WASHINGTON -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on July 9 named Jonathan Coppess administrator of the Farm Service Agency, only three days after Doug Caruso, who had been appointed in April, abruptly quit.
Coppess has been serving as deputy FSA administrator for farm programs. He previously was a legislative assistant for Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. He grew up on his family's corn and soybean farm in west-central Ohio, and practiced law in Chicago before he went to work for Nelson.
The FSA administrator is not particularly prominent in Washington, but is important in rural America because the administrator is in charge of the delivery of farm subsidies and disaster payments and also runs credit programs for lower-income farmers. The agency serves farmers through offices in nearly every county in the country, but has been plagued by an outdated computer system in recent years. The economic stimulus package contains money to begin to modernize of the computer system.
'Not what I expected'
Caruso, a former Wisconsin dairy executive and one-time state director for Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., who campaigned for President Obama, said in a statement he had resigned because "the job was not what I expected."
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He added, "While I believe USDA leaders and I share the same goals, we clearly have divergent views on how to accomplish those goals. Good people with the same goals and objectives can and will differ on tactics. Those differences made me a bad fit for the position and, given that reality, the most constructive thing I could do was step aside to make way for USDA leaders to appoint someone more in synch with their vision."
In a telephone interview July 9, Caruso said he had agreed with USDA officials not to speak further about his differences with the administration and added that he respected Coppess and wished him well as administrator. Caruso has returned to Wisconsin.
FSA has politically appointed state office directors in each state, but the Obama administration has named only a small percentage of them. Caruso's resignation caused a flurry of calls to Democratic members of Congress from potential appointees asking what happened and whether they still should be interested in the jobs, a Senate aide said.
In an interview July 9, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said of Caruso's departure, "These jobs aren't for everyone. They're long hours, tough issues and you have to have patience."
Merrigan said she considered Caruso to be "a great public servant" and that the administration looks forward to working with him in other roles. Merrigan also noted that this weekend, key USDA officials will gather for a retreat to talk about the decision making process and how to be in quick contact with the secretary when necessary.
Also July 9, Vilsack named William J. Murphy, a career civil servant, as administrator the Risk Management Agency, which runs the crop insurance program. Most previous administrations have named an outsider to this political post. The 2008 farm bill calls for the RMA administrator to renegotiate the government's contract RMA and private crop insurances companies for the provisions of crop insurance with the expectation of budget savings.
