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4:57 p.m.: A man from the environmental programs department gets back to me: "I hate to be the regular state worker that's always accused of passing the buck, but noise and dust regulation would be under our environmental protection agency, rather than the Agriculture Department," he says, adding that he has forwarded my name and number to the agriculture adviser at IEPA.
So here is the first time where they are told that it's the EPA, not the USDA who handles these kinds of things. Yes, they are told he's forwarding the info to the IEPA, so yes I would expect them to call them back. I agree that it's unfortunate that they got bounced around a bit, and similarly unfortunate that Obama was incorrect that it was the USDA that handled things for the noise/dust issue. However, I disagree that the amount of pain on the phone they experienced is any different than what you'd find from a private company of similar size. Large organizations have buracracy, period. It's the only way they can function.
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On Thursday morning, POLITICO started the hunt for an answer again, this time calling the USDA's local office in Henry County, Ill., where the town hall took place.
9:42 a.m.: Asked if someone at the office might be able to provide me with the information I requested, the woman on the phone responds, “Not right now. We may have to actually look that up — did you Google this or anything?”
So here we are, roughly 2 business hours after they were told the IEPA handles the issues yet again calling a branch of the agency that they've been informed DOESN'T handle the problem. Up until now, I'm sympathetic to the reporter. Yup, it's a pain working with the government. But as of this call on Thursday, they are now trying to build up this story to make it a bigger problem than it is.
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10:40 a.m.: A spokeswoman for the Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service calls me, to whom I explain my multiple attempts on Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the information I was looking for.
“What I can tell you is our particular agency does not deal with regulations,” she tells me. “We deal with volunteers who voluntarily want to do things. I think the reason you got that response from the Cambridge office is because in regard to noise and dust regulation, we don’t have anything to do with that.”
She adds that the EPA would be more capable of answering questions regarding regulations.
Here is the second time where they are told the EPA is who they need to talk with. All within about 3-4 business hours of each other.
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Finally, I call the USDA’s main media relations department, based here in Washington, where I explain to a spokesperson about my failed attempts to obtain an answer to the Illinois farmer’s question. This was their response, via email:
“Secretary Vilsack continues to work closely with members of the Cabinet to help them engage with the agricultural community to ensure that we are separating fact from fiction on regulations because the administration is committed to providing greater certainty for farmers and ranchers. Because the question that was posed did not fall within USDA jurisdiction, it does not provide a fair representation of USDA’s robust efforts to get the right information to our producers throughout the country.”
This is just the icing on the cake, and really speaks in my mind to what the reporter was really trying to do. Make a sensationalized story about how inefficient and **** up the government is. Again, at this point they have been told twice that the EPA is who they need to talk with, but have neither appeared to wait a reasonable amount of time (it's still the next day as far as I can tell) or call the EPA directly. Instead, they decide to call the USDA yet again.
Now all that said, I agree that it's unfortunate that Obama pointed them in that direction first. Hopefully his advisors will correct him that it's the EPA who handles that so in the future he'll be able to provide better info directly. That said, the level of willful sensationalism that's shown in this article is stupid.
The real unfortunate part in my mind, is that the real message that Obama was trying to impart, that there is a ton of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" rumor going around, because people don't actually pay attention to facts got lost in this article at least. A much more useful news story would have been tracking down what those changes are and validating if indeed they aren't as concerning as stated. But that would actually take someone writing an intelligent article instead of this sensationalist piece of ****.
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Except Obama is darker and doesn't clear brush in Texas.......and can speechify a bit better.
