I was (and still am) going to post on the list of contracts in the FS cut off by the Trump Admin via DOGE. I was going down DOGE’s list, but of course the FS is under USDA, so I had to read past USDA contracts. And it turns out that they are interesting, even though the funding doesn’t come through Interior Approps as does the FS budget, so those funds couldn’t have been used for the seasonals that the FS couldn’t afford during the last Admin, nor for other FS needs. At least that’s my understanding, and likely other people here know more about the budget. Point being, I was hesitant to talk about these USDA bucks as being a bit out of our space. But then The Hotshot Wakeup posted about it, and then Nick Smith linked to THWs post, so here we go.
First, DOGE seems to be working on contracts not grants, at least on this list.
Second, DOGE has not been through all agencies yet. But if you are interested in the consulting companies getting $100 mill from USDA, you can always go to highergov.com and search under “awardees” and see what other government contracts those companies received to get a bigger picture of how much they are getting from the feds.
As for me, I’m perfectly willing to accept that many useful things were done with that funding… like I’ve said before, it seems like there aredeliverables that are documented by the contracting folks. So why not just… post those where the public can see them? And I’m not judging what appears to be e Beltway Bandits of the Management Consulting subspecies, who are currently doing work in the DEI space. USDA clearly wanted the work done, and everyone’s got to make a living.
There are a couple of other interesting things.. if you look up the companies, some of them appear to be generic consulting firms without advertising a specialization in DEI. Take AMA Consulting, for example, on their “our services” page, you can see many useful things but not DEI. Ivy Consulting does highlight DEI. KL Scott does not, as far as I can tell. THW took a deep dive into Londagin, as we’ll see below, who does quite a bit of stuff, according to GovTribe “Specific service offerings have included organizational efficiency assessments, strategic alignment and process optimization, human capital roadmap development, communications support, and comprehensive DEIA initiative implementations across various federal departments.”
Based on a review of their websites, if their DEI contracts are stopped, there is plenty of other work for them in strategic organizational development, process improvement and similar work. Certainly there are processes at USDA that could use improvement. I also wonder whether there is some different requirements invoked if the contracts are above $25 mill, since there are four capped at that. But maybe USDA found that they had $100 mill lying around and divided by four?
One $25M DEI consulting contract went to Timothy J. Londagin, LLC. His LinkedIn account says he was a Strategy Team Member at the USDA National Headquarters, a management lead at the Department of Homeland Security, a team lead at the TSA, and an organizational lead at The General Services Administration.
The USDA alone contracted over $27M for DEI advising and implementation to his company.
He was also contracted $28.3M from the Department of Interior for Organizational Change Management Services in 2023, another $4.2M from USDA for Organizational Change Management in 2023, $6.5M for a Health and Human Services DEI contract in 2023, and a $4M+ contract from the Executive Office of the President.
I also found USAID grants totaling $4.477M issued to Timothy J. Londagin, which were partially funded with COVID-19 relief money in 2022. It was a sole source, non-compete contract.
Maria Asuelimen started AMA Consulting, which had a $25M contract for DEI consulting work for the USDA. Before that, she held management positions at FEMA and the Small Business Administration.
At this time last year, we were told they couldn’t find $70M to ensure wildland firefighters continued to be paid.
The exact descriptions of the terminated contracts were “DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION AND ACCESSIBILITY (DEIA) ASSESSMENT AND TRAINING SERVICES.”
15 thoughts on “THW’s Look at USDA’s $100 Million Contracts for DEI”
I’m very curious about the Current vs Total prices listed.
If these are BPA’s which some look to be, is the Total price what could be charged against the contract and the Total is what has actually been charged against?
Meaning that very little has actually been spent, and the price tags are potential spending?
If you look at the HIgherGov.com site, it shows a great deal of information. Perhaps someone can explain it all for us? For example, the USAID granthttps://www.highergov.com/contract/72MC1022C00003/#overview was offered sole source because the vendor is a certified 8a firm.
Now it appears that firms are 8a based on characteristics of the owners, so that even companies that make millions of dollars can be sole source.
We see that subs are working but apparently not disclosed.. not clear if they are supposed to be.
“Undisclosed Subcontractors No subcontract awards have been formally disclosed for this contract; however, based on invoice data these subcontractors have worked on this contract: Forrester Research”
Then there are mods for more money, but conceivably they would need a mod if they didn’t have enough money.
But it’s easy to see what was obligated, not so easy to see what was charged.
In my experience working for the USFS and partnering with FS and BLM on numerous projects over a 30 year period, contracts always go through a pretty rigorous process. I knew some Contracting Officers; they were very “By the Rules” people. It was their job to follow the rules.
Were these contracts competitive? I don’t know but if the rules required competitive then probably yes.
DEI is getting LOTS of discussion, and misinformation, these days so I’ll add a little history based on my time in the Forest Service: In the late 1970’s, I was on a Ranger District with a large number of employees (as I recall perhaps 60 year round and up to 140 w/ seasonal crews). The women were primarily in business management and clerical. NO Black or Latino employees on the district. I was the district rep for the Forest’s Civil Rights Action Group (CRAG). Members were chosen by the Forest Supervisor; We were supposed to work on barriers to diversity, help encourage a climate that was tolerant, etc.
I also remember the internal debates about whether or not female seasonals should be hired for presale or other crews that sometimes required overnight camps. What would happen? What would the wives of the men on the crew think, etc.
In my experience, the FS has come a long, productive and beneficial way from those years!
Diversifying the FS workforce has resulted in big improvements for the agency so in some ways I don’t give a rip about competitive vs. non-competitive contracts.
IF the FS and other agencies need to do more work to diversify then IMO the money is a good investment in making our federal agencies more reflective of our society while becoming more productive overall.
I checked and some were sole source 8a. I remember some of the same things you do. And yet, before I retired, efforts to diversity I think it was temps, required our civil rights director and a DRF to review every positions. My point is that diversifying the workforce is something the the FS has been doing, and indeed pulling out all the stops for a long time.
Competition may not mean much to you, but to many of us the alternatives can devolve into some kind of suboptimal good old person network, with a potential for graft.
I need to study this more but with a fairly brief overview, there seems to be some concerning stuff here. Kind of similar to the Keystone agreements. It would be so interesting to find out what were the internal conversations like. Were concerns expressed or was it full speed ahead? Has OIG looked into any of this? Maybe it’s all on the up and up. I don’t know.
Many of those posted by THW (and DOGE) are BPAs, without knowing what was actually obligated in a call order the ‘savings’ are not real since BPAs have zero dollars obligated to them when awarded, the amount is the award celling. Since BPAs flow down to call orders, awarded calls do not always appear on the parent contract vehicle record, but searching in FPDS by the BPA number you can see how many calls were made against the parent.
One way to identify what type of contract is, if it’s a BPA, the 5th last digit will be an A, if a standalone contract C, if an IDIQ D, task/call order F. A good place to drill down into all this https://www.usaspending.gov/.
Thanks so much for helping with our understanding! I think part of the difficulty is reading and understanding the different databases. I went to USA spending and got this..
My understanding would be that obligations are amounts that departments awarded, and the fact that they’re “obligated” means that those sums count against the annual budget because in some way the funding is being held?
And outlays would be funding that went out to the contractor?
You can click on the table to make it clearer.
Thanks!
So to use an example, if a $10 mill grant over, say a 5 year window, is obligated in FY 25, then the $10 mill comes out of the agency budget in its FY 2025 appropriation. So the agency has taken it from one FY, and put it in a pot to be withdrawn over 5 years.
Comes the FY 2026 budget, the new budget doesn’t have any effect on this grant because it’s already been “taken out” via the obligation?
Correct. The majority of funds that the agency uses for contracts and G&A is multi year (5-10 years monies, sometimes ‘no-year’ monies. All depends on how congress divvied the appropriations). Funds obligated/spent in the previous FY don’t have any bearing on the next FY budget is how I understand it.
Once the funds are committed, it’s up to the contractor/partner to get work done so they can invoice and get paid. This is where obligated funds could potentially be clawed back.
Most contracts like that are money thrown out the window. A management consultant comes in, waste everyone’s time asking what they do, writes a report with suggestions for change. The report is almost completely ignore. Everyone oats themselves in the back for a job well done. The consultant pockets millions. Been thru several of them. It’s a way for upper management to feel like they are involved and doing something without having to be involved or do anything. .. except take credit at the end.
Whatever the details and constraints of the funding sources, it should be remembered neither Chief Moore nor Secretary Vilsack made any effort to modify or cancel any of those contracts before firing every single non-fire seasonal employee.
Maybe their hands were loosely tied, but was it really impossible for them to go to the WH – or Congress – to ask for the flexibility to modify contracts and keep their blue-collar workforce?
Was there something stopping them from offering or encouraging early retirement? As of August 2024 the USFS had >4,000 GS-13/14/15, and nearly 10,000 GS-11/12. How many of those public servants who were hesitant to retire might have been more open to doing so had they known the alternative was total elimination of the seasonal workforce?
Thanks for looking into this.
As an retired FS employee and union activist, it is well known that FS management, whether it be the latest DEI or the normal BS, is incompetent. There is a reason that the FS has ranked at the bottom of the list, for decades, for employee satisfaction.
FS management has always been the FS’s biggest problem. They never have had accountability, many of them fly around the country, 1st class, to go to meetings, they do nothing (but go after lower grade employees), and do nothing on the District level.
A biggest reason that the FS will be ripe for cutting of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is because of this incompetent, do nothing management and that has been going on for decades.
The people that should be gotten rid of in the Forest Service are at least half the GS14s and above. Unfortunately, they protect their own, and us worker will probably be ones that suffer.
Thank you for sharing your insights, and thanks to Sharon for all of this good info. I have been curious what’s actually been going on at the USFS. This article and this comment are quite informative. Much appreciated all around.
I’m very curious about the Current vs Total prices listed.
If these are BPA’s which some look to be, is the Total price what could be charged against the contract and the Total is what has actually been charged against?
Meaning that very little has actually been spent, and the price tags are potential spending?
If you look at the HIgherGov.com site, it shows a great deal of information. Perhaps someone can explain it all for us? For example, the USAID granthttps://www.highergov.com/contract/72MC1022C00003/#overview was offered sole source because the vendor is a certified 8a firm.
Now it appears that firms are 8a based on characteristics of the owners, so that even companies that make millions of dollars can be sole source.
We see that subs are working but apparently not disclosed.. not clear if they are supposed to be.
“Undisclosed Subcontractors No subcontract awards have been formally disclosed for this contract; however, based on invoice data these subcontractors have worked on this contract: Forrester Research”
Then there are mods for more money, but conceivably they would need a mod if they didn’t have enough money.
But it’s easy to see what was obligated, not so easy to see what was charged.
Very interesting research results, Sharon.
In my experience working for the USFS and partnering with FS and BLM on numerous projects over a 30 year period, contracts always go through a pretty rigorous process. I knew some Contracting Officers; they were very “By the Rules” people. It was their job to follow the rules.
Were these contracts competitive? I don’t know but if the rules required competitive then probably yes.
DEI is getting LOTS of discussion, and misinformation, these days so I’ll add a little history based on my time in the Forest Service: In the late 1970’s, I was on a Ranger District with a large number of employees (as I recall perhaps 60 year round and up to 140 w/ seasonal crews). The women were primarily in business management and clerical. NO Black or Latino employees on the district. I was the district rep for the Forest’s Civil Rights Action Group (CRAG). Members were chosen by the Forest Supervisor; We were supposed to work on barriers to diversity, help encourage a climate that was tolerant, etc.
I also remember the internal debates about whether or not female seasonals should be hired for presale or other crews that sometimes required overnight camps. What would happen? What would the wives of the men on the crew think, etc.
In my experience, the FS has come a long, productive and beneficial way from those years!
Diversifying the FS workforce has resulted in big improvements for the agency so in some ways I don’t give a rip about competitive vs. non-competitive contracts.
IF the FS and other agencies need to do more work to diversify then IMO the money is a good investment in making our federal agencies more reflective of our society while becoming more productive overall.
I checked and some were sole source 8a. I remember some of the same things you do. And yet, before I retired, efforts to diversity I think it was temps, required our civil rights director and a DRF to review every positions. My point is that diversifying the workforce is something the the FS has been doing, and indeed pulling out all the stops for a long time.
Competition may not mean much to you, but to many of us the alternatives can devolve into some kind of suboptimal good old person network, with a potential for graft.
I need to study this more but with a fairly brief overview, there seems to be some concerning stuff here. Kind of similar to the Keystone agreements. It would be so interesting to find out what were the internal conversations like. Were concerns expressed or was it full speed ahead? Has OIG looked into any of this? Maybe it’s all on the up and up. I don’t know.
Dave- I looked at some OIG reports, but got caught up in the other news, and will post Monday.
Many of those posted by THW (and DOGE) are BPAs, without knowing what was actually obligated in a call order the ‘savings’ are not real since BPAs have zero dollars obligated to them when awarded, the amount is the award celling. Since BPAs flow down to call orders, awarded calls do not always appear on the parent contract vehicle record, but searching in FPDS by the BPA number you can see how many calls were made against the parent.
One way to identify what type of contract is, if it’s a BPA, the 5th last digit will be an A, if a standalone contract C, if an IDIQ D, task/call order F. A good place to drill down into all this https://www.usaspending.gov/.
Thanks so much for helping with our understanding! I think part of the difficulty is reading and understanding the different databases. I went to USA spending and got this..
My understanding would be that obligations are amounts that departments awarded, and the fact that they’re “obligated” means that those sums count against the annual budget because in some way the funding is being held?
And outlays would be funding that went out to the contractor?
You can click on the table to make it clearer.
The obligation is the awarded amount of the contract, the outlays are payments that have been authorized to the contractor.
Thanks!
So to use an example, if a $10 mill grant over, say a 5 year window, is obligated in FY 25, then the $10 mill comes out of the agency budget in its FY 2025 appropriation. So the agency has taken it from one FY, and put it in a pot to be withdrawn over 5 years.
Comes the FY 2026 budget, the new budget doesn’t have any effect on this grant because it’s already been “taken out” via the obligation?
Correct. The majority of funds that the agency uses for contracts and G&A is multi year (5-10 years monies, sometimes ‘no-year’ monies. All depends on how congress divvied the appropriations). Funds obligated/spent in the previous FY don’t have any bearing on the next FY budget is how I understand it.
Once the funds are committed, it’s up to the contractor/partner to get work done so they can invoice and get paid. This is where obligated funds could potentially be clawed back.
Most contracts like that are money thrown out the window. A management consultant comes in, waste everyone’s time asking what they do, writes a report with suggestions for change. The report is almost completely ignore. Everyone oats themselves in the back for a job well done. The consultant pockets millions. Been thru several of them. It’s a way for upper management to feel like they are involved and doing something without having to be involved or do anything. .. except take credit at the end.
Whatever the details and constraints of the funding sources, it should be remembered neither Chief Moore nor Secretary Vilsack made any effort to modify or cancel any of those contracts before firing every single non-fire seasonal employee.
Maybe their hands were loosely tied, but was it really impossible for them to go to the WH – or Congress – to ask for the flexibility to modify contracts and keep their blue-collar workforce?
Was there something stopping them from offering or encouraging early retirement? As of August 2024 the USFS had >4,000 GS-13/14/15, and nearly 10,000 GS-11/12. How many of those public servants who were hesitant to retire might have been more open to doing so had they known the alternative was total elimination of the seasonal workforce?
Thanks for looking into this.
As an retired FS employee and union activist, it is well known that FS management, whether it be the latest DEI or the normal BS, is incompetent. There is a reason that the FS has ranked at the bottom of the list, for decades, for employee satisfaction.
FS management has always been the FS’s biggest problem. They never have had accountability, many of them fly around the country, 1st class, to go to meetings, they do nothing (but go after lower grade employees), and do nothing on the District level.
A biggest reason that the FS will be ripe for cutting of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is because of this incompetent, do nothing management and that has been going on for decades.
The people that should be gotten rid of in the Forest Service are at least half the GS14s and above. Unfortunately, they protect their own, and us worker will probably be ones that suffer.
Thank you for sharing your insights, and thanks to Sharon for all of this good info. I have been curious what’s actually been going on at the USFS. This article and this comment are quite informative. Much appreciated all around.