involving members of the public

who are the participants in USDA programs. The second type involve employees of the department who believe they have been victims of some type of discrimination.

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Today’s hearing includes witnesses with information related to

both of these types of discrimination. We will hear from Mr. John

Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Association; Mr.

John Zippert, the Director of Operations for the Federation of

Southern Cooperatives and chairman of the board of the Rural Coalition; Mr. Lawrence Lucas representing the USDA Coalition of

Minority Employees; Mr. Harold Connor of Upper Marlboro, Maryland; Mr. Alexander Pires, an attorney in Washington, DC; and Ms.

Juanita Carranza of Lambert, Montana.

Our second panel will include Mr. Paul Fiddick, the Assistant

Secretary for Administration, USDA; Mr. Charlie Rawls, the USDA

General Counsel; Ms. Rosalind Gray, the director at the USDA Office of Civil Rights.

On our first panel we will hear testimony from Mr. Roger

Viadero, the USDA Inspector General, and from Mr. Bob Robertson

of the U.S. General Accounting Office. As their testimony will indicate, this is a problem that has been thoroughly studied, and since

1997, the USDA Inspector General has performed at least eight reviews evaluating the department’s efforts to solve the complex civil

rights problems at the department.

The General Accounting Office has also studied the issue and

both OIG and GAO made numerous recommendations to help solve

the problems. The most troubling aspect of these reports is how few

of these deficiencies identified by either OIG or GAO in previous

reports are ever corrected. Despite these reports and repeated efforts by USDA officials, the problems persist. Effective managers

are not being hired to solve the problems and employees are merely

being shuffled from agency to agency in an appearance of problem

solving and management revamping.

This missing link here seems to be one of accountability from the

highest level of management to the county supervisor in the field

who fails to adequately service an African American farmer’s loan.

Respect for the civil rights of all Americans is of paramount importance to me and all members of our committee. We are committed

to doing all that we can to solve these problems at USDA. With

this in mind, I would like our witnesses to focus on solutions to the

problems and solutions that can bring accountability into the equation.

[The prepared statement of Senator Lugar can be found in the

appendix on page 62.]

I want to before asking for the testimony of our witnesses to recognize that a new member of the committee is with us this morning, Governor Zell Miller of Georgia, now Senator Zell Miller of

Georgia. He has been recently sworn in and has chosen to be a part

of our group and we welcome him and are delighted that he is here

at this hearing. Senator Miller, do you have any opening comment

this morning?

STATEMENT OF HON. ZELL MILLER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

GEORGIA

Senator MILLER. I will be very brief, Mr. Chairman, but I do

want to say how very appreciative I am for your courtesy in allowing me to participate on this very important hearing even before

becoming officially a member of this committee. According to the

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leadership staff, they should ratify that on the senate floor later

today.

I do not have to tell you, of course, of the long history of Georgia

members on this committee, going all the way back to the 1870’s

with Senator John Gordon and, of course, Chairman Herman Talmadge whose portrait hangs in this room. Of course, my predecessor, Senator Coverdell.

Agriculture is a huge industry in our state. It is the largest industry in our state. It accounts for one out of every six jobs and

I am anxious to get started. This was my first choice of any committee to serve on. Senator Coverdell, I realize, had some big shoes

that I will have to fill and although he was not from an agricultural area, he became a great student of agriculture and a real

friend to the Georgia farmer and he will not soon be forgotten. I

know that many members of this committee will miss his presence

and I will try my best to fill those big shoes if I possibly can.

I appreciate the chairman’s willingness to address this issue. It

is a very timely issue in Georgia and I look forward to learning

more about it. I look forward to serving on this committee with

you.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Senator Miller. We

are really delighted that you are here and look forward to working

with you. Let us recognize now Senator Thad Cochran for an opening committee.

STATEMENT OF HON. THAD COCHRAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

MISSISSIPPI

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for organizing this hearing. It is appropriate that we hear from those who

have looked into some of these charges and allegations and complaints to give us an overview of what kind of situation exists at

the department on this very important subject. Some of us have

been concerned that we are seeing additional complaints brought

now on this same subject, not only for minority farmers, African

American farmers, but also those who claim to be discriminated

against because of their economic class or their lack of understanding of the sophisticated rules and laws that govern farm programs.

To the extent that they have been disadvantaged, and that is an

interesting point of view to be asserted in a court of law as a basis

for a claim for damages, but a suit has been filed or is being filed

in my state on that basis now and it will be interesting to hear

from some of our witnesses on that subject, too. Are the rules and

the laws being administered in a way or are they per se discriminatory for those who have a lack of understanding or sophistication

no matter what their color is or race? This is an interesting thing

that has arisen in our state now.

We have tried to make available through the Appropriations

Committee funds for the department to administer the settlement

of claims that have been brought. It will be interesting to hear if

there are additional funds needed for those purposes. At this point,

we are trying to resolve differences between the House and Senate

agriculture appropriations bills. We are meeting with administration officials and I am not personally aware of any special need at

this point for additional funds above and beyond what is in the

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Senate passed bill, but that would be something that we would like

to have in this record as well, if a witness could make that available to us.

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for recognizing me and let

me also congratulate the senator from Georgia on his selection of

the Agriculture Committee. When I came to this committee, I remember Herman Talmadge was sitting in the chair Senator Lugar

occupies now and he said and this is a unique committee. It is not

a partisan committee. We do not have votes in this committee that

are based on partisan considerations, but he had just been elected

chairman on the basis of a partisan vote. He said it in a very convincing way and I believed him.

[Laughter.]

Senator COCHRAN. We welcome you, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I believed him, too.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Without carrying this on unduly, Senator Talmadge sat about here. Senator Leahy and I sat close to where the

camera is at the back door and the table was that long and one

of your predecessors, Senator Cochran, Senator Eastland of Mississippi, sat just to the right of Senator Talmadge and both were

enveloped in smoke so that they were not easily seen by those of

us nor could they see us apparently.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Times have changed and one of the nice changes

has just entered the room likewise and that is Senator Gordon

Smith of Oregon. He has selected this committee and we are grateful that is the case and he will be joining us today for this hearing.

As Senator Miller has pointed out, there has not been official confirmation of these appointments, but it will occur later in the day

and there is important work to be done. Senator Smith, we welcome you to the committee. Do you have any opening comment this

morning?

STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON SMITH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

OREGON

Senator SMITH. Just, Mr. Chairman, I will have a statement I

would like to enter in the record and I would also just want to say

what a privilege it is to be on your committee, the Agriculture

Committee, and I can think of few industries closer to my own

heart than agriculture and it remains a cornerstone of my state’s

economy and so if I can help those who make their living from the

land by serving on this committee, if I can do that better, then I

am thrilled to be here. I also express the concern of others here

that when it comes to civil rights, that is another issue laid on top

of a great industry. We got to make sure that it is enforced and

people’s rights are protected regardless of their race or their gender

and so I am very pleased to be here this morning, sir.

[The prepared statement of Senator Smith can be found in the

appendix on page 66.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator. Senator Conrad,

do you have an opening comment?

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STATEMENT OF HON. KENT CONRAD, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

NORTH DAKOTA

Senator CONRAD. Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for

holding this hearing. Obviously, the cases that involve American

Indians have a major impact in my state and I also want to thank

the chairman for accommodating my request that we have as a witness somebody who is deeply involved in the filing of that litigation. I appreciate that accommodation very much and I also want

to welcome Senator Miller and Senator Smith to this committee.

You will find that this is a collegial committee and one where members do seek to work together.

Obviously, there are regional differences. There are at times, although we hope not frequently, partisan differences, but most of

all, this is a committee that does work together in a very productive way and we welcome you. We are glad you are here.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Conrad.

The CHAIRMAN. Now we would like to hear from the witnesses.

Let me ask each of our witnesses in each of the three panels to attempt to summarize your comments in a 5-minute period, and I

know this is difficult and the chair will try to be lenient so that

you are not cutoff in mid-flight, but this will accommodate the possibility of raising questions by senators who are here and those

that will be coming.

We will have to take a break at ten o’clock for a roll call vote

which has been declared and we know that a hiatus will occur at

that point. We will proceed as far as we can until then and then

we will not be interrupted after that first roll call vote. I would like

to call now upon Mr. Viadero first and then Mr. Robertson second

for your testimony. Mr. Viadero.

STATEMENT OF ROGER VIADERO, INSPECTOR GENERAL,

USDA, WASHINGTON, DC

ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES R. EBBITT, ASSISTANT INSPECTOR

GENERAL, USDA

Mr. VIADERO. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to testify

about our work on the department’s processing of complaints of discrimination. With me today is Mr. James R. Ebbitt, Assistant Inspector General for Audit.

Mr. Chairman, I have prepared a statement which I would like

to submit for the record and summarize here this morning.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be published in full in the record.

Mr. VIADERO. Thank you, sir. Over the past three and a half

years, the Office of Inspector General has performed eight reviews

of the department’s processing of civil rights complaints, all at the

direction of Secretary Dan Glickman. Our reviews were completed

over seven phases and resulted in eight reports and two internal

memoranda, all of which contained a total of 119 recommendations.

Our most recent reviews which constituted Phase VII of our report resulted in two reports issued simultaneously in March of this

year. Both concerned the that Office of Civil Rights. One reported

on the office’s processing of complaints of discrimination in program benefits and the other on its processing of complaints in employment. The story these reports tell is one of a staff that is deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
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moralized and inefficient and of a management that never got a

firm hold on a system it inherited but that resisted recommendations for improvement.

For the Office of Civil Rights, this has been a continuing story

throughout all seven phases of our work. Complaints were not adequately tracked, case files were poorly maintained, and managers

were not held accountable for deadline overruns.

Open cases we reviewed dated back several years. Many of the

problems we noted at the Office of Civil Rights during our most recent efforts were evident during the first review completed in February 1997. At that time, the Secretary had raised concerns about

the integrity of the department’s process for resolving discrimination complaints in farm programs. We found that the complaints

system was in total disarray. Complaints were backlogged within

the department and their status could not be determined. There

were no controls to monitor and track complaints, no current regulations to standardize policy and operations, no effective leadership,

and most of all no accountability.

Our foremost recommendation to the Secretary at that time was

to centralize control over the complaints process so that no agency

was allowed to resolve complaints against itself. In response, the

Secretary created the Office of Civil Rights. This office took control

of the Farm Service Agency’s program complaint system as well as

its backlog of 530 complaints.

Because there was no immediate action to clear this backlog, it

continued to grow throughout 1997 and peaked at 1,088 complaints. This number came to be known as the original backlog of

program complaints. While the office concentrated on reducing this

backlog, it simultaneously created another volume of cases that exceeded the department’s 180 day deadline for case resolution.

By March of 2000, the office had reduced the original backlog to

35 cases, but faced a new backlog of an additional 454 cases.

During our reviews of the Office of Civil Rights, it became clear

that the office was not implementing critical recommendations we

made. By our Phase V review, the office had not gained in efficiency and could not ensure that all complaints were being handled

with due care. We concluded the office needed to transform its

processing system completely and abandon component processing

for case management processing.

Assigning staff to processing components such as intake or adjudication resulted in fragmented workloads. Assigning staff to the

entire processing cycle for each case promised a more cohesive system. Managers at the Office of Civil Rights agreed with this assessment, but by the time of our Phase VII review, they had yet to implement the case management processing system. Our concerns

about the unreliability of the office’s data base also continued

through Phase VII. By then the office was providing the Secretary

with statistics we found inaccurate as well as misleading.

For example, these statistics suggested that the office processed

a substantial number of complaints of employment discrimination

made in the last three years. We found out these numbers—and

that is shown on chart one, we found that these numbers included

cases that other USDA agencies had processed.

[Chart.]

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Mr. VIADERO. The numbers allowed the office to assume credit in

1999 for cases it did not work as well as cases that were backlogged from previous years. Its own performance was even more erratic. Chart two.

[Chart.]

Mr. VIADERO. Using the same flawed methodology, the office

showed it had shortened its average processing time for employment complaints to 87 days. We found it actually took the office

222 days on average to process the complaints it accepted in 1999.

We should also note that the so-called completion time of 222 days

is based on only three cases. These three cases, the only ones the

office both accepted and processed in 1999, were finally closed due

to pending litigation and were never adjudicated by the Office of

Civil Rights.

Our Phase VII review showed little progress by the Office of Civil

Rights in achieving the efficiency it needs to ensure the integrity

of the complaints processing system. Unless the office implements

a management plan that addresses effective leadership, customer

focus and process reengineering, we question whether future complaints of discrimination will receive due care.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the

record a summary of the actions taken on the recommendations we

made during our seven phases of reviews. I would like that submitted for the record, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present these issues. I would be happy to answer any

questions you or other members of the committee may have at this

time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir. The summary you

have entered will be accepted in the record and published in full.

Mr. VIADERO. Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Viadero can be found in the appendix on page 72.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Robertson.

STATEMENT OF BOB ROBERTSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,

GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, DC

ACCOMPANIED BY JERILYNN B. HOY, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,

RESOURCES, COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

DIVISION, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. ROBERTSON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the

committee. Thank you for inviting us to be part of these important

hearings on USDA’s civil rights program. Our statement today is

based on a report that we issued last year and I am very fortunate

to have with me today Jeri Hoy, who was responsible for leading

the work that supported that particular report. I better put these

on. Who knows what words will come out of my mouth if I do not.

In fact, we reported that USDA was not processing civil rights

complaints in a timely manner. We found that USDA had one of

the worst records of the Federal agencies that we examined as far

as the timely processing of employment complaints.

We identified four long-standing problems that were impeding

USDA’s efforts to improve timeliness. First, USDA’s Office of Civil

Rights had experienced constant management turnover and reorganizations. We pointed out that between October 1990 and January

8

1999, the Office of Civil Rights had eight different directors. That

is almost averaging one new director each year. To add to this instability, the department’s civil rights program had been reorganized three times between 1993 and 1999 resulting in numerous

changes at the division and staff levels.

Second major problem we noted related to inadequate staff and

managerial expertise. In 1997, the Civil Rights Action Team, which

was a team of agency officials appointed by the Secretary to review

civil rights issues, reported that USDA employees generally viewed

the department’s civil rights offices as a dumping ground for many

staff who had settled their Equal Employment Opportunity complaints. This issue of inadequate staff expertise surfaced throughout the review and this is something we may want to come back

to later.

The third problem cited in our report was the Office of Civil

Rights lacked clear, up-to-date guidance and procedures to govern

the receipt, handling and resolution of its program and employment complaints. Those types of procedures are particularly important in the type of environment that USDA’s Office of Civil Rights

was working in at that time which was constant change of management.

The guidance is fundamental to promoting department wide compliance with and standardization and effective enforcement of civil

rights statutes.

Finally our report noted that poor working relationships and

communications within the Office of Civil Rights and between that

office and other USDA entities also hindered the timely processing

of civil rights complaints. Now in addition to these four problems

which tended to stall efforts to process complaints quickly, we also

pointed out that the department was not consistently using alternative dispute resolution techniques such as mediation to address

workplace and other disputes. Federal law and regulations encourage the use of these techniques in resolving Federal workplace disputes and it is a way of heading off disputes before they become

formal complaints.

We made four recommendations to the Secretary of Agriculture

to address the problems identified in our report. In commenting on

the draft of the report, the Director of the Office of Civil Rights

stated that the management weaknesses we cited were real and

that our recommended changes were necessary. Further, she said

that USDA was actively moving toward full adoption and implementation of these recommendations.

In preparation for this hearing, we reviewed the status of

USDA’s implementation of our recommendations. Although more

than 19 months have passed since our report was issued, USDA

has not fully implemented any of the four recommendations. USDA

officials noted, however, that the agency has drafted a long-term

improvement plan that is intended to systematically address the

problems in the program. They expect to begin implementing the

plan next month.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, our 1999 report found that USDA’s

civil rights program had a long way to go before it achieved the

Secretary’s stated goal of making USDA the civil rights leader in

the Federal Government. In recent months, USDA has taken some

9

initial steps to address the department’s chronic problems. Unfortunately, these plans will require long-term implementation including additional funding for hiring and training personnel. As a result, it appears as if the Secretary’s goal, at least in the short term,

remains illusive. That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and

I will be happy to take any questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Robertson. Your

statement, of course, will be published in full as the case of Mr.

Viadero.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Robertson can be found in the

appendix on page 114.]

Senator BAUCUS. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Senator Baucus.

Senator BAUCUS. Might I just have a statement introduced in the

record at this point?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator BAUCUS. I have a hearing that starts at 9:30.

The CHAIRMAN. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. MAX BAUCUS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

MONTANA

Senator BAUCUS. I have a fairly long statement and it is pretty

tough. It is tough because in my state in Montana there have been

a lot of civil rights complaints and none of them have been resolved, none. I in my testimony, am going to give some of the same

data that has already been given, but I just would like the department, those relevant in the department, to read my statement and

to take it very seriously because in that statement I also ask that

certain actions be taken including dates by when they believe some

of these cases can be resolved.

I am also going to give the department a weekly report of discrimination charges that I receive and I tell you it is many. There

are many on that list. I apologize to a Montana witness that I will

be unable to hear her testimony, but she has traveled by train to

come here to plead her case and I hope she does not have to come

to Washington, DC again because the record is just abysmal. I hope

we can get it resolved. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Baucus. Your statement will

be published in full at the beginning of the hearing with the opening comments of senators.

[The prepared statement of Senator Baucus can be found in the

appendix on page 68.]

The CHAIRMAN. Now, I would like to ask all senators to restrain

themselves likewise to five minutes in the question rounds. If there

is need for a second round, we will do that, but the first time

around, all of us try to stay within five minutes.

Mr. Robertson, clearly you and Mr. Viadero have painted a very

bleak picture of the reorganization of USDA’s efforts. I am just curious. In your agency you take a look at various other agencies of

government from time to time, I suspect, with regard to civil rights

matters. Why is the USDA situation such a difficult one, both in

terms of the numbers of cases that are currently being filed and

the lack of resolution of the cases or the retention of personnel to

do this work or to follow though by the management?

10

In other words, is this a fair to middling situation in the Federal

Government? Is it the bottom of the heap? What seemed to be the

peculiar characteristics of this situation that we have not been able

to grapple with?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Let me answer that question in two parts. Let

us talk about some comparisons of USDA’s record with other Federal agencies. We made those types of comparisons in our 1999 report and we have some preliminary information to update that. In

that 1999 report, we looked at data from EEOC in terms of various

performance indicators of processing employment complaints in a

timely process.

We looked at the percentage of cases that USDA or OCR investigated that were done within the stated 180 day EEOC timeframe.

We found that USDA had one of the worst if not the worst records

of the agencies that we looked at in regard to meeting that particular timeframe. That was by the way for 1997 statistics which were

the most current available at the time we did our work. We updated that 1999 information in preparation for the hearings with

some preliminary information from EEOC and basically found that

in regard to that particular measure, the situation has not

changed. They are still missing the mark, I believe, in about 99

percent of the—almost 100 percent of the cases in terms of conducting investigations within the 180 day timeframe.

We also in the older report, in the 1999 report, looked at another

performance measure again for processing employment complaints.

That measure was basically the time it took to resolve complaints

that did not involve EEOC hearings. Again USDA, based on 1997,

EEOC data was on the bottom of the pile. The preliminary information for 1999 indicates that there has been some improvement,

but USDA is still far above the EEOC set standards and far above

the government wide averages. That is the first part of the question on how the USDA is doing in regard to other agencies as far

as employment complaints go.

In regard to the why what makes USDA different, why are they

where they are—that is much more difficult question to answer.

We have had, as you have pointed out, several years of people

going in and looking at this program and finding all sorts of problems, having all sorts of suggested fixes, including the CRAT report

came out in early 1997, I believe, with 90 some odd recommendations. Roger and his crew have come up with a number of reports

with recommendations for fixes. We have come up with a report

with recommendations for fixes.

Obviously this program is not lacking for fixes or suggested fixes

for these problems. If I were king for the day and I were to say

this is what you need to focus on, I would focus on something that

both the OIG and GAO and the CRAT report have highlighted—

that is upgrading the level and quality of the skills and experience

and expertise in the Office of Civil Rights. If you get the right people in the right positions with the right skills, they are going to

identify the problems and take the appropriate actions to mitigate

them.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask in other agencies where similar

problems have occurred, is this the way they solve it? In other

words, they found new people, upgraded the whole status of the

11

movement and proceeded on as opposed to us hearing testimony

that we are not getting very good people in this agency? In fact,

there seems to be a deterioration in morale, a turnover of people.

You know we have committee oversight hearings on this situation annually. I can remember almost one a year each time that

I have been chairman and we come up with many of the same

problems, maybe compounded in terms of greater numbers. We are

oversight people. We cannot reach in as philosopher kings any

more than you can to wrench out the agency. I am frustrated as

to how to be effective. Given these annual hearings, the expositions, they are terrible. Why the embarrassment I would think to

the Secretary, the people managing the department, would be profound. The changes have not occurred.

This is why I wonder if there is something extraordinarily different about USDA? Simply overwhelmed by the nature of the

work that occurs in agriculture or some other factor that we have

not examined?

Mr. ROBERTSON. I believe that there are lessons that can be

learned by looking at how other Federal agencies do their business

and, in fact, sometime this fall the EEOC is coming out or one of

its task forces is coming out with a report that basically is a lessons learned, a best practices type report. That could be a starting

point for USDA to look at to see how it could address some of its

problems.

Ms. HOY. Can I add something? Actually the Postal Service is

one agency that we have heard cited as a turnaround agency,

where they had a lot of serious problems, and what they did was

to start using alternative dispute resolution in a very consistent

way and what that allowed them to do was to resolve workplace

disputes before they became formal complaints. They have been

using outside mediators, mediators from outside of the Postal Service, for the last four or five years apparently and the program has

been very successful in reducing the number of formal EEO complaints.

The CHAIRMAN. There is constructive relief if you move in those

directions?

Ms. HOY. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Conrad.

Senator CONRAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. How many staff are

there in the Office of Civil Rights in USDA?

Mr. ROBERTSON. I can give you ball park. When we did our report, there are roughly 120 people. That has increased slightly

since that time and the budget was somewhere in the neighborhood

of 13 million.

Senator CONRAD. How many cases do they have annually? Is that

fairly reflective up here? Looks to be roughly in the range 750 to

950 a year?

Mr. ROBERTSON. In terms of the caseload for employment complaints, I can talk about the number that they had on hand at the

end of fiscal year 1999, which was 1,680, roughly 1,700.

Senator CONRAD. That would be the current backlog?

Mr. ROBERTSON. That would be the number that were—— Senator CONRAD. Were pending?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Right.

12

Senator CONRAD. 1,700 at the end of 1999?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Right.

Senator CONRAD. I am interested in how many cases are brought

a year? It looks to me up on your own chart here that you are looking on a yearly basis between 750 and 950. Would that be a correct

conclusion from that chart?

Mr. VIADERO. Senator, that is not GAO’s chart. That is the IG’s

chart and Mr. Ebbitt would be happy to answer that for you.

Thanks.

Mr. EBBITT. Senator, that was the status for those years. The

flaw in that particular chart on the left was what the Office of Civil

Rights reported.

Senator CONRAD. Right.

Mr. EBBITT. What that reflects is cases essentially filed, not necessarily accepted. You have to draw that distinction because a filed

case is not always accepted. Sometimes there is not enough information provided. The cases on the chart on the right is what we

believe is what really happened in those particular years.

Senator CONRAD. I see. I see. Something less than?

Mr. EBBITT. That is correct.

Senator CONRAD. OK.

Mr. EBBITT. Also, Senator, this reflects program cases, not employee cases.

Senator CONRAD. Now, that is the next question I have. How

many of these cases—how many of these—— Mr. EBBITT. I need to correct that. That is employee cases.

Senator CONRAD. Oh, that is employee cases.

Mr. EBBITT. Yes.

Senator CONRAD. That was my next question. How many of

these, what percentage of these cases are employee cases? How

much of these cases are program cases?

Mr. EBBITT. Again, Senator, I have just been corrected. These are

all employee cases that are reflected here.

Senator CONRAD. That does not tell us program cases?

Mr. EBBITT. Those charts do not.

Senator CONRAD. When you gave me the number of 1,700 pending at the end of 1999, did that include employee cases and cases

that involved programs?

Mr. EBBITT. No, that was a figure that I gave—— Senator CONRAD. That is just employee?

Mr. EBBITT. That was a figure that I gave and that was for employees.

Senator CONRAD. Employees. Can you tell me how many of those

are within the department itself? Are these all within the department itself?

Mr. EBBITT. Yes, these are USDA employment complaints, according to CR data that is.

Senator CONRAD. This is truly extraordinary and they cannot resolve those with 180 days. All of these cases that are reflected on

these charts involve employees within USDA itself. Has anybody

got what the number of program cases are?

Mr. EBBITT. As of December 1, 1999, Senator, we counted 897 on

the program side.

Senator CONRAD. That were pending?

13

Mr. EBBITT. That is correct.

Senator CONRAD. That was in addition to 35 that were still left

over?

Mr. EBBITT. Thirty-three of the 35 have also been cleaned up as

of March.

Senator CONRAD. Mr. Chairman, could I just offer I read something interesting in the paper this morning about what has been

done within the District of Columbia by the new mayor. He has

reached an agreement with about 90 percent, 80 or 90 percent of

the middle managers, that they would get a pay raise in exchange

for giving up their appeal rights in terms of termination. Anybody

could be removed for cause or because they were not performing in

some way on two weeks notice, and I tell you I know this is controversial and some will consider it something that threatens employees.

I tell you, part of the problem here is it is very hard within the

Federal Government to remove people who are not performing, to

change managers when people are not performing. I wonder if this

is not a case where it would be a good experiment to see if we could

not in USDA in this office do something along the lines of what the

mayor and this city has done? You know my experience as a manager has been when things are not working well, there is one reason. It is the people involved.

Every time I had a management problem when I ran a large

state agency I found it was because I had the wrong person in the

wrong slot. It did not mean they were not a good person. Sometimes it just meant they just were not prepared for the job that

they had. Phase VII, Phase VII, the Inspector General has told us

here and nothing much is happening. I personally believe we are

going to have to go to some new approach if we are going to solve

this problem.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the senator. Senator Cochran.

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, my questions are going to go

to the program discrimination issue and I wonder in the testimony

from our first two witnesses, have the program discrimination

cases not been resolved just like the employment cases have not

been resolved? Are those numbers about the same?

Mr. EBBITT. Senator, as I was indicating, our last count of program cases is around 897. In our testimony, when we started this

process in November 1997, the backlog at that time was 1,088.

That is the so-called original backlog. Now that has been essentially worked down. They are very close to resolving or having dealt

with most of those cases. Part of the problem in handling those

cases then was the fact that you have more coming in and so the

new ones as they were coming in, they were not being handled in

a timely fashion because all the energies were being directed toward all those old ones. Roughly right now 897 is the number on

the program side.

Senator COCHRAN. Was there any effort made in your review of

the GAO review to determine the adequacy of the remedy that is

available for a program discrimination? What is your assessment

of that?

Mr. EBBITT. Senator, we in—let me see which phase, I get my

phases mixed up. In one of our reports we looked specifically at setVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
14

tlements, and was one of the charges made against the department

is that once the settlement has been agreed to by the department

and the complainant, then the settlement action was not always

carried out. We found a mixed bag, if you will, in that particular

arena. We did find evidence that settlements had been achieved

and that actions were being carried forward. We did find some

delays in carrying that agreed to process to fruition in some instances, but the real issue there was there were not that many settlement cases. A lot of cases just hadn’t reached the end of the

process.

Senator COCHRAN. What about GAO? Did you undertake an assessment of that?

Mr. ROBERTSON. Yes. Our work looked primarily at the timeliness of the process itself, but I would like to go back to your earlier

part of your question and some of your questions on the statistics

and just make a comment. In preparing for this hearing, we tried

to get some statistics that would give us an indication, a flavor of

whether the timeliness of processing the program complaints, in

particular the program complaints, had improved or, just exactly

what the status was. While it seems that OCR has statistics, I am

not comfortable in using those statistics right now to give you a flavor of what the progress has been and the OIG would be in the

same boat.

Again, it is an important thing to remember that the statistics

that we are talking about here are kind of iffy at best and that is

unfortunate.

Senator COCHRAN. Was any conclusion reached by either investigative agency about whether the law ought to be changed or improved in any way that governs the handling of these cases? Is

there something that we as a legislative committee should consider

in terms of amendment to current law on this subject, the program

complaint side I am addressing again?

Mr. VIADERO. Senator Cochran, I would like to answer your question and also get back to what Senator Conrad mentioned. You

know as a manager, it is accountability. It is timeliness. It is not

only doing the right things but doing things that are right and we

find an absence of all of this in the operation of this office.

Senator COCHRAN. What about the GAO on that subject?

Mr. ROBERTSON. We have no recommendations directed to legislative changes.

Senator COCHRAN. One thing I have heard just from people who

have reported to me some personal experiences in dealing with the

department is the complexity of the complaint process. Is this

something that in your view ought to be considered or addressed

by the Congress or is there an adequate process, it is just the administration of the process that has broken down?

Ms. HOY. My thoughts are that it is primarily the administration

of the process. I was thinking of the question that Chairman Lugar

asked earlier about why are things so bad at USDA and it just

strikes me that there are some agencies have poor personnel, others have poor systems, others have poor data, but with USDA it

is across the board and that is why. That is the problem. It is just

pervasive problems in almost every single area and it is hard to

know where to start.

15

Senator COCHRAN. My last question is provision for payment of

attorney’s fees; is this taken care of in the law adequately? Do attorneys get their fee from the settlement itself or is this paid over

and above the reimbursement to a successful complainant? I wonder what the contingent fee basis. You know we had a lawyer down

home and we said what is his contingent fee? What does that

mean? He said, well, if he loses, he does not get anything. If he

wins, you do not get anything.

[Laughter.]

Senator COCHRAN. I am just curious. I want to be sure that is

not the situation here with these cases.

Mr. VIADERO. It is my understanding, Senator, that it is both

ways. We have instances of both the contingent fee basis and a

fixed fee basis.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Senator Miller.

Senator MILLER. I do not have any questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Smith.

Senator SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I in preparation of this hearing,

we contacted our staff in Oregon to find out what complaints they

are having and talked to the local chapter of the NAACP, and if

there is a positive note, at least in Oregon this is not a glaring

problem, but as I contrast that with Mr. Viadero’s statement, and

I want to read it for emphasis:

Throughout the seven phases of review the Office of Civil Rights

has been a portrait of a dysfunctional agency. Its staff has remained demoralized through three major reorganizations. Management’s attempts to improve the working environment have been

perfunctory and its attitude toward accountability have been

unenthusiastic. The case files were in no better condition in March

2000 than they were in February 1997.

I guess do we need to start over? It sounds like you have got the

wrong people and maybe also the wrong systems. That is what I

am reading, Mr. Viadero.

Mr. VIADERO. We are not taking exception to any of that, Senator. We also would like to add we have all of this on our web site,

all seven phases which would include Phase III which is 18 linear

inches and is county by county throughout the United States on

their civil rights statistics. I would like to add, though, when we

walked in the first time, we found, by chance some files that were

laying in a file drawer for years. Nobody ever looked at them. We

actually had to construct an inventory of case files. There were files

and there were papers in these files from Mr. Smith, Mr. Cochran,

Mr. Lugar, Mr. Conrad, Mr. Miller right across the board in one

file. The files had never been properly maintained.

We have a picture of their automated filing system. It was a mobile filing system. They had a push cart from a Safeway store. The

files were in total disarray. Now this is not a civil rights function.

This is a basic management function of an office. I know that Mr.

Conrad is a kindred spirit in accounting and you just do not run

books and records this way. It is not a way to run a business and

this is a business like anything else and it has to be accountable

or we find bad business practices, if you will, and lack of accountability.

16

Senator SMITH. Can you correct me if I am wrong if I am misunderstanding the condition in the Pacific Northwest. Is there a

problem there?

Mr. VIADERO. Not that we are aware of.

Senator SMITH. Have you located where the problems are most

egregious? Is there an area of the country? Have you pinpointed it?

Is it in Washington, DC? Is it in the Northeast? Is it the Midwest?

Where are the problems the most egregious?

Mr. VIADERO. When I got back to our sampling in Phase II, and

we did four certain areas, geographic areas of the country, such as

Oklahoma because of its Native American concentration, such as

San Joaquin County, California for having the only county with

Asian farmer concentration. We did the greater Southwest basically from California right into your state, Senator Cochran, Mississippi, looking for Hispanics, of course, the Old Dominion, the

greater South with its on the historically black farms.

Senator SMITH. Are you finding that where there are problems

are they more personnel or are they more systems? Are they systemic problems or are they personnel problems?

Mr. VIADERO. We found no examples of systemic discrimination

in any of our reviews.

Senator SMITH. Is it just personnel who just do not give a rip

about civil rights?

Mr. VIADERO. Well, it is important to note that the county system, the county executive who is hired by thr county committee

who in turn is elected by local farmers, how are you going to have

discrimination if the farmers in the country are voting for the leader of the county. That is why we say it is not systemic. By the way,

these people are not federal employees. They are quasi-government

employees and they are outside the normal books and records of

the department, if you will, and not subject to the merit systems

that we have within the civil service.

Senator SMITH. Ms. Hoy mentioned that the Postal Service was

an agency in difficulty and is the model you are pursuing to fix

USDA; is that accurate or are there other agencies in the government that are really good examples of the enforcement of civil

rights laws that we ought to be looking at here for USDA?

Mr. ROBERTSON. I think Jeri was alluding to the fact that there

are some other Federal agencies that had some success particularly

with alternative dispute resolution and Veterans Administration

was one of those. I believe the Air Force is another.

Senator SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just followup a little bit on Senator

Smith’s question, and that is in the testimony that I see down here

on county committees, problems and elections, a suggestion is that

in the spirit of the Voting Rights Act, county committee procedures

are seriously flawed. Voting participation averaged ten to 15 percent of eligible voters, only 5 percent participating in one South

Carolina county. Up to 25 percent of the ballots disqualified because they were not filled out correctly and so forth.

Now, Mr. Viadero, you are saying many of these discrimination

complaints arise from decisions of these county committees; is that

correct?

Mr. VIADERO. That is my understanding, sir, yes.

17

The CHAIRMAN. That in trying to parse this situation a little bit,

we have USDA down here in Washington with civil service people,

merit and so forth, and we have USDA out in the field in various

ways. As you point out, you have sort of a democratic system here

which county committees are elected and, therefore, the voting procedures or how people come on to those committees or how people

are kept out of the committees comes into play, I suspect. This may

be a more complex situation then in trying to evaluate, getting

back to Senator Conrad’s suggestion that as in the case of the

mayor of Washington, DC, you take some stringent action so that

people can be fired and removed and move out of the picture.

What we are seeing here, I suspect, is the question at the grassroots in many cases in which people have been elected quite apart

from these folks down at USDA in the civil service or many of us

around this table. Now how do you begin to deal with all of that?

Mr. VIADERO. Well, this will reference now back to Senator

Smith’s question so far as what we see on a systemic basis. Let me

give you an example of how this system works. Mr. Lugar, since

you are the chairman here, we are going to make you the CED, and

Mr. Cochran is his outreach coordinator, and Mr. Cochran—I am

sorry—Mr. Conrad as a farmer. Well, the chairman likes Mr.

Conrad. OK. Mr. Cochran, the outreach——

Senator CONRAD. You got a good start.

[Laughter.]

Mr. VIADERO. I need help wherever I can get it. Mr. Cochran, the

outreach coordinator, will call Mr. Conrad up and say, Mr. Conrad,

the final date for filing these applications is a week from today.

Now, Mr. Smith, Mr. Lugar is sort of neutral on you. Mr. Cochran

just does not call you. You have been given your packet with the

dates on it. That is the type of impetus that we see. Now can you

say that that is systemic, that that is intentional? I dare say you

could not. We have not been able to find it.

That is probably the most egregious thing/example of what we

found and that is very simplistic. Again, to quote a great guy, my

son, ‘‘it ain’t rocket science,’’ and he is a rocket scientist. It is the

best I can give you.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Conrad.

Senator CONRAD. Mr. Chairman and those who are here as witnesses, I go back to every time as an administrator I encountered

a problem like this, it went right to the question of the people that

I had in the positions of responsibility. I found systemic problems.

It is amazing how they get resolved when you have the right people

in the right positions because they figure out how to change the

system to make it work. You know I have been told we heard this

morning that this office has been used as a dumping ground. That

is the reputation of this office. That disgruntled employees have

been moved into these positions and now we got a situation where

the job is not getting done.

Now the evidence is overwhelming. The job is not being performed. I do not want to be harsh, but, when you have gone

through seven phases of review and nothing is happening to fix it,

somebody has got to be held accountable. As a manager, I would

hold the people who are in positions of responsibility accountable.

They are the ones who have the obligation to produce results and

18

they have failed, and they have failed miserably and there can no

longer be any question about it. I would advocate that we get new

leadership and they have the power to get people in positions of responsibility who do the job. That is, an obligation we have as an

oversight committee. We cannot be the administrators obviously.

We should send a clear message that this is it.

Now we have all the reviews that we need to have. There is a

failure. The people who are there in positions of responsibility

ought to be held accountable. That is not being unfair. That is not

being harsh. That is setting standards and setting goals and holding people accountable.

Could I just close with a question to Mr. Viadero? What would

you do in this circumstance? If you had the power to try to clean

up this mess, what would you do? What are the two or three steps

that you would take immediately?

Mr. VIADERO. Well, some of the steps have been taken in the

very recent past by Assistant Secretary for Administration Fiddick

whom you are going to hear from on the next panel. He appointed

a fellow by the name of David Winningham as Deputy Director for

Civil Rights, as the title is called, in the Office of Civil Rights, and

Mr. Winningham, much to his credit, has gone in and established

some basic management controls and met with people and is getting this backlog down. I do not think we can say scrap the system,

scrap the people. Again, it is a people issue. OK. Mr. Winningham

appears to have the right mix, if you will, of people skills and management skills and also the support of the Assistant Secretary.

Senator CONRAD. Does he have the ability to move out people

who just are not performing? You know sometimes you just have

people who are not performing and does he have the ability to remove people who are not performing?

Mr. VIADERO. I am assuming that Mr. Fiddick would support

him if that is the final decision that they make.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Are there other questions

of this panel by senators? If not, we thank you very much for your

testimony and we hope that the next panel will have some satisfying answers and then we will have a third panel of witnesses that

we have already mentioned. The chair would like to mention also

that there will not be vote at 10 a.m., and so that is gratuitous so

that we can proceed without interruption.

The CHAIRMAN. We now have Mr. Paul Fiddick, the USDA Assistant Secretary for Administration, accompanied by Ms. Rosalind

Gray, Director of the Office of Civil Rights, and Mr. David

Winningham, Chief Operating Office of the Office of Civil Rights;

and Mr. Charles R. Rawls, USDA General Counsel.

We welcome the next panel and I will ask you to testify in the

order that I introduced you, first of all, Mr. Fiddick and Mr. Rawls.

Please try to summarize your comments in five minutes more or

less, and then we will have more extended conversation as questions come from senators. Mr. Fiddick.

19

STATEMENT OF PAUL FIDDICK, USDA ASSISTANT SECRETARY

FOR ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, DC

ACCOMPANIED BY ROSALIND GRAY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF CIVIL

RIGHTS, AND DAVID WINNINGHAM, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER,

OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS

Mr. FIDDICK. Thank you, Chairman Lugar. We have a longer consolidated statement for Ms. Gray, Mr. Rawls and myself that I

would like to have entered into the record.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be made part of the record in full.

Mr. FIDDICK. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Mr. Chairman,

members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me before your

committee today. It was almost exactly a year ago that I appeared

before this committee for my confirmation hearing. I was sworn in

as Assistant Secretary for Administration on November 16 of last

year. Although new to the department, I have become well acquainted with USDA’s troubled civil rights history. The Secretary

and I believe that we are making some progress addressing the circumstances that give rise to complaints, on the one hand, and in

processing the complaints we receive, on the other.

Nevertheless, we are humbled by the task that remains. Beginning with our Secretary, we strive to hear the message that employees and customers are sending us. The Secretary, those of us

here, and administrators of our USDA agencies have maintained

an ongoing dialog with groups and individuals representing employees, customers and other stakeholders. We have honestly endeavored to maintain an open door policy.

Last year, we received 1,261 program discrimination complaints.

We are projecting about 650 complaints in fiscal year 2000. In fact,

we will receive fewer program and employment complaints this

year than any year since 1997. Let me be clear. Acts of discrimination and the complaints they represent are an anathema and unacceptable to USDA in any number.

Over the past five years, USDA has closed an average of about

750 EEO complaints a year. Those are employment complaints.

This is more than all but three other cabinet agencies. Unfortunately, we have been receiving an average of about 850 EEO complaints a year for the same period. The time it takes us to process

complaints is inexcusably long. If justice delayed is justice denied,

then we are not doing justice by our customers and employees.

Now here is what we are doing about it.

Mr. Chairman, as you may remember from my confirmation

hearing, I am new to government. I spent more than 25 years of

my career in private industry, most of that time in top management. When I arrived at USDA, Secretary Glickman instructed me

to use my business experience to develop an enduring solution to

the operational end of our civil rights problems. I approached this

assignment as I would a business problem, one where an operating

unit was not performing up to expectations. I recommended and

the Secretary approved a plan to create a new position in the Office

of Civil Rights that I borrowed from the private sector, that of chief

operating officer.

This divides Civil Rights into two distinct areas. One, complaints

processing and administration headed by the COO, a career senior

executive; and two, the policy, regulatory and legislative functions

20

led by the senior political official. The latter role is filled by our

Civil Rights Director, seated on my left, Rosalind Gray. In April I

named David Winningham, a 28 year USDA employee with an extensive management background, to the new COO position. He is

seated on my right. Both of these positions report directly to me

as Assistant Secretary.

The past five months, we have set about developing a long-term

improvement plan, a zero-based approach to determining the staff

and time resources necessary to fundamentally and permanently

improve our civil rights operations. The plan is a comprehensive

collaborative work that includes efficiency studies and

benchmarking to the best practices of other Federal agencies.

The draft management plan was delivered in August and to the

extent of our resources the finished plan will be rolled out in the

next 30 days. Secretary Glickman has made it abundantly clear

that in the area of civil rights, the status quo is simply unacceptable. We are using all of our intellect and our energies to solve

these historic problems in a way that will survive beyond this administration and that will provide responsible social justice for

USDA employees and the public today and in the future. Thank

you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fiddick can be found in the appendix on page 124.]

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Fiddick. Mr. Rawls.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES R. RAWLS, GENERAL COUNSEL,

USDA, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. RAWLS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be

here this morning. During the 2-years since this committee recommended my confirmation as general counsel, I have spent a considerable amount of my time, probably the majority of my time,

working on civil rights issues, helping the Secretary carry out his

mission, his vision to address and improve civil rights at the department. I certainly share his strong commitment to civil rights

for all employees and program participants and I believe as the

Secretary does that USDA can and should become the civil rights

leader in the Federal Government. Obviously, from what you have

heard this morning, we have a long way to go.

My office acts as the Secretary’s legal staff. We advise the Secretary and agency personnel on the full range of legal issues. Our

lawyers provide assistance on everything from procurement to regulatory process, a statutory interpretation, any number of things.

We do represent the Secretary in some legal proceedings, provide

legal opinions for the department, that sort of thing, but USDA is

represented in the Federal courts, of course, by the Department of

Justice.

Of note to the committee, as recommended by the Civil Rights

Action Team, the CRAT report, our office did establish a special division devoted to Civil Rights. It is staffed with a small but experienced and talented group of lawyers who are working very hard on

a broad range of legal matters associated with civil rights. This effort was greatly supported by the Secretary and, of course, the Congress. Senator Cochran did provide some additional funding to staff

the office which is very difficult, as this committee knows in this

21

time of tight discretionary budgets, but I would want all of you to

know that the Civil Rights Division is staffed by individuals with

outstanding records, excellent credentials and impressive experience.

They are working very hard to see that our civil rights laws and

policies are carried out in an effective and efficient manner at

USDA. We accept our responsibility seriously and with enthusiasm

with respect to civil rights, but our duties are not easy. We often

must raise difficult questions. We take unpopular positions. We

make hard decisions which quite often put us at odds with someone, either within the department or outside of USDA, but the requirements of the law, fundamental elements of fairness and a concern for the due process rights of all concerned will continue to

guide our every action.

Our statement discusses briefly the settlement of the Pigford

class action and I will just touch on that for a moment. This was

a class action brought on behalf of African American farmers

throughout the country. It is indeed an historic settlement because

it offers the promise of resolution and closure to so many who have

felt that they were wronged for so long.

As a staff member in the House of Representatives during the

1980’s, I became keenly aware of many of the complaints of discrimination at USDA by African American farmers. These complaints were deeply felt but difficult to prove. Many of the complaints were not meaningfully addressed or were certainly not addressed in a manner that reassured the complainant that his or

her case had really been heard or decided on the merits. In conjunction with efforts by the Congress to waive the statute of limitations, it did make a settlement of this case possible. I believe that

on balance the settlement provides a workable solution to some

very difficult problems which had to be resolved in a legal forum

which presents its own difficulties.

It will provide an opportunity that many felt that they never had

to be fairly heard. Under Track A of the settlement, some 20,000

individuals will have their claim reviewed by an objective neutral

third party. Far about 18,000 claims have been adjudicated. 11,000

or a little better than 60 percent have been successful for the

claimants. The Track B arbitrations handled under this settlement

are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Department of Justice

and they are handling those cases.

We are now working very hard with the court, the court appointed monitor, the Department of Justice, the plaintiff lawyers,

to see that the settlement is implemented in a fair, efficient and

timely manner. It has been a challenge, I will tell you. The number

of class members turned out to be much, much greater than expected. Simply establishing the process and dealing with the class

of this size has been a monumental effort for everyone.

We will continue to see this as a challenge. We will rise to meet

that challenge and find ways to implement the settlement in a fair

way and in a way that is helpful and fair to the claimants to the

maximum extent possible. Mr. Chairman, many employees and

managers at USDA do share the Secretary’s commitment to civil

rights, as I do. Some are still insensitive to what improving civil

rights means and that remains one of the challenges for the future.

22

Some very good things are happening as discussed in our statement.

In the last five years, the Farm Service Agency has increased its

lending to African American farmers by 67 percent. It has also

worked hard to improve the diversity composition of its county

committees. The department has focused new attention on small

farms, farm workers and the disabled. Our food safety message, for

example, is going out in four languages now besides English, to 183

African American newspapers. After much give and take, the Forest Service working with the Department of Justice and USDA lawyers has settled a class action brought by a group of women in one

of its regions. A number of agencies are doing much better outreach

and undertaking cooperative efforts with minority groups including

Native Americans.

Does USDA yet have a long way to go with improving civil

rights? The answer is yes. One thing we have learned is that civil

rights, which many times translates into the more easily understood concepts of good customer service and good employee relations, requires constant attention and improvement. Mr. Chairman,

I am happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Fiddick, let me just

ask for the benefit of all of us trying to understand the kinds of

cases that are here—we have heard the statistics about the numbers and in the last panel I suggested some of the problems may

come at the county committee level. Even Mr. Rawls has suggested

that the diversity of county committees has been one of the objectives, but are there any typical groups of cases? Are largely these

cases employees who have been discharged who feel that they have

been unfairly treated or employees who did not receive promotions

who felt that they had been unfairly treated? I am just trying to

get some idea of who is filing these hundreds of cases and why

there seems to be such an incidence of this at USDA in comparison

with other agencies?

Mr. FIDDICK. Well, with your permission, sir, I would like to ask

Ms. Gray to answer that question as the director of our Office of

Civil Rights since early in 1998. She has had a great deal more experience with that firsthand than I have.

The CHAIRMAN. Right.

Ms. GRAY. Thank you. On the program side, the majority of the

complaints are filed by minority persons, African American males,

women, some Hispanic, some couples and also couples because the

woman was handling the business at the time. The complaints usually are against—most of them are against Farm Service Agency,

and what they are about are generally the denial of an application

for an operating loan or for ownership loan or for the denial of restructuring of financing, when the person thought he or she were

eligible for it, and in the case of disaster payments, frequently the

essence of the complaint relates to the refusal to provide an application. On the program side, that would include the majority of our

cases.

On the employee side——

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just ask here, Ms. Gray, these would appear to be fairly open and shut cases, would they not, in terms of

fact? Either you got the application or you did not get the applicaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
23

tion or you qualified for the loan and their criteria or you did not?

In other words, what we are hearing is these cases take months,

maybe even a year, to resolve, which, of course, does mean justice

denied if it was an emergency loan or a disaster payment at the

time, but maybe I am mischaracterizing and making too simple

what is much more complex.

Ms. GRAY. It is relatively simple, but we do not process in the

short or reasonable period of time quite frankly. There is no other

way to say that. It is not simple because usually there are two

sides of the story and then there is also the truth, which involves

not only doing a field investigation and talking to the complainant,

but it also requires a very extensive review of the record and the

application for the particular benefit.

Part of our problem in the Office of Civil Rights is that we do

not always have the skills to review the farm application package

to process in a timely fashion so, yes, it is simple, but it is not quite

simple and there are many programs in the Farm Service Agency,

and we are not always quick in our review and we do try to be

careful.

We also have a number of housing complaints and generally the

housing complaints are about the denial of the loan for purchase

of a house or some housing facility. That is the easy side. The difficult side is certainly the employee side. We have every range of

complaint that you can imagine would happen in the workplace.

We have sexual harassment complaints. We have certainly racial

discrimination, Hispanic, African American, some Native American.

We have complaints about discrimination and promotions and

training. You name it. If it is an aspect of the employee relationship, there is a complaint about it.

The CHAIRMAN. Once again why so much of this at USDA as opposed to other agencies?

Ms. GRAY. Well, the number of complaints at USDA based on the

number of employees is not that much different than many agencies. USDA is slower in processing its employee complaints than

most agencies. Our agency that has the largest number of complaints is certainly the Forest Service and the working situation for

the employees in the Forest Service, some of them in isolated camp,

certainly give rise to the complaints. That, then again, makes it

more complicated for us to bring about the appropriate investigation because some of the employees are in isolated camps.

I think that for Farm Service where we have county employees,

again, the local culture contributes very heavily to the workplace

and what goes on in a county community is reflected in the workplace and that gives rise to a number of complaints. We are because we are so large and spread throughout the country a department that very much reflects our customers and to the extent that

there is discrimination, and there is discrimination in these counties and in these workplaces, we get complaints about them.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Fiddick, is one possible alleviation of your

problem a group of skilled personnel who are conversant with complex agricultural programs or those who can go to the site and say

this person is qualified for the loan or this person is not? In other

words, just trying to break through the clutter of all this, what sort

24

of people do you need, what type of authority for them to go to the

site and get on with it?

Mr. FIDDICK. No, I believe you are entirely right, Senator, that

there is a certain skills deficit that has been documented in the Office of Civil Rights. We did not know exactly how many persons

that represented, whether those persons were incapable or whether

they were simply playing out a position. As a part of the long-term

improvement plan, the management plan that has been drafted,

one essential element of that is to take a skills inventory of the

personnel we have on board currently and what the organization

needs to meet its requirements. We will conform one to the other

in an appropriate way.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me mention that Senator Charles Robb of

Virginia has given a statement that I will make a part of the

record. He has been deeply interested in this issue for a long time,

and Senator Robb has asked two questions, one to Mr. Fiddick and

one to Mr. Rawls, that I will submit to you so that you might give

written responses for our record if you would. He has been in contact, as I understand with both of you or your offices as recently

as July 11, and so I mention that as background for his inquiry in

terms of followup.

[The prepared statement of Senator Robb can be found in the appendix on page 234.]

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Conrad.

Senator CONRAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank the witnesses as well. Mr. Fiddick, we certainly have high regard for you

and your background and it sounds to me as though you have got

a plan to improve things. I have certainly heard very good things

about Mr. Winningham and your background and the level of intensity you bring to trying to fix these problems.

Mr. FIDDICK. Thank you, sir.

Senator CONRAD. Can you tell us what you see as the major hurdles to be jumped here? You know as I was saying earlier, every

time I have had a management problem, and this sounds to me like

a management problem, I have generally found it is people. I have

got the wrong people in the wrong slots. It does not mean they are

not good people. Just sometimes you got the wrong people in the

wrong slots. Sometimes you got people who just do not have the

right attitude. They are not can-do people. You know they got a

million reasons why something cannot be done.

I remember very well one time I had a serious problem in a

major part of my department and after listening for about eight

months to all the reasons things could not be done, I realized I just

had a guy with the wrong attitude. I got him out of there and I

got somebody with the right attitude and it is amazing how all the

problems got cleaned up very quickly.

As you diagnose it, Mr. Fiddick, what is the primary problem or

problems and how soon can they be resolved? Is there something

that we can do that would help you and then I would have the

same question for Mr. Winningham?

Mr. FIDDICK. I agree with your premise that there are few things

in business or government that cannot be solved with the right

management put in the right position empowered to act. I agree to

some degree with what the previous witness from the GAO said

25

that the problems in the Civil Rights Office have been systems and

process and people and more or less all of the above. The hurdle

that we have, the height of the hurdle is all of the work that needs

to be done. That is the bad news. The good news is that it can be

done with the right management in the right place and I believe

that we have begun to make those strides. You fix the problem a

day at a time and a hire at a time and the new structure we have

in the Civil Rights Office with Rosalind handling policy and regulatory and David handling operations is a good one.

We will bring on board before the end of the month a Deputy Director for Employment, which is an important position in our operation, and the person that we have hired is a career civil rights

professional in that job. As the IG and the GAO has correctly reported, there has been a tremendous amount of turnover in this office since it was reconstituted in 1997. I do not know that anyone

is to blame for that, but it certainly has been to the detriment of

the efficiency of the office and the customers of the office. We can

begin to fix that with each new hire and are.

Senator CONRAD. Mr. Winningham, what would be your response

to that?

Mr. WINNINGHAM. My response is that the Office of Civil Rights

came together very fast under a great number of adversities. The

staff has never been pulled together in a coherent manner. The

skills are lacking in certain areas such as programs which when

you are looking at farm loan programs or rural housing or the various programs which complaints are filed against, having the rights

skills and knowledge to be able to evaluate the issues that are associated with those complaints, we just do not have that.

We have a system where the files are not well put together and

so we all have to look at our processes, we have to look at our skills

mix, we have to look at the levels of authority and we have to look

at the amount of resources. We also did a time study to take a look

at how long it takes for each process of the complaint process to

perform and we found that we are lacking in several areas. It is

a comprehensive amount of things that must be done if we are to

get out of this and the one that is big on top of all of this is the

inventory of complaints that we have. My view is that we have to

put together a project that would eliminate the inventory of complaints that we have right now as well as the new complaints coming through the system during that period. That when we get

through it, we would be even. In my mind, that is significant if we

are ever going to get our arms around this.

Senator CONRAD. You know it sounds to me as if you have got

a backlog here that has got to be addressed and obviously you got

the program side, you got the employee side. Is part of the solution

here using alternative dispute resolution, to use mediation to try

to get through these cases more quickly?

Mr. WINNINGHAM. That is not going to be the solution for what

we have except by the time it gets to us, we are under the 180 day

clock that is ticking where we have to take it through the due process. ADR is best before you ever get to that point. There are cases

when you are getting into the resolution initiative that would lend

themselves to ADR while it is in the formal complaint process.

26

Senator CONRAD. Can I ask Mr. Rawls just a question? That is

you have got now class action suit that involved the black farmers,

the Pigford case. You have got resolution there. You have got the

Keepseagle case that involves Native Americans. Are these cases

largely the same kind of cases in your view? Are they different

kinds of cases? Are you treating them the same or are you treating

them differently? If you are treating them differently, why?

Mr. RAWLS. Senator, I am going to disappoint you and give you

a very bureaucratic answer, but it is really the only one I can give

you, which is that Keepseagle is in active litigation being handled

by the Department of Justice. You know motions have been filed.

I really cannot discuss that case beyond that. I would offer to talk

with the Department of Justice and visit with you or your staff

about it, but I really do not think it is appropriate to try to make

comparisons or otherwise talk about the case in this forum.

Senator CONRAD. I would like the opportunity to talk to you

about it and Justice Department as well on those fundamental

questions that I have asked here. How are they viewed? Are they

viewed as largely similar or in some way different? I can just tell

you that within the Native American community, there is a perception at least that there is differential treatment going on here and

that is a great concern within the Native American community. I

thank the chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Conrad. Senator Lincoln.

Senator LINCOLN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, certainly for holding this hearing which is very important to my constituents in Arkansas and, if I may, I would just like to make a few comments

before I ask questions since I was tardy, and I apologize for that.

The CHAIRMAN. Please do.

STATEMENT OF HON. BLANCHE LINCOLN, A U.S. SENATOR

FROM ARKANSAS

Senator LINCOLN. As the youngest woman in the history of our

country to serve in the U.S. Senate, I certainly understand how important it is that the principles of equality and opportunity apply

to all Americans. I found myself in the same position that many

of the complainants have in your cases.

I feel that Congress definitely has a duty to ensure that discrimination does not prevent anyone from realizing their full potential

or their dream and I believe that is why we are here today. I also

believe that government assistance should be equally available to

all citizens of this country and it is unbelievably disturbing to me

that we even have a reason to hold this hearing, but I appreciate

the previous panel of witnesses and certainly your willingness to

be here.

There are certainly several allegations, as Senator Conrad brings

up other issues and other cases, problems that we all be discussing

today and in further discussions, but there is one in particular, the

Pigford v. Glickman case, the class action suit, otherwise known as

the black farmers case, that has caused great frustration to a number of my constituents in Arkansas. In 1998, I contacted by letter

Secretary Glickman and President Clinton and the administration

to handle this case as expeditiously and as fairly as possible.

27

I could certainly foresee the problems that were brewing. I was

very delighted when Ms. Gray came to my office to visit with me

during this year’s session to talk about some of the frustrations

that had escalated in Arkansas and the concerns that we had.

However, I am extremely concerned about the claims approval

process that was established by the consent decree that was signed

by USDA and the lawyers representing the black farmers. I certainly recognize that some of that is out of your hands at this

point. I also find that to be a bureaucratic answer as well in many

ways.

I understand that that decree the Department of Justice is the

official government entity presiding over that case. They have also

been required to contract all claims reviews out to private organizations, which I have had a difficult time in understanding and in

getting in contact with. The private entity reviews data that is collected by USDA to determine whether a claim is potentially valid.

These private entities have control over that. Once a black farmer’s

claim has been designated as potentially valid, it is then referred

to a second private entity which approves or dismisses this claim.

I am assuming that I am representing the process correctly.

I have kind of filtered through as much of it as I can. The system

was immediately overwhelmed by an unexpected number of claims,

as you all have mentioned earlier. Attorneys for the black farmers

had estimated that around 400 claims would be filed and instead

more than 20,000 black farmers have logged discrimination claims

with the court established claims evaluator. As a result, I am hearing that claims have been delayed and often handled without proper consideration, a lot of what everyone else in this room has been

hearing and certainly you have as well.

I have heard from many farmers who feel their valid claims have

been denied while others have been approved even though the two

complainants’ histories are very similar, side by side individuals

living next door to one another, who have almost identical situations.

The court appointed monitor in this case, Randi Roth, opened an

office in Memphis, Tennessee, which we were pleased because it

would be in close proximity to the many cases that we had in Arkansas and to allow easier access to the black farmers. Yet I am

still receiving complaints that many farmers cannot even get someone with authority over their claims to return their phone calls. To

me that is inexcusable. Arkansas farmers often refer to USDA as

a bureaucrat’s endless bureaucracy and that is why it is so disheartening for us to get a bureaucratic answer. I certainly look forward to working with you all, but I do have a great deal of questions in terms of how my constituents are being handled.

Perhaps you can give me some idea or indication the approved

number of 1,152 claims in this particular case, in the Track A

claims, how many of those have been paid? I am also getting the

reaction that they are getting a judgment but they are not getting

paid. In your opinion, what can be done to expedite the review

process for these claims approvals or their dismissals? Do you have

recommendations for those independent entities that are out there

handling this? From your management standpoint, is there a better

28

way that the private entities could be handling this and a better

way for you all to work with them?

Mr. FIDDICK. I think that General Counsel Rawls probably can

best field this question.

Mr. RAWLS. Well, I will say a few things. Pieces of the process

are working quite well, but I would reiterate what I said earlier,

which you alluded to, with 20,000 claims this has been a monumental undertaking. Specifically, to some of your questions, the

third party adjudications, the review of the actual claim on its merits, under the settlement, was a very important aspect of the settlement, to move that out of the government, out of the department.

Senator LINCOLN. Right.

Mr. RAWLS. Hopefully instill some confidence in the claimants

that, as I said earlier, they got heard one time. Maybe they do not

prevail, but they got heard. Those adjudications, while they took

quite awhile to set up this whole system, they have gone pretty

well. In fact, they have done about 18,000 of those adjudications.

Now where some of the——

Senator LINCOLN. How much of the approved ones have been

paid?

Mr. RAWLS. Well, that is where I am getting to. That is where

some of the frustration is. We have had about 11,000 cases approved. 7,000 of those have actually been paid. There is a group of

claims that are in the process that are in the queue at the Department of Justice to be paid from the judgment fund.

Senator LINCOLN. A little over half. Because you are almost at

1,200 there in terms of the approved. These are just in Arkansas

for me, my numbers.

Mr. RAWLS. OK. Obviously I do not have the Arkansas numbers

in front of me, but class wide, 11,000 have been approved and

7,000 have been paid.

Senator LINCOLN. OK. I am sorry. The nationwide numbers are

so close to Arkansas, I thought you were referring directly to Arkansas because ours are 1,100. Thank you.

Mr. RAWLS. Right. I can see why that is confusing. The payment

system itself took a while to set up. The judgment fund apparently

normally deals with very large, a small number of very large payments. This is a very large number of payments and frankly they

were overwhelmed at the beginning of this, but that seems to be

getting straightened out and those payments are being made now

within 90 days.

Senator LINCOLN. Within 90 days?

Mr. RAWLS. Yes.

Senator LINCOLN. The backlog, do you anticipate within 90 days

that backlog would be taken care of?

Mr. RAWLS. Well——

[Laughter.]

Mr. RAWLS. I cannot say that. What I am saying is that they are

endeavoring to make 90 days from the date of the adjudication.

Senator LINCOLN. You feel confident that the system that is now

in place is equipped to deal with both the backlog and those that

are being adjudicated at this point?

Mr. RAWLS. I do. I believe the system is working. I am frustrated

that——

29

Senator LINCOLN. Can I write my constituents and say in 90

days they can see it?

Mr. RAWLS. From the date of their decision, yes.

Senator LINCOLN. Mr. Chairman, may I ask one last question?

Ms. Gray, you made the point in terms of percentages. Do we know

where the agency, the Department of Agriculture ranks in terms

of percentage of minorities in that agency?

Ms. GRAY. We certainly have the statistics for each of the protected classes. We would have statistics for African Americans, for

Hispanics, and I would say that for most categories, the department is pretty close to—for African Americans, it is pretty close to

if not slightly above civilian labor work force—for African Americans—below on Hispanic, below on Native Americans, and below on

Asian Americans, slightly above on women in terms of the civilian

labor force numbers, which is the way we track that.

Senator LINCOLN. You did make the comment that in terms of

the number of cases that you had that it was not outrageous in

terms of the percentage of minorities——

Ms. GRAY. Right.

Senator LINCOLN [continuing]. That you have in the agency.

Ms. GRAY. The employment complaints themselves—— Senator LINCOLN. Right.

Ms. GRAY [continuing]. We are about fourth or fifth in terms of

the percentages. We are about at one percent and there are about

four or five agencies that are below us and the rest are certainly

above that, but about one percent of the total employee population.

Senator LINCOLN. Of USDA?

Ms. GRAY. Of USDA.

Senator LINCOLN. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

apologize for running over.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Senator Lincoln.

Thank you for the historical note that you are the youngest woman

elected to the Senate. That is an important point.

I would like to recognize now the distinguished ranking member

of our committee, Senator Harkin of Iowa. He has been deeply interested in this issue and in a bipartisan way we have held these

hearings, and as I pointed out almost annually, trying to come to

some benchmarks and some solutions. I would like to recognize the

senator for his opening comment or questions he may have of the

witnesses.

STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

IOWA, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being late and I hope none of you take that as any indication of a lack of interest in this issue by me. As our chairman said,

he and I both have had a long-standing not only interest but working bipartisanly to try to get this department moved and changed

around so that we can not only handle the cases but try to find out

why we got so many of them. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this important hearing.

For far too long a positive record at USDA has been marred by

a deep-rooted and far-reaching tolerance of racism, hostile work enVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
30

vironments and discriminatory treatment of minority farmers. I do

want to give credit to this administration and particularly to Secretary Glickman for the action he has taken. In December 1996, he

appointed the Civil Rights Action Team. In March 1997, the Office

of Civil Rights was created to address the employment and program complaints at USDA. He has taken some positive steps.

The administration also, as we know, reached a settlement in the

class action suit by African American farmers concerning discrimination in lending and benefit programs. There has been some increased lending to minority farmers and a higher percentage of minority employees at USDA, all good indications of moving in the

right direction.

That is the good news—despite those improvements, USDA’s Inspector General and GAO have found continuing problems in the

operation of USDA’s Office of Civil Rights and even more troubling

a failure to address the IG and GAO recommendations. The IG

noted that no significant changes in processing complaints had

been made since the last review. I do not know if you have covered

that in my absence or not, but I would like to ask you about that.

I believe this is unacceptable, totally unacceptable. It is essential

that USDA improve the process of handling complaints as called

for by both the USDA Inspector General and the GAO. Even beyond that, what I just said, USDA must get to the root of the problem. The message has to come through loud and clear at USDA discrimination is unacceptable in any form, place or time. Now what

I keep hearing is that the number of complaints at USDA completely overwhelms the system for investigating them. The Secretary has called for more outside help to come in to handle the

complaints.

The question ought to be why are you getting so many complaints in the first place, not do we need to hire more people to

process the complaints? What is the root of the problem, my

friends? The answer is not just to hire more people to process more

complaints. Why are you getting so many? That is the root of the

problem and I do not see you getting to that. I do not see USDA

getting to the root of that problem.

The bad actors have to be held accountable at the root of this

thing, not just at the end of it, but at the root of it. Again, I do

not know. I look in vain. I do not know. Can you fire anybody?

Does anybody ever get fired at the Department of Agriculture?

[Laughter and applause.]

Senator HARKIN. You know? This goes on and on and on and on.

You get more and more complaints and the system sort of bogs

down. Then when the IG and the GAO make their recommendations, we come back a year or so later and we find out that no process changes have been made. That is what they say. Now maybe

you have got a different story, but that is what they are telling me.

Now, last—I do not want to lay all the blame on the Department

of Agriculture—Congress must also do its part. Mr. Chairman, I

believe we can start by fully funding the Outreach for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers Program, which provides grants to eligible

community-based organizations to provide education and other agriculturally related services to socially disadvantaged farmers and

ranchers. Congress authorized $10 million for this program in the

31

1990 farm bill, but has refused year after year to fund the administration’s request for that amount. For 2001, both the House and Senate have approved only $3 million for this valuable program. It should be fully funded before this

session of Congress ends and we should fund it through the Ag appropriations bill. It is not in your bailiwick, Mr. Chairman. It is in

the appropriations bill, but it ought to be fully funded. It ought to

be funded at the $10 million level. It is called the Outreach for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers Program. Congress has got to do its

part on this also. Mr. Chairman, thank you again for having this

very vitally important hearing.

[The prepared statement of Senator Harkin can be found in the

appendix on page 64.]

Again, if I had one question I would ask of Mr. Fiddick, I would

just ask the question that I just alluded to and that is the IG office

and the GAO recommendations have noted that no significant

changes in processing complaints have been made since the last review. Now have you already addressed before I got here?

Mr. FIDDICK. I hope we have.

Senator HARKIN. Well, try it again.

[Laughter and applause.]

Mr. FIDDICK. I will be happy to. The IG’s field work ended coincident with the end of fiscal year 1999. All of the figures that you

saw in the report were more or less current as of September 30 of

last year. Since that time, well, I arrived on the scene in November

of last year, and since that time we have made some organizational

changes in the office of Civil Rights. We do that, we understand,

at our peril because there have been a number of organizational

changes, persistent organizational changes in that office, that have

not worked to the benefit of the office. We think that we have arrived at a solution in this case that will work because we have divided the policy functions from the operational functions, invested

the operational functions in a career executive, which has been the

exception and not the rule, and will be particularly important in

the coming months as one administration goes out and another administration goes in.

If I could give you one individual answer to that question that

would give you some encouragement going forward, it is the effect

of instituting and inserting a career officer at a high level in the

process at this particular time.

Senator HARKIN. That person is there?

Mr. FIDDICK. David Winningham.

Senator HARKIN. That is you, Mr. Winningham, chief operating

officer. How long have you been on board?

Mr. WINNINGHAM. I have been over there since April.

Senator HARKIN. Where did you come from?

Mr. WINNINGHAM. I came from FSA.

[Laughter.]

Senator HARKIN. Well, I do not know what that outburst was

about.

Mr. WINNINGHAM. I am sorry. I apologize to you. Farm Service

Agency. I was civil rights director in the Farm Service Agency since

1997.

Senator HARKIN. Since 1997?

32

Mr. WINNINGHAM. Right.

Senator HARKIN. Are you saying to me that the fact that there

has been no significant changes in processing complaints, that only

goes back to last September? That is what you are telling me. We

are looking at less than a year. Is that what you are saying to me?

Ms. GRAY. Let us take it back—— Senator HARKIN. When was the last review?

Mr. FIDDICK. In March of this year.

Ms. GRAY. The last review in March was the employment review.

The reviews actually started much earlier, that going back to 1996

when they identified the backlog of complaints, which had the

1,088 cases for program, and, in fact, all of those cases have been

resolved except for three. In September 1998, Secretary Glickman

convened an Early Resolution Task Force which was able to resolve

all but 35 of those cases so that was an initiative that was conducted. It certainly was recommended by the IG and it certainly

was part of one of the management decisions that the IG has accepted.

There have been through the various phases of investigations for

program complaints—keeping in mind that the first IG investigation on employment only happened last year—certainly the resolution of more than 50 percent of the management decisions that

they have made. You certainly will be getting copies of those for

your record, I am sure. I do not think it is accurate. I have a letter

from the IG’s office as of August 31, which certainly records by

number the recommendations and the management decisions that

have been reached as a result of the investigations into the Civil

Rights Office. To say that nothing has been done is not accurate.

On the employment investigation that was just completed this

spring, we have reached management decision on more than half

of the 21 recommendations in that report and the recommendations

that have not been accepted, it is because the things were put on

hold as the department completed the management plan. The management plan will certainly change the responses that were submitted. To say that there has been no progress or to say that there

has not been agreement with the Office of Inspector General on the

recommendations that they made is not correct. We will certainly

be happy to submit the letters from that office to you for your consideration.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you. I may have some followup later, Mr.

Chairman, but I see my time has run out.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Harkin. We appreciate very much your responses today. Obviously, you have

heard the Inspector General and GAO to begin with. You have attempted to give at least as much optimism to the situation as you

could, but clearly the underlying problems—Senator Harkin has

mentioned them again—as we talked about them earlier, the high

number of these cases, the reason for this number of disputes, is

still not clear to any of us, perhaps not to you. Maybe it is something that you will never have an answer to. You do the best you

can to institute procedures so that justice occurs in a fairly short

period of time.

We will continue to be in touch with you. We would like to have,

Ms. Gray, the comments that you just made or at least the findings

33

from the attempt to meet with the OIG recommendations or the

reasons why these have not been instituted. Certainly his charges

were very severe, namely the 119 recommendations and no

progress. You are saying, in essence, management plans are about

to be instituted incorporating some of these or you put some things

on hold institutionally. This may be understandable, but, on the

other hand, what appears to be the case is not much movement

even given the critiques that seem to come annually and that is

disturbing to most of us in this panel. Yes.

Ms. GRAY. It is disturbing, but we have resolved thousands of

cases and the fact of the matter is that a thousand new ones have

been filed.

The CHAIRMAN. This begs the question of why?

Ms. GRAY. Why? Because there is some discrimination and certainly the perception of discrimination at USDA. That is the situation. To address that, the Secretary certainly made several new initiatives in June. One was the accountability policy, to hold employees and managers responsible for discrimination, not only where

there was an official finding of discrimination but also where there

was a settlement of a case, because there was the perception that

some managers were settling cases to avoid being disciplined. We

have set up procedures to track the settlements as well as the findings and the settlement agreements are automatically forwarded to

the Office of Personnel for them to take appropriate disciplinary action.

Senator HARKIN. Mr. Chairman, if I might just ask—I do not

know the answer to this question. How does this number of complaints at USDA, civil rights complaints, compare with complaints

say at HUD or at VA or at HHS? I would to know how this—is

there any kind of comparison on this?

Mr. FIDDICK. There is as a matter of fact, Senator, and I believe

that we can find that information for you. The source is the Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission Report in 1998, which

tracks employment complaints which is in their jurisdiction.

Senator HARKIN. Employment complaints.

Mr. FIDDICK. In that year, Agriculture had a number of complaints equal to 1.0 percent of its total work force and I have how

the other cabinet offices ranked. Those which have a rate that

would be more than Agriculture are Labor, Education, HUD and

Transportation. Those that have a rate less than Agriculture would

be all the rest. The 1-percent incidence—— Senator HARKIN. Excuse me. What did you say?

Senator LINCOLN. There is five that had more.

Mr. FIDDICK. There are four that had more.

Senator HARKIN. Four had more.

Mr. FIDDICK. Agriculture would rank five of the 14 other cabinet

agencies.

Senator HARKIN. This is employment discrimination.

Mr. FIDDICK. That is correct.

Senator HARKIN. That is internally. We are talking about program.

Mr. FIDDICK. Right.

Senator HARKIN. These are not just employment cases you are

getting. These are program complaints; right?

34

Ms. GRAY. That is correct.

Mr. FIDDICK. Yes.

Senator HARKIN. That is what I am interested in. Let us talk

about the apples and apples. I am saying how does this compare?

HUD has programs. HHS has programs that reach out to communities. What kind of complaints are they getting on civil rights complaints on their program applications and their program outreach

programs compared to USDA, not employment, not employment?

Mr. FIDDICK. We do not have those figures.

Senator HARKIN. I do not either.

Mr. FIDDICK. We will try to find them for you.

Senator HARKIN. I do not either. That is why I asked you.

Mr. FIDDICK. It is much easier with EEOC because you have a

central reporting agency. I would say, though, that there are many

opportunities for USDA to discriminate because we have millions

of transactions with customers. Our current loan portfolio is

214,000 farm loans. We originated 38,000 farm loans last year. We

had 60,000 rural housing transactions. The denominator in the

equation we are talking about is very large both for employment

and for program activity.

Senator HARKIN. Well, I got to believe under HUD with all the

Section 8 vouchers they have got and things out there, they are

going to have about as many as you. I would just off the top of my

head think it.

Mr. FIDDICK. We will look into it.

The CHAIRMAN. Just adding to that, Senator Harkin, it was also

mentioned that the Forest Service has a good number of complaints

and this, of course, is totally outside the loan business, an interesting part, and shows the far-flung aspect of USDA’s activities. Well,

we thank you very much for coming.

Senator HARKIN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. We would like to recognize now a panel composed of Mr. John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers

Association; Mr. John Zippert, Director of Operations, Federation of

Southern Cooperatives, and chairman of the board of the Rural Coalition; Mr. Lawrence Lucas, USDA Coalition of Minority Employees; Mr. Harold Connor, Upper Marlboro, Maryland; Ms. Juanita

Carranza, Lambert, Montana; and Mr. Alexander Pires, Conlon,

Frantz, Phelan & Pires, Washington, DC

Gentlemen, we thank you for coming this morning. I will ask

each one of you, as we have the other panelists, to try to summarize your comments in a 5-minute period, more or less, and then

that will offer opportunities for senators to engage in questions and

colloquy with you. I will ask you to testify in the order that I introduced you and that, first of all, would be Mr. Boyd.

STATEMENT OF JOHN BOYD, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BLACK

FARMERS ASSOCIATION, BASKERVILLE, VIRGINIA

Mr. BOYD. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank

you for hosting this hearing, this long overdue hearing, I might

add, and also I would like to thank Senator Harkin and my good

friend, Senator Charles Robb from Virginia, who worked long and

hard on this issue, who introduced the statute of limitations waiver

for African American farmers.

35

Again, my name is John Boyd, president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, and it gives me good pleasure to

be here this morning to talk to you for a few minutes about the

problems that have existed for decades. It is our belief that our actions taken or not taken by the U.S. Government over the past century have systemically deteriorated rural America and African

American farmers and other socially disadvantaged farmers across

the country.

At critical times when our farmers needed government the most,

they failed to come through for them. For that reason, I wish to

thank this committee for taking a look at this issue this morning

and I hope that my statements here today will be beneficial to everyone here as it relates to the plight of the black farmers.

The National Black Farmers Association has been working hard

and long on the issue of black farmers from protesting, using our

historic mule struggle, to gain the attention of the media over this

issue, and again I would like to acknowledge the Clinton administration for at least taking a look at this issue and meeting with us

on December 17, 1997, so we would like to thank the Clinton administration. To me, USDA is still known as the last plantation. I

have personally named it an overflowing cesspool of filth that

needs pumping and cleaning and disinfecting.

In the early 1900’s, there were more than one million black farmers in this country. Today that number has declined to less than

18,000 black farmers. The National Black Farmers Association believes that must of this decline is directly attributed to the actions

and inactions of the United States Department of Agriculture officials.

As I listened to the Inspector General this morning, it turned my

stomach to hear our very own Inspector General admit to such

egregious acts, numbers and boxes of unprocessed files that lingered in the Office of Civil Rights for decades. I remind you of the

legal example such as loaded handguns in the United States Department of Agriculture office where African American farmers

came in and was greeted by a loaded handgun, only to no prevail

when no one was fired for this egregious act.

These are some things that we hope that this committee will

take a strong look at and deal with, Mr. Chairman. In an atmosphere in many parts of the country where USDA officials gave millions of dollars in gifts to their friends and farming families while

thousands of African American farmers was left without help,

seven years ago, I personally faced some discriminatory acts by the

United States Department of Agriculture. As I sat in my farm

house by candlelight during the dead of winter, it became very

clear to me. My lights had been turned off. Federal officers were

knocking at my door threatening to confiscate my equipment. Foreclosure signs were being posted on my property. Stress had destroyed my family. There was no money. All of this at no fault of

my own.

Through these type of actions and others has wiped out thousands of black farmers across this country, and we have to do

something to deal with this kind of issues. I realize that I was not

alone. Many other black farmers had lost their farms through egregious discrimination acts, mostly by the United States Department

36

of Agriculture, and this has been the worst nightmare for a lot of

people across this country.

As these acts of discrimination continue with the United States

Department of Agriculture, our government distances itself from

cores and values on which this country had been founded. During

the Reagan administration, America’s top decisionmakers dismantled the Office of Civil Rights within the United States Department

of Agriculture. This resulted in thousands of discrimination claims

simply being thrown away or stored in boxes standing as high as

ten cubic square feet per the Civil Rights Action Team report that

was listed in 1997.

Black and other economic disadvantaged farmers have been and

continue to be denied access through financial and programmatic

resources readily available to others throughout our society. Mr.

Chairman, I report to you today that our American dream is still

being denied. Too many African American and socially disadvantaged farmers have just not received justice and it is still just a

dream for them.

One of our first leaders to recognize this problem was Congresswoman Maxine Waters on the House side and she worked long and

hard along with other Members of Congress to address this issue.

With thousands and thousands of farmers yet to be compensated

from this settlement, this appears to be an example of a hollow

promise and again America failing black Americans like it did in

the 1800’s promising the 40 acres and a mule to those who had

been wronged.

Again we are here today to say that we have to make that promise fulfilled. The class action did not provide any injunctive relief—

a court appointed monitor who simply does not have the power to

overturn decisions for farmers who supposedly prevailed in the

class action lawsuit, lawyers who refuse to continue to represent

them because they have not been paid either through the consent

decree. Mr. Chairman, we have some serious problems with the

class action lawsuit. There is a number—I see my time has run

out—but there is a number of recommendations that I would like

to submit for the record and I hope that this committee will take

a long, hard look at those issues.

I would just like to close by talking about the county committee

system. This county committee system, Mr. Chairman, makes up a

racial makeup of 8,000 white males, 28 blacks and two females,

which promotes racial disparity, sexism, and there has to be something—there is a law within the department that they can terminate people that are on a county committee. It is just simply not

being done. Again I hope that this committee will take a long, hard

look at a issue that has plagued this country for decades. Let this

not be another listening session, but let this be a hearing that will

be a long and fruitful harvest. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Boyd.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Boyd can be found in the appendix on page 138.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Zippert.

37

STATEMENT OF JOHN ZIPPERT, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS,

FEDERATION OF SOUTHERN COOPERATIVES, AND

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, THE RURAL COALITION, EPES,

ALABAMA

Mr. ZIPPERT. Yes. My name is John Zippert and I am the Director of Program Operations for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Epes, Alabama, and I am also the chair of the board of the

Rural Coalition, which is a national organization of communitybased groups dealing with these issues, including the Inter-Tribal

Agriculture Council, Hmong farmers in California, Latino farmers

across the Southwest. I am here in both capacities and personally

I have been working on this problem for 35 years, starting in 1965

as a worker/volunteer worker for the Congress of Racial Equality

in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, where I participated with the

farmers there in an ASCS election and these were farmers who had

not yet voted in a real election because of the passage of the 1965

Civil Rights Act.

I have a long history of working on this problem and it is a serious problem; and it is a problem, as you have heard this morning,

that USDA has not fully addressed and we submitted 40 pages of

testimony. We have been working on this for years. We will submit

more. I am going to talk about the Pigford part for the end, but

let me say that we are very concerned that top managers and people within the agencies of USDA are not being held accountable for

the behavior of their subordinates.

There is a people problem there. As Senator Harkin asked, they

have great difficulty in firing people who want to do the wrong

thing; they appear to be more successful in getting rid of people

and reorganizing people who want to do the right thing, and this

is something that Congress ought to take another closer look at. I

also support your statement and we have been strong supporters

of the Section 2501 program of outreach for the socially disadvantaged farmers. Really if you look at the $10 million that should

have gone into that problem, we have a deficit now since 1990 of

60 or $70 million that was never appropriated for a program that

could do something about these problems and could reach out to

people and give them information about all the programs of USDA,

not just the loan program, the forestry programs, the crop insurance programs, the export programs and so on.

Let me also say on a very particular thing that we have been

working on for years which is CRAT Recommendation No. 28. This

was to create a registry of minority farmers so we could tell where

they were and make sure assistance was given to them so that the

disastrous reduction and loss of black-owned land would not continue. Here was a simple recommendation. FSA/USDA agencies

agreed this would be done. We went through all kind of hurdles

with OMB. I have a letter from Mr. Fiddick six months ago saying

this is his top priority and yet today there still is no registry and

there seems to be a dispute between the agencies of USDA on what

funds can be used to actually implement and do this program.

Something is wrong. Even the best intentions go awry and we have

heard of records and so on here. They just do not seem to really

put their mind on things and get it together and carry it out.

38

Now let me say about Pigford v. Glickman, and I had to tear myself away from my office. We have lines of farmers at all of the

Federation’s offices in the South today waiting to make sure that

they can be included because there is a September 15 deadline for

late filing. Because there was not adequate outreach and information at the beginning of this case, that not everybody who should

have been in it knew about it and is in it. On page eight, nine and

ten of the statement that we have given, we have some detailed

concerns about this suit, and of the 20,488 Track A people—this is

as of August 15—there may be a few more now—18,000 have been

adjudicated. 10,931 have been approved, but only 6,600 of them

have been paid, 60 percent. Here we are a year and a half since

the settlement, two farming seasons and only a third of the people

in the class have actually received a check and been paid.

Now of some of the people who have been determined by third

party people that they were discriminated against, the government

intends to ask the monitor to reconsider some of those people and

I really think Congress ought to ask the Department of Justice to

drop those reconsiderations. That if a third party found discrimination, all the things you have heard here, the government ought not

challenge those third-party decisions.

In addition, we have 7,000 people out there who are seeking our

help and the help of some of the other people you will hear from

on this panel to make a reconsideration of their case, and some

thought ought to be given that everybody who is in this class ought

to get this settlement and we are going to work hard to see that

those 7,000 people get their reconsideration.

Now, there is a lot that can be said here. One other thing is that

although you have heard that third parties have dealt with this,

FSA has had a flying task force of people to get evidence and information to challenge people’s complaints of discrimination. They

have had time and people to do that, but they have not had the

people to send people a check. I have one farmer—I am going to

finish with this. I have one farmer who gave me a letter which he

received after waiting for his check for 90 days in which he is written by the settlement people that it is going to take longer because

they have had too many people to participate in the case. I just feel

if we can have a flying task force of FSA to find reason not to pay

people, we ought to have a flying task force or somebody to help

pay the people who have been judged to have been discriminated

against and the farmer told me that this was the strangest, and

he said that this letter—he described this letter as chicken excrement. He said this was the most chicken excrement letter he had

ever got from the government.

[Laughter.]

Senator HARKIN. Do we have a copy of that? Did you put that

in here?

Mr. ZIPPERT. I will put it in. I want to probably cross the person’s

name, but I will put it in.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Zippert.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zippert can be found in the appendix on page 141.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lucas.

39

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE LUCAS, USDA COALITION OF

MINORITY EMPLOYEES, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and this honorable committee

for taking the time out of your busy schedule to deal with the issue

of not only the farmer but for the first time one of the things that

has been missing in this whole dialog about the Department of Agriculture, which only a few of the media have addressed, and that

is the problem of the racism and sexism and the hostile work environment that is not only perpetrated against farmers but against

its own employees.

I would like to enter into the record my prepared statement as

well as some attachments in support of that.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be published in full as will all of the statements of the witnesses.

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you. This organization, the Coalition of Minority Employees, started in 1994, but it does not represent just the

concerns of African Americans. It just so happened that its president is black, but we represent the concerns of Asians, Hispanics,

people of color, persons of disability, and all those people that fall

under Title VI as well as Title VII. I would also like to say that

the Honorable Chuck Robb and Albert Wynn have been in the forefront of not only dealing with the issues of the discrimination and

the dysfunctional civil rights system in USDA, but he also deals

with the systemic and the in-depth problem and used Mr. Harkin’s

aides to get to the breadth of the problem as it relates to employees.

You are not going to be able, as I said at the fairness hearing

on behalf of the black farmers, you are not going to settle the problem of the U.S. Department of Agriculture unless you do what you

have said and many of your colleagues—I think Mr. Harkin said

it—that the one problem that they have not done, they have not

fired people and not held those managers accountable for all the

pain and suffering that is inflicted not only on employees but on

customers throughout this United States.

In the Forest Service, in Montana, for example, we have examples, and the Forest Service will tell you that there was not a

woman thrown down the steps. They will tell you that there was

not a woman who lost her fetus because of hostile work environment. They will also tell you that there are no acts of nooses being

held and portrayed on government buildings. They will say that the

‘‘N’’ word is not being used. They will say they treat all people of

all religions, Jews, Asians, Arabs fairly.

They do not deal with those issues fairly on a broad base at

USDA. The problem, Mr. Chair, is the problem that the Department of Agriculture and their recommendations that I heard even

from the Office of General Counsel laying the problem on only on

civil rights employees is wrong. The initial complaint that comes

from discrimination does not come from the employee in the Civil

Rights office. It is because of that culture, all those isms, the bigotry that is perpetrated at the ground level. It is wrong for OIG

and anyone else who comes to you to say that the problem in Agriculture is the problem of the employees in Civil Rights. That is just

one of the problems and believe me it is dismal.

40

However, what is very important that the problem starts at the

ground level by employees who do not treat their employees with

dignity and respect and they feel the same way about its customers. Now let me say one thing about the Office of General

Counsel that made recommendations to you today. That same Office of General Counsel tells you that we have got a problem and

we are straightening it out, but it was that same general counsel

that told the American public, this president and this committee

that there was no discrimination against black farmers. There is a

contradiction here.

Now they also tell you that the Office of Civil Rights under Mr.

Winningham is going to be correct. Senator Harkin kind of touched

it. How can the individual that has been overseeing civil rights and

the demise of employees in FSA, the Farm Service Agency, and

farmers now going to take on the responsibility of seeing that employees and farmers are treated fairly? That is a hypocrisy and

they lay that at your feet and want you to believe it.

The employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the

people I represent, the Hispanics, the Asians, now they will say

why is it that we have a 10-percent increase in complaints if everything is being fixed? They will say, OK, we have resolved 13 complaints and fired people, but not one of those complaints of persons

being fired have discriminated against a black farmer and we are

paying over a billion dollars and no one being held accountable for

farmer complaints and they tell you that the situation is fixed.

They do not hold anybody accountable for discrimination against

black farmers, but they also do not hold anybody accountable for

discriminating against employees.

Now they will tell you now that gives me a great deal of pain.

They tell you that all the fixes are in place and I tell you that they

are not. Until we get to the problem and make sure that people

who are around the Secretary, who tells the Secretary that everything is all right, and has advised him poorly including the Office

of General Counsel, we need to do something about firing people.

You have people at the U.S. Department of Agriculture running the

Office of Administration and Civil Rights, but you also have the

real problem at the ground. Until you begin to make sure those individuals who are the ones who are discriminating found guilty of

discrimination are punished is the problem.

I will close by saying this. There is a structural problem at

USDA. They will tell you that everything is fine. You cannot have

the Assistant Secretary for Administration overseeing civil rights

and overseeing the Office of Human Resources. That has been

proven a no-no by the Civil Rights Commission. They have been

advised by the EEOC, but yet and still they will come to you and

say we have got the fix. I say to you that the structure of civil

rights, you need an assistant secretary responsible for civil rights

who answers directly to the Secretary or the Deputy Secretary.

Those people in civil rights cannot answer to the same person

who handles the office of human resources that is supposed to hold

people accountable because it does not work in government. I am

saying that there is a structure in USDA which they tell you, Mr.

Chair, that is fine. I am saying the structure is fixed and I say

what they are saying to you is that the problem is in the Civil

41

Rights Office. I say the problem is all the sexism and racism, bigotry and hostility that the employees at the Department of Agriculture that administrator after administrator, president after

president, secretary after secretary has allowed to go on, and I

would hope that this committee would not be fooled by the program

that they offer for you. You have got to hold people accountable at

every level and fire those people for discriminating against the

American citizens as well as very competent and hardworking employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas.

[Applause.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas can be found in the appendix on page 188.]

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Carranza, we welcome you. As Senator Baucus mentioned earlier today, you have spent two days on a train

to get here.

Ms. CARRANZA. Yes, I did.

The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate that perseverance and we look forward to your testimony.

STATEMENT OF JUANITA CARRANZA, LAMBERT, MONTANA

Ms. CARRANZA. Thank you, Senator. As you said, I did spend two

days on the train and so you might as well shut your little light

off because I am going to read my written testimony.

[Laughter.]

Ms. CARRANZA. My 89-year old mother made that trip with me

and it was 48 hours. Thanks to Amtrak. First of all, I would like

to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and address

the civil rights resolution process at the United States Department

of Agriculture. I will have no statistics to testify about because numerical figures do not tell what the reality is about. The fact is

that in the delivery of its federally mandated farm programs, the

United States Department of Agriculture has like the Bridgestone/

Firestone Corporation a broken, defective and deadly product that

must be recalled.

If a recall is not in order at USDA, what other reason can one

give why certain farmers and ranchers are selectively chosen to be

denied services at the FmHA/FSA county office level when Federal

law states that no one, and I quote, ‘‘shall be treated differently’’?

If a recall is not in order at USDA, why is the pattern of discrimination that begins at the county office level continued and enforced by entrenched FmHA/FSA state office officials regardless of

what Congress mandates?

If a recall is not in order at USDA, why is the mandatory inhouse appeals system, one that ultimately reiterates the original

death sentence, begun at the county office for the targeted family

farmers and ranchers foolish enough to believe that there can be

justice in that mortally flawed charade?

If a recall is not in order at USDA, why do regional USDA Offices of General Counsel combine forces with the Department of

Justice not just to remove farmers and ranchers from their land

but go for the jugular effect? Then the selected farmers and ranch

families are left penniless, humiliated and beaten with not one

shred of human dignity left and in some cases self-inflicted death

42

is an easier solution than the tortuous process delivered from those

two government entities.

If a recall is not in order at USDA, why has the civil rights resolution process been such a dismal bumbling farce? On November

13, 1998, Secretary of Agriculture Glickman spoke of resolving the

discrimination fiasco as USDA. He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King,

and I quote: ‘‘An unaddressed injustice at any time is an injustice

for all time.’’ The Secretary should be reminded of what Dr. King

instinctively knew, that it is the speaker’s actions that validate the

spoken word, not just the pacifying rhetoric.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Joann Martens

of Wolf Point, Montana, who filed a civil rights complaint in 1993

because she was denied the same servicing actions that were only

given to her ex-husband and was then told by the county office supervisor, that women do not belong in farming and is still waiting

for her case to be resolved, that USDA really does believe in justice.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Sharon Mavity of

Sidney, Montana, who filed a civil rights complaint in 1997 when

she tried and failed to save her fourth generation family ranch for

her and her sons because she was denied the loan servicing that

was instead given to a selected young white male and is still waiting for her case to be resolved, that USDA really does believe in

justice.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Rosemary Love

of Harlem, Montana, who filed a civil rights complaint in 1997 and

whose 36 year marriage ended 3 months ago because of the strain

of fighting FmHA/FSA for 17 years and is still waiting for her case

to be resolved, that USDA really does believe in justice.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Jacky Shiplet of

Livingston, Montana, who filed a civil rights complaint in 1996

after she was denied loan servicing by FmHA/FSA, but young

white males did receive loan servicing, and who has had to choose

between food or medicine for her disabled husband, that USDA

really does believe in justice.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Dolly Stone of

Browning, Montana, who last week had to stare down a sheriff’s

foreclosure sale on her ranch despite USDA’s own moratorium on

foreclosures for class members of the Keepseagle v. Glickman class

action, that USDA really does believe in justice.

Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell Margaret

Carranza, my 89-year old mother, who experienced the deliberate

pattern of insufficient and repeated late funding from FmHA/FSA

that is meant to drive certain farmers and ranchers into insolvency

and bankruptcy, that the USDA really does believe in justice. The

USDA in-house appeals process deliberately failed her by failing to

make FmHA/FSA adhere to the regulations and rules that are supposed to regulate farm programs.

The USDA civil rights process failed her at the time of the discrimination complaint partly because it had been dismantled by the

Reagan/Bush administrations.

I have to tell you that I am missing part of my testimony. Do

you have it? Thank you. I apologize. I will begin again the last

paragraph. Let the Secretary and his civil rights team tell MarVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
43

garet Carranza, my 89-year old mother, who experienced the deliberate pattern of insufficient and repeated late funding from FmHA/

FSA meant to drive certain farmers and ranchers into insolvency

and bankruptcy, that USDA really does believe in justice.

The USDA in-house appeals process deliberately failed her by

failing to make FmHA/FSA adhere to the regulations and rules

that are supposed to regulate farm programs. The USDA civil

rights process failed her at the time of the discrimination complaint

because it had been dismantled by the Reagan/Bush administrations in 1993.

The Chapter 12 bankruptcy process failed her because the tentacles of FSA reached into that system as well. The state FSA office

furious that a discrimination complaint had been filed refused to

let the family operation into the Chapter 12 protection unless they

signed a drop dead agreement that signed away the discrimination

complaint and all of their rights under due process guaranteed to

them by law.

Our congressional delegation failed her because when letters

were written asking for their intervention, FmHA/FSA state and

national officials responded denouncing her operation as the guilty

party. Even elected representatives, like the general public, can

also be guilty of believing that only government knows best and

that the government is always right until it is too late, too late to

stop an overzealous Assistant U.S. Attorney from declaring that

she is aware of Secretary Glickman’s moratorium against foreclosures on open USDA civil rights complaints, but she is going to

bring the full force of the Federal Government down upon the

Carranza women and make an example of them, and she did.

The personal property was seized by the U.S. marshals and sold

at public auction even though Dr. Jeremy Wu of USDA’s Office of

Civil Rights kept assuring the Carranza’s that the sale would be

stopped. When it was not, he would not return repeated phone

calls.

Personal family effects, baptismal records, family ranch records,

family heirlooms are still on their former property because the

same Assistant U.S. Attorney said, and I quote, she would ‘‘have

the FBI on their heads so fast it will make their heads spin’’ if they

attempted to retrieve their possessions from their former property

now owned by FSA’s predetermined buyer.

The USDA Office of Civil Rights has failed Margaret Carranza

miserably as well because they not only failed to protect her rights

in the foreclosure process, but they have failed to honor her rights

as a human being, the same rights that our country was founded

upon, and I quote, ‘‘that all men are created equal, that they are

endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that

among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’’

I ask you today is seven years long enough for Margaret

Carranza to wait for the justice that the Secretary pontificated

about in 1998? What about the other women from Montana that I

mentioned earlier? What about all the other farmers and ranchers,

men and women, that this out of control FSA system has been allowed to selectively remove from farming and ranching? Senators,

this is not an exaggerated unsubstantiated testimony that a FedVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
44

eral system you are responsible for is defective and that it must be

fixed.

What you have heard is the reality of our lived experience and

no buck passing, denials, or stonewalling is going to make it go

away because we the people upon whom the injustice was committed are not going to go away until the system is fixed. Change not

just for us but for all of those who will be a target the next time

someone walks into a USDA office and wants their land, too.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Carranza.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Carranza can be found in the appendix on page 212.]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Connor.

STATEMENT OF HAROLD CONNOR, UPPER MARLBORO,

MARYLAND

ACCOMPANIED BY JOSEPH D. GEBHARDT, ESQ.

Mr. CONNOR. Good morning. My name is Harold Connor and I

would like to thank the committee for giving me an opportunity to

appear this morning. I have a longer statement, a longer written

statement, and I would like to request that it be included in the

record.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be published in full.

Mr. CONNOR. Thank you very much, and I will try to make my

comments brief. As I said, my name is Harold Connor. I am an employee of the Farm Service Agency. I am currently the Deputy Director of the FSA Price Support Division here in Washington, DC,

and we handle a number of programs including the Market Assistance Loan Program, the Loan Deficiency Payment Program, Small

Hog Operation Payment Operation Program, and our programs

provided more than $15 worth of financial assistance to the nation’s farmers on 1999 crops.

I began my career with FSA in 1971 while still in college and

graduated from the University of Missouri and was hired as the

first black county executive director for FSA in the state of Missouri, came to Washington in 1983, and within a few years after

I got to Washington, I encountered my first significant racial discrimination within FSA. I filed a complaint but then after talking

with some of my colleagues, both black and white colleagues, they

mentioned that most people who filed complaints are marked, and

in the future they have a very difficult time either obtaining promotions or they also would face some retaliation. I dropped that

complaint.

Things did not get any better on the job and within a couple of

years I filed another complaint, carried that through to a settlement, and once I did finally come to settlement, but before I did

reach a settlement, I had had severe and permanent damage to my

health and my marriage. In 1976, I applied for a position as Director of the Audits and Investigations Group with the Farm Service

Agency, and I thought I was well qualified for the position, had 12

years of experience, some seven and a half years as a county executive director, and I had also handled audits as a program specialist

in Washington, DC

45

The white selecting official selected a lesser qualified white for

the position so I filed an EEO complaint under the Herron v. Glickman class action complaint that was brought against FSA by middle managers, grades 12, 13 and 14, African American managers

in Washington. On December 14, 1999, I received a finding of discrimination from an EEOC judge and within a couple days after

that, a representative of USDA falsely told The Washington Post

that even though I received a favorable determination that I had

already been promoted, which really kind of irritated me pretty

much because we had not even come to any kind of decision.

The EEOC judge recommended that because I had been discriminated against, that I be promoted to a grade 15 position that was

either in my current position or a position that was similar to the

position that I had applied for. The position that I had applied for

and been unfairly denied has since been abolished so that was not

available. They also determined that I should receive back pay,

back to June 9th of 1996, and $10,000 in compensatory damages.

The Office of Civil Rights turned the enforcement of these provisions back over to the Farm Service Agency, and they even gave

Farm Service Agency the option of offering me whatever position

they wanted to offer. What FSA offered me was a position that was

especially created as assistant to a Schedule C political appointee

and with no supervisory responsibility and no management responsibility and no major program responsibility.

This did not fall in line with what the EEOC judge had decided

that I should have because it was not substantially equivalent to

the position I had applied for or the position that I was in. I turned

that offer down and filed a noncompliance complaint with the

USDA Office of Civil Rights. They did not bother to respond to my

complaints, so I filed a complaint through my attorneys with the

Office of Federal Operations with EEOC. I am confident that I am

going to win my appeal there, but the problem with that is that

it normally takes about two years for that complaint process to

carry out so in the next two years I am going to have additional

damage to my health waiting for a determination to be made.

I do not believe that the Office of Civil Rights should ever have

turned the enforcement of its rules over to FSA because they were

the agency that had discriminated against me. The Office of Civil

Rights takes a stance that seems to be trying to favor the agency

that is involved in the discriminatory activity.

They either take action or inaction depending on what is going

to support management’s position. For instance, a friend of mine,

who is also in the Herron v. Glickman complaint, had a complaint

of reprisal that was never investigated and there was no record,

and yet the Office of Civil Rights decided to dismiss that case because it would be advantageous to management. By the Office of

Civil Rights pro-management stance, it encourages those within

the agency who are interested in retaliation.

I have a particular case that or particular situation that I wanted to mention. We, within the Price Support Division, were trying

to get some automated functions out to allow producers to request

loan deficiency payments from home without making a trip to the

office, and it would be totally automated to where they did not just

have to key it in and print off an application and then send it in.

46

Rather, it would be automated to the point where they could key

it in, it can be processed, and we can issue the payment to them

through electronic funds transfer.

However, the division that we had to go through to get these

processes put in place has just completely stymied us from day one.

As a matter of fact, at one time the director of that division, acting

director, informed his key people not to talk to myself, my immediate supervisor, who is also an African American, or the chief of

our Automation Branch, Mr. George Stickels, who served up here

as a congressional fellow for a period of time. This same person

whom we have to go through to get automated functions put out

raised a question at a manager’s meeting as to what can be done

about people who file multiple EEO complaints, and there are some

more things that are in the record that we submitted.

The main issue that I had today is that even though a representative of the Department said that I had already been promoted, I

have not been promoted. This is some nine months after the determination was made. I have not been promoted. I also have not even

received any back pay. As a matter of fact, the agency has not even

begun to process my back pay. When I submitted an e-mail to the

Human Resources Division asking about the status of my back pay,

I was referred to an OGC attorney and that attorney said that they

would not answer any of my questions. If I had any questions

about this particular case, I would have to contact them through

my attorney.

With this hearing today, I would just like leave some recommendations of what the Department could do to help the Office

of Civil Rights to kind of take a more active role and a more positive role in solving some of these employee complaints. The Office

of Civil Rights should be more involved in the negotiation process

when we are trying to negotiate settlements. They should have full

power and authority to see that any orders that it sends down to

agencies are fully carried out and properly carried out, and the Office of Civil Rights should also take a more active role in keeping

the statistics on race and promotion in a format that could be useable in EEOC cases.

As a matter of fact, the EEOC judge who heard our particular

case said that the documentated statistics on race and promotion

that were submitted by FSA were very unreliable and left much to

be desired. Again, I would like to thank the committee for allowing

me to have a few minutes and if possible I would like to have my

attorney maybe say a couple of things.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Connor can be found in the appendix on page 216.]

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Connor, let me just ask—I will grant

your wish, but it will need to be a brief comment because we need

to proceed on to the next witness and to questions as I announced

earlier.

Mr. CONNOR. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. We have permitted you and other witnesses to

speak much more than the 5-minutes because you have a very important case to make, but please I will allow your attorney to make

a comment, but be very brief if you can.

47

Mr. GEBHARDT. Thank you, Senator, and Senator Harkin. My

name is Joseph D. Gebhardt, and I have been Mr. Connor’s attorney for several years now, and I was the lead attorney and still am

in the Herron v. Glickman class action on behalf of the middle

management black employees at FSA.

One thing that we have found in the case that really you should

know about is that the Office of Civil Rights is sending its staff

people to depositions in EEOC cases to defend management. They

are acting as pseudo lawyers. Some of them are lawyers, and OCR

is actually sending staff people to represent and defend managers

at their depositions in these EEOC cases. When you wonder what

those 120 employees are really doing, that is something that is

going on.

Now, Charles Rawls also told you that the OGC attorneys who

are in the Civil Rights Division, he said it is a small and experienced group of people, that they work on a variety of civil rights

issues and they give civil rights advice. What they really do is they

defend management in the EEOC hearings. That is what the OGC

civil rights lawyers do probably 90 percent or 100 percent of their

time. Every time we have a case at the EEOC, they are there representing management. In fact, the OGC lawyer told the EEOC

judge that Harold Connor was not discriminated against.

Well, the judge saw through the smoke and all that and ruled

that there was discrimination, but that is what OGC’s Civil Rights

Division lawyers are doing. Mr. Rawls told you that they are experienced—they are a small group and they are not experienced. One

of the lawyers we worked against in the Herron case had graduated

from law school one year before.

You have heard about this mismatch of skills in the Office of

Civil Rights today. I will give you a good example. The former Environmental Justice Coordinator for USDA Central Office, Dr.

Velma Charles-Shannon, they competed their position. They just

put it up for bid because they transferred it out of departmental

administration and the civil rights arena over to the Forest Service

area. She had to compete for her job. Fair enough. She had a doctorate in toxicology and had some civil rights familiarity. She is a

black woman, very high stature, had held a lot of responsible jobs

in government before.

They gave her job to a white woman who did not have any qualifications like that and who had applied for the job and had been

interviewed over the phone; they just gave her job to a white person. Well, what did they do with Dr. Velma Charles-Shannon?

They made her an employment complaints specialist in Civil

Rights. It is not that they are putting garbage employees in there.

They are creating the skills mismatch in order to promote discrimination.

Mr. Connor just told you about the back pay issue, that they

have had nine months to get ready to pay his back pay. We gave

them the calculations—what—about six months ago for him and

Dr. Cliff Herron, who is in the audience, another discriminated

against FSA employee, as found by EEOC and USDA. They have

not paid Cliff Herron’s back pay either. We have asked them to

send us the calculations when they get the calculations done. They

48

are not doing it. There is no interest in civil rights enforcement at

USDA.

Secretary Glickman’s spokesman, Andy Solomon, lied in The

Washington Post and said Harold Connor and Cliff Herron had already been promoted. We have let Secretary Glickman know that.

We let the USDA/OGC lawyers know it. They have not taken any

corrective steps. This goes to the top and that is all I have to say.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Pires.

STATEMENT OF ALEXANDER PIRES, CONLON, FRANTZ,

PHELAN & PIRES, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. PIRES. Thank you very much. My name is Alex Pires. I represent farmers for a living and I wanted to talk about three things:

the black farmers, the Native American farmers, and the Hispanic,

women and Asian farmers. I started the black farmers case. I wrote

the complaint. I started with the three original black farmers, Tim

Pigford, Lloyd Shaffer and George Hall.

The black farmers case was just a modest attempt to make

changes at USDA. It was not intended to do anything more than

that. My hope when we started was to get two or 3,000 black farmers hearings. You have heard today everybody testify about it. In

the end there will be maybe 25,000. I need to tell you how crazy

it is out there. Last week the Poorman Douglas Company, which

handles the phone calls, got 127,000 phone calls. Yesterday, they

got over 20,000 phone calls from black farmers complaining. My office everyday my phone system completely overloads—everyday. I

have 13 lawyers. We are getting four to 500 pieces of mail and

faxes a day on the black farmers case. The case is actually getting

bigger.

I did not come here to talk about that. I came here to talk about

the problem. USDA, you are complaining to the wrong people. It

is not the people in Washington that are the cause of the problem,

in my opinion. It is at the local and state level. It is a very racist

organization. It is white men running everything. All the local

county committees are white males. How do they stay in power?

You can only vote if you are a farmer in the program. You only get

in the program if you get a loan. You only get a loan if you get approved. You only get approved if the people in power decide to give

you a loan. It is self-perpetuating.

In the history of this country, there has never been a black dominated county committee even in black counties. There has never

been a Hispanic dominated committee even in Hispanic counties.

Women are even more powerless. White males run the show. In the

South, the local county offices fill out the forms for white people.

Minorities do not get services. It is very simple. I have been doing

this for 20 years. I have represented more farmers than anybody

in the country. I see it everyday. I have been to more county hearings than anyone. That is what I do. The racism exists at the local

level.

Native Americans it is even worse. They get no services. It is a

national disgrace. I am in the middle of that case I filed also called

Keepseagle. The government is fighting the case. It is worse than

the black farmers case. The Native Americans have been treated

worse, if that is possible. They never get servicing. They never get

49

attention. They never get loans. They will not settle with us. I understand that. They will not talk to you. Senator Conrad asked

questions about it, as did others. I understand that. I am a big boy.

It is litigation. In the end, we will prevail, but it will be bigger. We

will be back in front of you and you will find out the Native American case will probably have 40 to 50,000 claims.

The third problem is Hispanics, women and Asians. They are totally powerless. They are out of the program. When a woman walks

in to a local county office, she has very little chance of getting good

servicing. It is not these people in Washington. It is people at the

local level. You do need to think about changing the system. The

election process does not work well. White men will always be in

power. You need to have a different system to get minorities in

power at the local level. The state system, it does not work either.

On the positive side, we have learned two things in the Pigford

case. You can have private enterprise process cases. You can take

the best part of the government, which is its money, and match it

with the best part of the private sector, which is its processing, and

we have done almost 20,000 cases in a year and a half. We can do

a lot better job. What we have learned is that black farmers had

a lot to say about the system and it has been good for everybody.

It is very easy to complain about a lot of things. Have there been

delays in getting checks? Yes. The judgment fund where the money

comes from is overworked. The people in Washington have been intellectually honest about the settlement of the case. They have

worked hard. We meet constantly about it. I do not think it is a

case of bad faith there. Could we do better? Sure. We now have 46

retired judges writing decisions, 11 arbitrators issuing arbitration

decisions. The monitor’s office has ten people. Like I said, I have

13, 14 full-time people working on it. I have another hundred lawyers that I brought in. The vast majority, by the way, are black.

I could do a better job in the American Indian case if I could get

it resolved. I need help from Congress. They need to help us get

the government to the table and get started on all these cases. Native Americans have 25 years of stories to tell. We might as well

get started and start telling them. There is no sense in acting like

it is not there. It is almost impossible as a Native American to get

a loan. I do not care whether you are in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana.

I spend all my time on the road. It is very, very hard because

if Mr. Harkin comes into my office and sits down, I have two

choices. I can sit down and help him fill out the forms and work

with you, ask you questions, help you help me help you by asking

you to fill out the form with me together. You and I work together.

I can qualify you. If I do not want to qualify you because you are

a Native American or I do not particularly care for you because you

are a woman, you are never ever going to get approved. That is

how the system works at the local level. If I do not want Mr. Harkin to get a loan, you, sir, will never get a loan. If I want you to

get a loan, I do not care how many problems you have had, I can

qualify you. That is basically how it works.

Finally, these people here, all of them who I know, have worked

very hard. These are very controversial cases. I am in the middle

now with a whole mess of people trying to work on the reparations

50

matter and I find that it is not my fault, for example, that I am

a white person. I would prefer actually for what I do for a living

if I was a black person, but I am not. I cannot say anything more

about that other than it makes it more difficult.

The black farmer is a wonderful and loving person. They have

persevered through what no human being would normally do, much

like a war. Because of John and others, they are making progress.

It is difficult. There are fights constantly everyday, everyday. The

Native American case, though, is actually worse, and I would ask

you in your hearts to think about that. It is a national disgrace,

not the problem these people behind me, at the local levels, and we

need to do something about it.

It is just money. It is just money that is needed to process these.

Yes, there will be a billion dollars in the black farmers case. My

gosh, that is nothing. We have given out over $100 billion in subsidies in the farm program in the last 15 years. What is a billion

dollars? It is not that much money.

Finally, when you help us solve the Native American case, think

about the women and the Asians and the Hispanics. We have until

October 20 something to file the last case. We are working on the

last case to file which involves them. It is very complicated. I know

people do not like lawyers. I do not much like them myself. We

have no other choice right now. I do not see the legislative solution

for what we are doing and I do not see anyone else coming forward

so we have these cases. I do thank you very much, though, for taking the time, and I will answer whatever questions about any of

the three cases. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Pires.

[The prepared statment of Mr. Pires can be found in the appendix on page 229.]

The CHAIRMAN. Let me begin by asking you a question. If I heard

you right, one solution, and this oversimplifies it, but sort of work

with me, you would literally contract out the process that is now

occurring in the civil rights function in USDA perhaps to private

lawyers? Is that a possibility?

Mr. PIRES. No. You have the right thought. In the black farmers

case, the way we got 20,000 cases processed was to give it to private enterprise, retired judges and give them very short deadlines.

In the Native American case, you are going to need that. You are

never going to be able to go back to the government system and

get it done. It is also wrong. You are not going to be able to get

people to rule upon someone that they discriminated against. It is

naturally inconsistent.

You are going to have to do that with Hispanics, women and

Asians also. In the bigger picture, the best thing that you could do

to help farmers, to help American farmers, is to change the election

system at the local level, to take the white male and take his power

from him. I can give you two thoughts for what it is worth and you

are far smarter than I. One is let people put their name in to be

nominated in any county. 15 people come forward and then select,

give the power to who you want to select so they can pick women,

they can pick Asians, they can pick Hispanics. If it is a black county, in Green County, Alabama, and it is 71 percent black, why do

we have five white people? Makes no sense to me.

51

My gosh, what are we doing? Why could you not set up a new

system, a new system for elections to take the power away from the

white males. That would overnight make everybody’s job up here

better. We are yelling at the wrong people. By the time the problems get here, they are completely out of control, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, just following through that idea, clearly in

the 71 percent black county you mentioned, if everyone was eligible

to vote and did vote——

Mr. PIRES. They are not, sir, because they do not have loans.

That is the key. There are 71 percent of the people who are black,

but the farmers who are in the program, the black farmers are

probably only 30 percent, the white folks get all the loans. White

folks have 70 percent of the votes. They vote the white people in

and they just perpetuate the system. The election system does not

work. It is self-perpetuating.

You know how they give out loans in the South? White people

get it first who are members of the committee. Their sons get it

next. The seed guy, the implement dealer, the John Deere dealer,

the white structure, all owned by white people first. After the

money has been pretty much taken care of, they look to blacks next

and they look to women last. Hispanics, if there are some. Now in

the big four out West, in Texas, Colorado, California where Hispanics have more of a stick, they do a little bit better. Essentially

white people take care of white males first. The election system

does not remedy it.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Let us say we change the franchise so

that everybody voted, not just those who have loans, for example,

now then what happens?

Mr. PIRES. It would be great. It would be great. It would be wonderful.

The CHAIRMAN. This is, without trying to force at least a conclusion, this is a legislative recommendation that you would make?

Mr. PIRES. Well, me—these people know more about it—that is

what I would do. I would love to get the white male and put him

in his place. I am getting to hate white men.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Boyd.

Mr. BOYD. Mr. Chairman, to reiterate on some of the things that

Mr. Pires is talking about, half the problem is there are African

Americans on these committees, but they cannot vote. In other

words, they are sitting in the county. They are minority advisors

to the committee that have no voting privileges and I cannot believe that we are sitting here in the year 2000 that we have committees, Federal committees that exist that deprive certain groups

of people the ability to vote. That is one aspect of it.

The county committee system was designed to steal land. It was

a legal way to steal land from poor African American farmers and

other socially disadvantaged farmers where the county committee

people, and these are—Mr. Pires, you are right—the most powerful

people, powerful white farmers in the communities that get together and say, OK, I am going to get Mr. Boyd’s farm at a third

of what it costs, and what they done was I had a county committee

person come by my house. It was not advertised in the newspaper.

He said, Mr. Boyd, I know you are in trouble, I am going to give

52

you a chance to get out, come live on my farm if you sign these

documents.

He had my paperwork coming to my farm talking about selling

my farm out. I had a few choice words for him, but I am running

for office and I cannot say them today.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand. Mr. Zippert.

Mr. ZIPPERT. There are a number of things, some of which Mr.

Pires has pointed out, but actually technically everyone in the

county who has a farm interest can vote in this election. However,

the procedure under which you register to vote is not clear and the

procedures under which people get ballots and the procedures on

which ballots are counted, all of this has been, is really a scandal

that needs to be looked at, and that is the problem.

For instance, in some counties, the husband and wife each get a

ballot if they are white, but black people, only the husband gets a

ballot. This is based upon this whole cultural process that has been

described here or racist process, depending on what you want to

call it, and this is what goes on and then we have a chart, a detailed chart, in the report we submitted to you following page 32

which goes into some of the statistics that the Rural Coalition was

able to get from FSA about these elections. We have a FOIA that

they have yet to respond to. You might want to ask them about responding to that.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your request?

Mr. ZIPPERT. Well, we requested information about the results of

these elections and participation in these elections, number of ballots that were invalidated and reasons for it, and we have not gotten a response, and it sort of comes—Mr. Pires has described in

simpler terms, but there are complexities in this and specifics in

this and if you know the system, there are ways in which you can

manipulate it to have the result that Mr. Pires describes and we

have tried—the Rural Coalition suggested a voter registration

form. It was initially adopted and then it was dropped. We have

been talking to them for years about some kind of a proportional

representation system. If we cannot get people elected, then the

people who are appointed ought to have the right to vote.

We have the situation where when the community nominates a

black candidate that they want, the committee puts three other

blacks on the ballot to dilute the black vote. There are all kinds

of ways they have manipulated this system and it really deserves

a hearing of its own with the people in USDA who are in charge

of this because they have allowed this to go on.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask for just a pause. Unfortunately a roll

call vote has been called. I did not realize that was occurring and

we are in the final minutes of it. I will return if you can stay and

I would like to continue the hearing at that point. If you want to

continue, Senator Harkin, please proceed.

Senator HARKIN. I just want to say I have got another thing I

have got to go to right after this vote and I do not know how much

longer we are going to be on this vote, but I just want to thank

you all for being here and I will try to return, but I really do think

we are going to have to look at the selection process that you are

talking about and try to restructure this. It almost seems like we

need almost like a voting rights act for agriculture, a modern-day

53

voting rights act that will be not just sit back but actually will be

proactive, actually go out and do some things like that. I hope I can

get back, but if not I want to thank you all very much and you

have made great suggestions. We will followup on that.

[Recess.]

The CHAIRMAN. The hearing is resumed. Did you have further

comments, Mr. Lucas, with regard to we were discussing the voting

situation with regard to county committees, and I do not know

whether Senator Harkin pursued that further or whether you have

a comment on that?

Mr. LUCAS. I agree with my colleagues on the panel, especially

with John Boyd saying that we have gone through a civil rights

struggle and you still have people, African Americans, who supposedly are on a committee, that cannot vote. That is appalling as

we move into the 21st century. That the comments and the breadth

of my colleague to my left talking about the whole voting process.

I would have to add that the problem does not just rest with the

county committees. We have people in Washington and political

people in Washington, some of them, some of your former colleagues who are now working at the Department of Agriculture,

who are beginning to act like the culture, the plantation mentality

that has existed in the department so long has now come to the Department of Agriculture and they are beginning to act just like

those people who are doing all this harm.

I think that if the programs were still administered properly,

once the complaints rise up and those that do get through the system, They are people in Washington in some of these offices, and

by the way some of those people look like me. It is not just a situation where we are putting it on all white males. We have Hispanics

and blacks in very high positions in the USDA and they are in

some of these offices around the country who are also taking part

in that discrimination. I do not want to make it seem like you let

the political appointees around the Secretary and some of the assistant secretaries in the administration, administrators and managers off the hook.

I think the problem is you cannot put a band-aid on a cancer and

that is what you are doing if you only deal with one piece of it. You

have got to hold these people accountable and fire these people for

discriminating and ruin the lives of so many American citizens,

both in the Department of Agriculture and outside.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Now, we have discussed at least the

three parts of the program, and there may be more in the class action suits—Mr. Pires had discussed and offered some counsel on

that—the problems of discrimination in the field with regard to

program discrimination, and you are now raising an important

point that you raised in your testimony originally that the problem

may lie with the management of the department.

You know let us just take a look at that for a moment. Sort of

start with the Secretary, the assistant secretaries, other people.

Many of these persons are appointed by the president of the United

States depending upon which administration comes and is confirmed by this committee. Is the problem at that level or is the

problem at levels below the political appointees, that is persons

who have some status through the civil service who proceed on

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really through several administrations, or how can you give us advice as to where we look?

Mr. LUCAS. To be very short, I notice that Mr. Boyd will probably

have some comments on that, too. What you have is the Office of

General Counsel who told the American public that there was no

discrimination of black farmers are also saying in the case of the

employees, and you got over 15, almost 18 class actions of employees. They, too, are saying the same thing they said about the black

farmer case. This committee should order the Office of General

Counsel, i.e., Charlie Rawls, to cease quoting from Rule 23 and

being a barrier to settlement of these complaints.

I think we could have settled the black farmer complaint at a

much lower level than $1 billion if the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of General Counsel would have listened to the attorneys and to the farmers. These cases were brought to them early

on, but they would not listen—Mr. Pires, John Boyd, Pigford—and

what you have is a culture within the Department of Agriculture

and some of these people are political appointees, i.e., the Office of

General Counsel, or i.e., the Director of Civil Rights, and now you

have Mr. Winningham overseeing some of the same cases that he

was reviewing when he was at Farm Service Agency. That is also

a conflict of interest but they will tell you that he is the best person

qualified.

I would say to you that you have got to get to the problem holistically and you have got to order the Office of General Counsel to

stop interfering with the policy of this Secretary who says he wants

the complaint settled, but once it leaves his lips, it goes into a deep

hole and the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Civil

Rights and certain people who work there are seeing to it that

these class actions of women, Hispanics and Asians are not resolved. You should demand and the American taxpayer demand

that they come to the table and settle these complaints and not

have a similar situation that we had with the case of the black

farmers. It is arrogance. It is indifference and Mr. Chair, you have

the power to change it.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, perhaps, but let me just try to delineate

what these powers are. We have oversight hearings. We are having

one now and we have the ability to offer legislation. That is our

prerogative here in the Congress if it is signed by the president

and if we have it through two houses. Ultimately there are people

appointed by the president and members of the cabinet, subcabinet,

they are confirmed by our committee and we try to ask questions

of them, and the gentleman now who is handling the thing, Mr.

Fiddick, came before the committee, as he pointed out, a year ago

and seemed to us, at least at that point, to be a person that might

make some headway in the system. That may or may not be the

case.

At least that is the sort of judgment that we have an opportunity

to make. We do not manage the department. We try to help the department by illuminating these problems and you have been helpful in that respect today. I am just trying to come to grips with the

levels. Is the Secretary empowered to change the council or at what

level really is somebody in charge at the department?

55

Mr. LUCAS. Let me say this. The effort of former Secretary Espy

to change the department and get to the culture with the employees and the farmers was admirable. The effort of this Secretary

and the effort of this president who sent people down to the Department of Agriculture to solve this problem, and some of them

are political appointees, have not served this president and this

Secretary and this nation well. It is time—— The CHAIRMAN. Then perhaps they should remove them. Is that

their—— Mr. LUCAS. I think it is time to make some changes at the very

top. You need to not have Mr. Fiddick overseeing civil rights because there is a conflict of interest. The Office of General Counsel

should cease to be a barrier and all the reports that you had before

this settlement, OGC was considered hostile to civil rights, especially to the black farmer situation. I do not see any change in that

to this day. That is why you have increase of class actions by Hispanics, Asians, disabled, because you have an indifferent management that spends all its time and its effort supporting people in the

courts and at these hearings with the taxpayers’ money by sending

OGC lawyers to protect them against us. They have made in so

many words, Mr. Chair, turned good, decent American citizens into

advocates and that should not be.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Boyd.

Mr. BOYD. Mr. Chairman, that if you look at Secretary Glickman

as the overall view, he has tried. I agree with Lawrence that he

had some inside people that are ill advising him on a lot of issues,

Lawrence, as well, but where we really need to take a strong look

at, Mr. Chairman, is the leadership within the Farm Service Agency as it relates to farmers, all farmers, whether you are talking

about Hispanic farmers, Mr. Pires or the Indians or the black farmers. The gut and the root of the problem lies within Farm Service

Agency. Why do we have a settlement of a billion dollars where we

have not taken a strong look at the leadership of the agency that

basically caused this discrimination?

That is Farm Service Agency and if this committee would take

a strong look at the leadership, possibly bring us some new leadership in Farm Service Agency, and then take a strong look at the

local leadership just like Mr. Pires talked about, if someone has 15

or 20 complaints on them down in Mecklenburg or Brunswick

County, Virginia, where a man was found sleeping when he was

supposed to take application. He said the atmospheric pressure

made him go to sleep on CBS 60 Minutes, this kind of nonsense,

if we take a look at those people and hold those kind of people accountable, Mr. Chairman, I do not think it will take long for that

information to trickle down through the system.

You know bad news travels fast. If we made a few heads roll—

I am going to go ahead and say the right terminology—I think that

you will see a big difference in Farm Service Agency.

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Carranza.

Ms. CARRANZA. I would like to reiterate the same thing. I would

be the last person to defend Rosalind Gray. I have to say that I

do not believe Ms. Gray caused the discrimination nor anybody in

the Office of Civil Rights. They have been faulty in resolving this,

but the big stumbling block from what I have seen in the Montana

56

cases is the Regional Office of General Counsel and Mr. Rawls himself and the focus cannot be lost here that it is FSA from not the

county committee but the county supervisor is the person who establishes what is going to happen and he is FSA.

The county committee is just a bunch of dumb farmers in my

county, like myself, but they take their direction from that person

and that person, the county supervisor, takes his direction from the

state office, and those two entities are protecting their ass. There

is no other way of saying it, and there is a regulation that was

passed by the Secretary’s Office on June 30 of this year that said

that when a USDA employee was found guilty of discrimination

after a settlement had been reached, that those persons would be

punished and that is what is stopping our cases from being resolved because once those settlements are finalized, those people’s

heads are going to roll and they are protecting themselves.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Zippert.

Mr. ZIPPERT. I would just support the idea that some close look

needs to be taken at the middle management levels, the state office

level and the county level of the Farm Services Agency, because

that is where a lot of the problem is and a lot of the decisions about

credit and acreage and in relation to these committees. I would

mention to you that this morning we had a presentation from the

Inspector General and he was not aware of the things that we have

brought out here about the problems in the democratic—he called

it a democratic system and he was very proud of it. We need to go

back and talk with the Inspector General about the standards on

which he is judging this and maybe bring to his attention—I do not

know if he stayed for the rest of the hearing—but we need to bring

to his attention some of the other things that was said in this hearing.

I think there is blame to go around here, that there are other

people. You know if the person who oversees the process like that

does not understand that they are in a lot of places in the South

and probably places in Indian country, that there are problems

with the way these committees work, then the whole premise on

which he is examining the program may be wrong. I would say that

we need to look at that. We need to look at FSA. We might need

to look at FSA in comparison to some other groups like NRCS,

maybe Foreign Agriculture Service, some others, who may be doing

better and see where the problems are in that regard.

If they really want to do an intensive internal look, I am not saying—there are probably complaints everywhere, but there are probably more complaints in FSA than anywhere else.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Zippert, I just want to express appreciation

to you. You have made reference to it and I would acknowledge the

statistical data with regard to the elections, the procedures and

what have you, which are very important illumination of this hearing and we will make certain that the Secretary, the Inspector

General, and others have all of that testimony so that everyone at

least is instructed as we have been by your testimony. Mr. Pires.

Mr. PIRES. Just a couple of things. I am trying to put myself in

your shoes, if I may, to see what would be most helpful to you.

There are just a couple of things that are very interesting about

USDA and it is pure power. It is the second biggest Federal agenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:18 Jan 14, 2003 Jkt 070527 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 70527.TXT SAG1 PsN: SAG1
57

cy, but it is bigger in a different way. It is not raw dollars. It has

a presence everywhere like the post office. We had until very recently 3,000 county offices. There is less now, maybe 2,500, but in

agricultural America, USDA has a big presence everywhere. It has

sometimes in some counties two offices, let alone one.

There is a mind-set, and the mind-set that has been established,

as I mentioned earlier, is that white males rule, but there is another mind-set, and that is when you go into the office, the mindset that should be present is this is my government, I am coming

in, I need a loan to farm. Farming is based upon borrowing in the

spring, paying back after harvest in the fall unless you have a winter crop. This is still very much an agricultural country. USDA has

tremendous lending ability. It is really one of the largest lenders

in the world, but it is even deeper than that, Senator, because they

give disaster programs, disaster loans. You are constantly trying to

reach in there and look around the country, find out who is in trouble, come up with a disaster program, whether it is Indiana, this

year, or Georgia. You know what you have to do every year.

What about everybody else who is not a white male? Women— you need to understand women are completely out of the system.

To be a woman and go into a county office and think you are going

to be serviced is a pipe dream. You are not going to get serviced

because they are not attune to that. Hispanics, who are becoming

an ever-increasing part of our population, particularly in the big

four, California, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and they get very,

very poor service. They are conditioned to be careful to go in to not

to be as aggressive as the white male is.

I can tell you in most parts of the South and the Midwest, white

people are so used to service, they come in and they say how are

you doing on my application? Their applications are filled out by

the staff. How am I doing? How is my application coming? How am

I doing this year? They expect the white structure to service them.

It is very rare that a Hispanic person or a woman or a Native

American ever walk into an office and say how is my application?

Know what he would get or she would get? They would get an answer have a seat and I will get to you, and maybe they will and

maybe they will not.

I think for you, Mr. Chairman, the election process is one area

and the second is if there was a little bit more of an oversight process where the Senate knew this year—for example, you asked a

very good question, in terms of programs, how does USDA do

against other programs as a percentage of complaints? Nobody

knows. They only know EEOC. Nobody knows about programs.

Second, nobody knows what happens to Hispanics, Native Americans, white women when they walk in. Nobody pays attention to

it. It is not a statistic that is—yet Hispanics are going to end up

being 20 percent of our population. We need help statistically. We

need help.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Mr. Boyd.

Mr. BOYD. Mr. Chairman, I am going to have to leave in a

minute. I wanted to make these last closing statements. Down in

the same county I was talking about, the individual was sleeping

in the office, there were certain days that African American farmers only could come in the office and get service.

58

Mr. PIRES. Black Thursday.

Mr. BOYD. That was on—that is right.

Mr. PIRES. It is called Black Thursdays.

Mr. BOYD. On Thursday, that was the only day you can come

into the office. If a white farmer came in before you, he would see

you and speak with him first. He would open the door while he discussed my personal business very loudly. Overall if we can bring

some dignity and respect to the United States Department of Agriculture where it can treat its customers with dignity and respect,

I do not think that would be asking too much. Certainly we found a way to disburse $8 billion in disaster relief last year, that we can find a way to disburse one or $1.5 billion to

a group of needy people that desperately need that money. They

are sitting at home right now waiting. They are sitting here now

watching this hearing, wondering what is going to come out of this

hearing. Will I get some results? Will I receive my check? A lot of

these farmers have letters that say you will receive your check in

90 days. 90 days has come and gone twice and they have not received their checks.

If the committee could look into it and ask the Justice Department to look into it as well, to find out what can be done to speed

up the payment process for these much needed farmers, these are

some things that we can do now and I hope that this committee

will take those things into consideration and I hope that they will

listen to the other distinguished members of this panel and come

out of this hearing with some resolutions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your testimony. We will raise the

payment question with the department.

Mr. BOYD. OK.

The CHAIRMAN. As well as many other questions.

Mr. BOYD. Sure.

The CHAIRMAN. In specific answer to your request.

Mr. BOYD. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lucas.

Mr. LUCAS. Senator Lugar, as I heard the Office of Inspector

General rave about how well things are going under the new leadership, I bring to mind three individual incidents which falls in the

house of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and under Mr.

Winningham. Very recently I was told before coming to these hearings that a woman in the state of Delaware filed a complaint of a

housing complaint and was processed—was supposed to be processed under the administration, under new leadership of Mr.

Winningham. This lady lost her property last week because the

U.S. Department of Agriculture in this administration that you

heard people raving about did not process her complaint as they do

farmers.

Let me give you two examples which falls in the house of the Assistant Secretary for Administration. I am questioning the accountability at the top and that is what you were asking. Here we have

people, an Assistant Secretary for Administration, who you know

and have worked with, called a jungle bunny and a wonder monkey

by a group of white employees after the work hour, but yet and

59

still the Office of Administration is not going to hold those individuals accountable. Under the same house when it comes to accountability, just recently a high level official told an Asian at an Asian

meeting that if you suffer the glass ceiling, and Asians suffer from

the glass ceiling at USDA at the GS–13 level, that person was told

go and find another job.

Now what I am saying to you is that we have a problem with

leadership as it relates to civil rights and this, what you heard this

morning, trying to put it all on the employee, it is a cultural and

systemic problem and some of the people that have been given the

job recently to do that job has not done it well. If we are going to

hold the people in the Office of Civil Rights accountable, we need

to hold Mr. Fiddick, we need to hold Mr. Winningham and we need

to hold Mr. Rawls equally accountable for the mess that is going

on at USDA and not doing something about the problem and not

settling these class actions and not settling these employee complaints. That is where the problem is and we need to do something

about that, too. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Connor.

Mr. CONNOR. What I would like to say is that before we filed our

class action complaint, we actually had gone informally to upper

level people. Actually, there was Mr. Roemiger, Mr. Rawls in a different position at that time, Mr. Dallis Smith, and these were people at the Secretary’s level, deputy secretaries, and under secretaries. We discussed the issues we had with the Farm Service Agency

on an informal basis and offered our services to help them to solve

these problems.

Basically, we just got the old wink and OK and everything is

fine, but basically they did not listen to us. They just kept pushing

us down and wanted to do a study and finally when we got the impression that we were being put off, we just went ahead and filed

a complaint because we were not getting anywhere internally. That

gets back to what we were talking about before. It is throughout

the agency. The people up above want to put that nice face on it,

but they had the opportunity right there to, as a matter of fact,

that would have prevented us probably from filing our class complaint had they just listened to us and tried to do some things informally, and you have that culture inside the agency starting from

top to bottom.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank each one of you. Ms. Carranza, do you

have a final comment?

Ms. CARRANZA. Thank you. I would like a final comment.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Ms. CARRANZA. For those of us that are not in a class action or

part of any lawsuit, we have wanted our cases to be settled in the

administrative process. There is a Senate bill in the Senate. It is

called the USDA Civil Rights Resolution Act of 2000, Senate bill

2079. We would like you to consider that as an avenue for us to

have our cases resolved. I would also like to ask for the record if

the testimony submitted by the other Montana women could also

be included in the record?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, it will be included in full.

Ms. CARRANZA. Thank you.

60

The CHAIRMAN. I thank each one of you. You have been illuminating, articulate and patient in a hearing that has been the better part of four hours but time very well spent. We are grateful to

you. We will try to follow through on the suggestions you have

made. The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

(61)

A P P E N D I X

SEPTEMBER 12, 2000

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DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

SEPTEMBER 12, 2000

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

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Æ