In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, a makeshift trade organization quietly advocated for the government to cede control of a hunger relief program to the organization's corporate members.
The so-called Feeding U.S. Families coalition, which included Accenture, Marriott, UPS, Aramark, DHL, Nestle, Kellogg's, and the National Restaurant Association, a major service industry lobbying group, urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to use a public-private partnership model to run a program that fed needy families while helping troubled farmers during the first year of the pandemic.
The suggestion came in the form of a policy paper, a so-called white paper, which was revealed by email records obtained through a request made by the Sentinel under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The coalition's efforts were not included in lobbying disclosures made by any of the companies involved, but specialists in government ethics law said that the firms did nothing wrong by failing to publicly acknowledge their outreach to officials.
Public-private partnerships have been used by investors and right-leaning politicians to privatize as many government services as politically and economically possible. They are billed as efficient for taxpayers, but so-called PPPs often end up leading to inferior public services while lining the pockets of corporate executives and shareholders.
Research has linked the increasing prevalence of the PPP model to growth in the consulting and finance industries, which ballooned in recent decades as policymakers prioritized tax cuts for the rich over public investment. Accenture, a leading consulting firm, spearheaded the creation of the Feeding U.S. Families Coalition. The company's logo adorns every page of the coalition white paper, and its federal contracting arm, Accenture Federal Services, chaired the efforts to discuss its policy ideas with USDA. The company also reached out to congressional staffers who work on agricultural issues, a representative for Accenture said.
The assistance program in question, the Farmers to Families Food Box program, was launched by the Trump administration in 2020 to address the increase in food insecurity and the sudden perishable food supply glut caused by social distancing measures, which abated the spread of COVID-19.
The Feeding U.S. Families Coalition attempts to shape Farmers to Families ultimately failed, and the Biden administration canceled the program in April 2021 saying that it wasn’t worth the costs, but efforts to shape Farmers to Families are still noteworthy. The records released by USDA detail large corporations quietly—and legally—attempting to influence the administration of public relief programs in ways that would benefit their shareholders. The need for emergency government assistance is only expected to rise in the coming decades, with the effects of climate change likely to intensify. It's unlikely that Feeding U.S. Families will be the last ad hoc corporate coalition that attempts to engage federal agencies in hushed academic policy discussions that just so happen to positively impact their revenue streams.
When asked about the nature of the Feeding Families Coalition, Accenture denied that the group was involved in lobbying. “No lobbying was conducted,” a company representative said. “It was never [Accenture Federal Services'] intent to bid on any associated work, since AFS is not in the Food Box business. AFS received no business as a result of the report.”
The report itself, however, urged USDA to use an app developed, in part, by Accenture. When asked how the recommendation and potential licensing fees squared with the lobbying denial, the firm said that it had no profit motive. “No, we shared that as an example,” the Accenture representative said.
While the denial might be questionable, there is no question of any legal wrongdoing on the part of the coalition's members for failing to itemize their outreach in lobbying disclosures. Experts who specialize in government ethics said that the company was well within its rights to keep its advocacy work quiet because it was couched in educational terms.
“Plenty of corporations and trade associations have figured out how to exploit the weaknesses of the Lobbying Disclosure Act, and this seems to be yet another example of why we need to close the loopholes and strengthen lobbying and ethics provisions,” said Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for the non-profit Common Cause.
“The corporate 'white paper' on policy recommendations is a commonplace evasion of the lobbying disclosure laws,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules. Holman noted that the Lobbying Disclosure Act was written to ensure that “academic organizations that publish reports for the general public on issues of public concern” would not be subject to disclosure requirements, and that “some corporations have exploited this caveat in the law.”
“Very rarely is a corporate 'white paper' designed or written for the general public. They are almost always written—as in this case—specifically to influence public officials,” Holman said.
At one point, the Feeding U.S. Families Coalition did have its paper available for the general public, but only for those executing a Google search with the obscure organization's name. The policy paper circulated by the group was published by pepsicopartnership.com, but the website stopped hosting the paper after Accenture was asked about the publication. “AFS does not manage this site. It is not clear how or why it was posted here,” the company's representative said.
But there can be no question about the nature of the report, whatever Accenture says about lobbying. The document outlined ten recommendations, many of which make the case for contracting out program work to coalition partners. “This coalition has the capability to source, process, box, and distribute food and food products widely, in partnership with UDSA, to serve the growing need across America. We jointly believe that a Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) model enables a more robust, scalable, and targeted approach,” the paper stated.
Details about which company would do what are listed in the various recommendations. One bullet-point called for the agency to rely on “logistics and food processing companies,” another called for USDA to use shipping companies to deliver food, while a third urged the agency to “fund the production of more shelf-stable foods and restore the supply of products like canned beans, tomatoes, mashed potato flakes and pasta to food banks.” Shipping companies in the coalition included UPS and DHL. Another coalition member, Kellogg's, has food processing capabilities, and another, Aramark, services food processors.
Another set of recommendations called for USDA to employ “supply chain optimization” and various data analysis techniques including visualization, both of which Accenture touts to potential clients on its website. The data analysis recommendation included the aforementioned Accenture-developed app, which could help food banks find surplus food to distribute to families, the coalition said, though it conceded that “multiple apps and websites already exist,” which do this.
The redundancy speaks to a major criticism of public-private parterships: they fail to live up to their billing as efficient. A common rationale for PPPs, according to advocates, is that they transfer liability from the public sector to private investors in exchange for profit, which is termed a “risk premium.” But the risk only exists on paper. Research published in December 2019 found that contractors often threaten litigation after winning bids to force governments to take on more costs—and that politicians will often acquiesce to these threats because their own career is tied to the success of the initiative.
“A deal that initially promises seamless risk transference and good value for money can become a financial albatross,” said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, which put out the research. Another study on PPPs published in 2010, which included a case study of Portugal from a masters of finance thesis, found that the country's use of public-private partnerships “did not add value for money to the public sector.”
“If traditional procurement had been used, it would have been far less expensive, even given the public sector’s tendency to be less efficient,” said the study's author, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento.
Nevertheless, the arrangement has been widespread because neoliberal fiscal policies have starved public administrators of funding over the past few decades. Officials have looked to plug gaps by using private financing, according to a study published on privatization in July 2012 by People for the American Way. White collar industries have gleefully taken advantage. The research cited an unnamed corporate executive giddy at the thought of a major recession while addressing a body called the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships.
“Desperate government is our best customer. There will be a lot of desperate governments out there,” the executive said. The remarks were made at an annual meeting in 2008, as the global financial crisis sent the economy into a tailspin. The record of the statement in the Cleveland Plain Dealer identified the speaker only as “chairman of a major finance company specializing in infrastructure privatization.”
The finance industry has been joined in pushing for PPPs by the consulting industry, according to research published in 2009 by Lee Cokorinos for the Center on Policy Initiatives. “Consultants now often have better access, deeper institutional knowledge and, due to the high rate of turnover among public sector personnel, longer tenure,” Cokorinos wrote. He noted that infrastructure privatization funds annually invest hundreds of billions of dollars and that various government entities in the United States annually spend dozens of billions on consultants. Accenture featured prominently in Cokorino's paper.
“In August 2008, David A. Wilson, Accenture‘s managing director of state and local government finance and administration industry practice made a presentation on 'Using Economic Downturn as a Catalyst for Administrative Transformation,'” the research said. Accenture's managing director of Public Service North America at the time, Steve Shane, was quoted as saying consultants should aspire for “successful commercial-public sector integration.”
In the case of the Feeding U.S. Families coalition, Accenture failed at its attempts to foster “commercial-public sector integration.” Perhaps they would have had a greater chance at success if they used a more personal touch in their approach. Records on Farmers to Families released by USDA also show a successful attempt to shape the program, albeit with much more modest ambitions, relying on a lobbyist who was well connected to the Department of Agriculture during the Trump administration: former U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia).
Chambliss was longtime friends with then-Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, having become acquainted with the former Georgia governor during the 2002 election campaign, which saw each man elected to office. In 2017, Chambliss spoke on Perdue's behalf in front of the Senate Agriculture Committee before Perdue's confirmation hearing.
“We have a client, Native Maine, that applied to participate in the above program and were turned down,” Chambliss said in an email to Perdue's chief of staff, Joby Young. Native Maine is a produce wholesaler based in the New England state.
“They feel they are a natural fit for the program and want to find a way to make sure they get in the next round,” Chambliss continued. “Can you please direct me to the right person to contact about their application. [sic]”
The email was sent at 8:09 a.m. on June 1, 2020. Young replied to Chambliss later in the morning plugging the former Senator into the proper channel. Three weeks later, the Maine congressional delegation announced that Chambliss' client received a $1.35 million contract to distribute produce under Farmers to Families.
People in Maine who work in hunger relief told the Sentinel that Native Maine performed its duties well. But the episode is still noteworthy because it shows the benefit of having personal contacts in Washington, and because Chambliss didn't mention the contract in Lobbying Disclosure Act filings. Neither he nor his employer, the law firm DLA Piper, nor Native Maine responded to questions about the contract, and whether the amount Chambliss was paid by the company fell below disclosure requirement thresholds under federal law.
Click here to browse the files we obtained from USDA. There are 337 pages of emails. Feeding U.S. Families Coalition records are on pages 148-158. Chambliss’ outreach on behalf of Native Maine can be found on page 308.
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