The Weed Agency (35 page)

“He’s right, we are in revolt!” declared the red-clad sparkplug running the local Tea Party, Kristi Womack. She had been
a district office director for Bader, and it took about three minutes of persuasion to convince her to run for the office of her old boss.

The district race was shifted from “toss-up” to “likely Republican” when Hasenkamp characterized Womack as “some loon always whining about what the Constitution says.”

Bader tapped his extensive fundraising network to assist Womack, and was a regular speaker at Tea Party rallies in the district. And Bader had felt that nagging frustration abate a bit, at least since the day his Google search alert pinged with many, many references to “Agency of Invasive Species.”

MARCH 2011

U.S. National Debt: $14.2 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $430.12 million

When the Tea Party-backed Republicans took over the House of Representatives, they found themselves almost immediately in public relations combat with the Obama administration about a plethora of issues: a showdown over the debt ceiling, a controversial gun export program called Fast and Furious, efforts to repeal the recently passed health care bill, and so on.

So most of America failed to notice when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings about an alleged cover-up of health hazards in a new federal office building. However, the investigation did generate one memorable exchange, which received national attention when it was featured on Jon Stewart’s
The Daily Show
.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?” exclaimed Jon Stewart in mock incredulity. “Answer something! What is the weather outside? What is two plus two? Coke or Pepsi? Who was the better Darren on
Bewitched
? COME ON! GIVE US SOMETHING TO WORK WITH!”

The House hearings had turned Humphrey and Wilkins into widely mocked poster boys of government incompetence, and anyone who bothered to follow the story knew it had grown out of Ava’s widely read
Wired
story, depicting how no one had replied to e-mailed and written warnings about the drywall for an entire year.

The story had begun with a dramatic description of Nicholas Bader climbing over the chain-link fence, explaining that the quirky former congressman had been obsessed with his former staffer’s claim of seeing Chinese drywall on the building site.

But the heart of the story was that Bader, his former staffer, and Ava ultimately went through the “proper channels,” communicating their concerns about a health risk to workers in the building. Ava saw this as giving Wilkins one more chance to prove that the agency could overcome its bureaucratic inertia under his management. When a year passed, with no indication that anyone in the government had done anything, then she publicized the concerns, leading to the hearings.

The day after the
Daily Show
segment, Ava went to her front door to find a flower delivery. It was from Nicholas Bader, now on the board of a nonprofit activist group fighting for spending cuts, the Foundation for a Less Expensive America (FLEA).

She looked at the note.

She smiled and returned to work on the inevitable follow-up; unfortunately, she was second to the story.

It was, the EPA found, a very small amount of substandard drywall; a subcontractor to a subcontractor supplying the drywall had a theft shortly before shipment to the AIS building site, and replaced the missing material from another source.

The process of determining it all, however, delayed the opening of the building until Thanksgiving 2012.

NOVEMBER 2012

U.S. National Debt: $16.3 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $493.58 million

Vice President Joe Biden was the guest of honor for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new Vernon Hargis Agency of Invasive Species Building at 1500 Independence Avenue Southwest.

The vice president, giddy over his reelection earlier in the month, only made brief remarks; the highlight was undoubtedly his declaration that “I’m glad you people are on the job, because I [inaudible] can’t stand weeds,” although some disputed whether the inaudible comment was really all that inaudible, and some wondered whether the vice president’s subsequent comparison of invasive species to hemorrhoids in his off-text remarks really fit the tone of the occasion.

Adam Humphrey, now sixty-seven, attended, and the vice president was supposed to thank him in his remarks but called him “Appleby” instead.

After the ceremonies and good-byes were done, Humphrey strolled up 15th Street, past the Washington Monument, and around the Ellipse, taking a look at the White House.

Looking through the fence, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“You must be quite proud of your victory,” Nick Bader said.

“I was about to say the same to you,” Humphrey said, only mildly surprised to see his old nemesis. “You drove out Wilkins.”

“He’s retiring with a full pension. Just like you. Your agency’s budget is bigger than ever.”

“I never got a chance to work in that beautiful new building I spent years fighting for, a protégé who I spent most of a career grooming will never run it, and at the precise moment I am to be publicly recognized for all of my decades of tireless effort
and leadership, the vice president mixes me up with a restaurant chain. I suppose you’ll chalk up my life as yet one more example of your hated government waste.”

“It could have been different, Humphrey,” Bader shrugged.

Humphrey laughed at the thought and shook his head. “No, it couldn’t.”

He had nearly arrived home when his cell phone rang. He recognized the number as a former staffer who had departed the agency a few years earlier to take a managerial position with the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services Division. They exchanged some pleasantries, and Humphrey’s face brightened immensely.

“Why, yes, Jeff, I
am
available to provide management consultations,” he beamed.

Jamie Caro-Marcus was happy to work in the new building. With the college tuition of her sons to think of, she knew she would be handling the same duties, planning the trips and conferences for all of the Agency of Invasive Species senior staff, until retirement. She found comfort in that assurance—most of the time.

One glaring exception was the night there was a documentary on the Reykjavik Summit, and she found herself thinking of all of the dreams—ambitious, silly, and otherwise—that ran through her head the first time she walked into the offices of the agency. She never had found the time to try to apply for a job with the United Nations, nor had any of the weed-related conferences she planned gotten her anywhere near the glamorous world of international diplomacy.

She called in sick the next day and decided she needed to see
Ava again. If she couldn’t recapture how she felt then, she could at least cherish the same company as those days.

Jamie concluded it was a lot easier to get through each day if she didn’t spend too much time thinking about what might have been.

DECEMBER 2012

Agency of Invasive Species Administrative Director Lisa Bloom differed from her two male predecessors. Despite all she had learned from Adam Humphrey and Jack Wilkins, she felt the agency and its dedicated employees needed to do a much better job of “telling their story.” She found that the only way she could get press interested in telling that story was a free lunch.

So it was around a table at a Washington restaurant that she laid out the latest in weed abatement technology; the species the agency deemed most threatening to American agriculture; the public awareness campaigns they would unveil in the coming year. Most of the reporters faked interest, nodded, and ate, but there was one middle-aged guy at the end of the table with an increasingly amused and skeptical smirk.

Finally he piped up.

“As you know, as we speak, Congress and the president are grappling with the ‘fiscal cliff’ and sequester, and the forecast for the foreseeable future in Washington is an increasingly bitter fight among more and more hands over a stagnant funding pie,” the reporter said. “The rating agencies are saying that another downgrade of the United States’ credit rating could occur in the coming year if the federal government doesn’t demonstrate an ability to control its long-term debt. Sooner or later, any government effort to control spending is going to look skeptically at a federal agency dedicated to fighting weeds. How
concerned are you that fiscal realities might lead to dramatic cuts to your agency’s budget or perhaps even eliminating your agency completely?”