A guide to the government shutdown at USDA

The U.S. Department of Agriculture was shut down last night, but food stamp benefits will be delivered for the month of October, forest fires will continue to be fought, meat and poultry will still be inspected, grain inspection will continue, laboratory animals will be fed and the rural development division will still monitor government loans.

But USDA will not release any new production statistics, most of the rest of USDA will shut down and its website may go dark.

The situation at the Agricultural Marketing Service is complicated because some AMS programs are funded through user fees and will continue to operate, while others are funded through appropriations and will not.

USDA mission areas varied in the detail of their shutdown plans, however.

All USDA employees will be furloughed — put on temporary leave — except those who have “excepted” status because “they are performing emergency work involving the safety of human life or the protection of property or performing certain other types of excepted work.”

Agency legal counsels, working with senior agency managers, determine which employees are designated to handle “excepted” and “non-excepted” functions,” according to the USDA shutdown plan.

If the shutdown takes place, the guidance to employees says that all non-excepted employees will be expected to report to work on Tuesday “for the sole purpose of engaging in orderly shutdown activities.”

“Supervisors will provide employees with instructions to shut down their activities and secure property in their offices, leave out-of-office phone and email messages, complete timesheets, etc.,” the document says. “Excepted employees should be instructed to report for work and to perform their excepted activities as required. For those teleworking, ‘report’ may be done by telephone.”

“Employees are required to report for duty on their flexible work day if it is the day before an anticipated lapse in appropriations to conduct an orderly shutdown of their work even if it is their flexible work day and they were not scheduled to come to report for duty.”

In most cases, the guidance says, furloughed employees should take no more than three or four hours to “provide necessary notices and contact information, secure their files, complete time and attendance records, and otherwise make preparations to preserve their work.”

But some agencies have said it will take several days to complete an orderly shutdown.

See more at: http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/21778/#sthash.7EjWvUPI.dpuf