Rural Utilities Service
Encyclopedia
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
(USDA), one of the federal executive departments
United States Federal Executive Departments
The United States federal executive departments are among the oldest primary units of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States—the Departments of State, War, and the Treasury all being established within a few weeks of each other in 1789.Federal executive...
of the United States government charged with providing public utilities (electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
, telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
, water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
, sewer
Sanitary sewer
A sanitary sewer is a separate underground carriage system specifically for transporting sewage from houses and commercial buildings to treatment or disposal. Sanitary sewers serving industrial areas also carry industrial wastewater...
) to rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
areas in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
via public-private partnership
Public-private partnership
Public–private partnership describes a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies...
s. The agency's acronym is an allusion to the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
word rus ("countryside"), the etymological source of the word rural.
History, structure, and programs
The RUS is one of three agencies (the other two are Rural Business-Cooperative ServiceRural Business-Cooperative Service
The Rural Business-Cooperative Service is one of three agencies within USDA Rural Development responsible for administering various economic development programs to rural communities in the United States and its territories...
and the Rural Housing Service
Rural Housing Service
The Rural Housing Service is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture . Located within the Department's Rural Development mission area, RHS operates a broad range of programs to provide:*homeownership options to individuals;...
) that are part of the USDA's Rural Development Bureau. The three agencies are headed by administrators, who each report to the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development (the RUS administrator is the only one of the three who is Senate-confirmed).
The RUS administrator makes the primary policy and program decisions for the agency and is assisted by a borrower and program support staff that includes a financial services staff, an administrative liaison staff, and a program accounting services division. Because of the financial nature of the agency's work, the administrator and associated staff work closely with two other agencies that are not part of the USDA, the Federal Financing Bank (FFB) and the Rural Telephone Bank (RTB). These banks provide the funds for many of the loan programs administered by the RUS.
The program functions of the RUS are divided into three operating units: water and waste, electric, and telecommunication
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
s, each led by an assistant administrator. The administrator and staff concentrate on the financial details of individual RUS projects, and these three operating units provide the engineering and technical personnel to plan and execute projects.
History
RUS traces its roots to the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), one of the New Deal agenciesAlphabet agencies
In total, at least 100 offices were created during Roosevelt's terms of office as part of the New Deal, and "even the Comptroller-General of the United States, who audits the government's accounts, declared he had never heard of some of them." While previously all monetary appropriations had been...
created under President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The REA was created on May 11, 1935, with the primary goal of promoting rural electrification
Rural electrification
Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas...
. In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads.
Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to compete with or regulate private enterprise
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, despite many of these utilities' having refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Private power companies set rural rates four times as high as city rates. Under the REA there was no direct government competition to private enterprise. Instead, REA made loans available to local electrification cooperatives, which operated lines and distributed electricity.
In 1939, 288,000 households had their electricity provided by rural electric cooperatives; most of these electric coops had applied for and received loans from REA. Harry A. Slattery
Harry A. Slattery
Harry A. Slattery , was an American lawyer and statesman. He was United States Under Secretary of the Interior from 1938-39 and gave his name to the Slattery Report, which proposed to develop Alaska through immigration...
was the administrator of REA from 1939–1944. In 1944, he resigned after a conflict with the Secretary of Agriculture.
In 1934, less than 11% of US farms had electricity. (In Germany and France that same year, nearly 90% of farms had electricity.) By 1942, nearly 50% of US farms had electricity, and by 1952 almost all US farms had electricity.
In 1949, the REA became authorized to provide loans to rural telephone cooperatives.
The reorganization of REA into RUS was authorized by the Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 (P.L.103-354).
Related federal legislation
- 1944: Rural Electrification ActRural Electrification ActThe Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided federal loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve rural areas of the United States....
Amendments PL 78-425, 78-563 - 1949: Rural Electrification Act Amendments PL 81-423
- 1961: Area Redevelopment Act PL 87-27
- 1961: Housing Act PL 87-90
- 1962: Rural Electrification Act Amendments PL 87-862
- 1965: Appalachian Regional Development Act PL 89-4
- 1965: Department of Housing and Urban Development PL 89-174
- 1966: Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development ActDemonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development ActWith the growth in federal grant programs for construction projects, there was a need for a mechanism to coordinate these projects. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 was enacted to guarantee that federal grants were being spent on set projects...
PL 89-754 - 1972: Rural Development Act PL 92-419