Prometheus 6

The USDA has been a frequent target of discrimination complaints for decades, resulting in taxpayer payouts in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The department is currently fending off class-action lawsuits from Latino, American Indian and women farmers similar to the claim filed by black farmers, who so far have been paid $972 million, according to the GAO. ...

"It's been going on for a long time, for many decades, in terms of failure to address civil rights issues at USDA," Shames said. "Any claims coming out of this office need to be considered closely. These disparities in the numbers -- they do not have the management structure in place to be able to track these cases."

USDA Is Called Lax on Bias
GAO Accuses Agency of Inaction on Racial Discrimination
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 18, 2008; A06

Nearly a decade after the Agriculture Department agreed to settle a discrimination suit brought by black farmers, one of the largest payouts in U.S. history at almost $1 billion so far, the department has yet to develop a system to adequately address hundreds of other bias complaints from farmers and its own employees, the Government Accountability Office said this week.

In blunt testimony before a House subcommittee this week, Lisa Shames, director of natural resources and environment for the GAO, said the department cannot prove that it has reduced its mountainous backlog of discrimination complaints and that its claims to the contrary cannot be trusted.

"At a basic level, the credibility of USDA's efforts has been and continues to be undermined by . . . faulty reporting of data on discrimination complaints and disparities in . . . data," Shames said. "Even such basic information as the number of complaints is subject to wide variation in . . . reports to the public and the Congress."