Ag Official Suspended For 4 Weeks Executive Director Mistreated Whistleblower, Agency Rules

The top U.S. Department of Agriculture official in Washington state has been suspended without pay for alleged retaliation against a former employee and whistleblower, officials confirmed Thursday.

Larry Albin, who was appointed by President Clinton in 1993 as state executive director of the Consolidated Farm Service Agency, was given a four-week leave in a case that reached the secretary of agriculture.

The action came after the Office of Special Counsel ruled that Albin, whose office is in Spokane, mistreated former CFSA employee Steve Sanderson in 1993 after Sanderson had filed a whistleblower complaint against Albin.

“I was threatened daily,” Sanderson said from Olathe, Kan., where he now lives. “I sat in a corner, and everyone was told they couldn’t speak to me. I was told I was mentally ill.”

Albin, who oversees the agency that administers federal farm programs in Washington state, said the allegations are unfounded. He is on unpaid leave through Aug. 15.

The action shocked those who know Albin, a loyal Democrat known for consensus-building and open government. Prior to his appointment, he had managed the Spokane County CFSA office for nearly three decades.

In his state position, Albin organized the nation’s first Agricultural Summit in 1993 in Spokane. He brought Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman to Rockford earlier this year for a meeting with farmers.

“He’s a leader in agriculture,” said Don Rasmussen, an Eatonville, Wash., farmer and member of the CFSA state committee, a kind of board of directors for the agency.

“This is a blemish on his (Albin’s) record, but I guess people make mistakes. This is the price he’s got to pay for it.”

Sanderson has joined the Commodity Credit Corp. in Kansas City as a warehouse examiner. Both CCC and the CFSA are branches of the U.S. Agriculture Department.

The special counsel, an independent agency that investigates whistleblower complaints, agreed to discuss the case after Sanderson waived his right to privacy.

Spokesman Louis Vega in Washington, D.C., said investigators found that Sanderson had been reassigned and given a poor performance review after he raised questions about how Albin had raised money for the 1993 Ag Summit. Sanderson was isolated from others and given menial tasks to perform, the agency said.

Albin signed a statement agreeing not to discuss the case. But in a memo obtained by The Spokesman-Review, Albin wrote his superiors in 1993 that he had warned Sanderson prior to the whistleblower complaint that Sanderson would be reassigned for his poor treatment of employees and for insubordination. Among other things, Albin claimed Sanderson had blocked Albin’s request for a $20 printer cartridge and had encouraged secretaries to lift documents from Albin’s desk that might prove damaging.

Sanderson’s whistleblower complaint raised questions about Albin seeking donations from grain companies whose storage licenses had been suspended by the USDA.

Sanderson believed Albin was cutting deals with companies that wanted to win back their licenses. The inspector general for the USDA, however, dismissed the charge.

, DataTimes