Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
March 10, 1999
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 4132 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY March 10, 1999 MIKE DOMBECK CHIEF USDA FOREST SERVICE
HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS INTERIOR FISCAL 2000 INTERIOR
APPROPRIATIONS
BODY:
STATEMENT OF MIKE DOMBECK
CHIEF USDA FOREST SERVICE Before the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON
APPROPRIATIONS Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee FOREST SERVICE FISCAL
YEAR 2000 BUDGET March 10, 1999 Chairman Regula, Representative Dicks, and
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to discuss the Forest Service's proposed budget for fiscal year 2000. Last
month, I addressed our employees in Missoula Montana about the state of the
Forest Service. I would like to review some of those remarks as I discuss the
proposed budget for the Forest Service. I am honored to have served as Chief of
the Forest Service for over two years. During this time, I have had the pleasure
to be a part of the continuing evolution in the direction of the Forest Service.
I have come to appreciate that many of the conflicts we face today over
management of natural resources are very similar to the conflicts faced by the
agency's first Chief, Gifford Pinchot. What made the Forest Service unique under
his leadership was a set of conservation values that were not always popular,
but which reflected the long term interest of land health. Mr. Chairman, as in
the days of Gifford Pinchot, the values put forth in the President's fiscal year
2000 budget emphasize long term health of the land. In my testimony today I want
to concentrate on the values of healthy land by elaborating on some key areas:
1) the major changes reflected in the President's budget that set a new
leadership direction for the Forest Service; 2) how the Forest Service Natural
Resource Agenda reflects these values; and 3) how we are addressing important
accountability issues. Let me first address some overall perspectives about
where the Forest Service has been and where the Secretary and I want to take it
in the future. Over the last decade there has been a significant change in how
society views conservation values. Many people have ceased viewing publicity
owned resources as a warehouse of outputs to be brought to market and instead
have begun assigning greater value to the positive outcomes of forest
management. The result of such change is that we often , find ourselves caught
in the middle between competing interests. Some look to you, the Congress to
"fix" the legislation that they perceive has negatively affected their
interests. Others push to limit the number of appeals, so the agency can get on
with producing timber or stopping timber production, as the case may be. Still
others ask courts to resolve land use policies through litigation. Too often we
find ourselves waiting for someone else to resolve our issues for us. I think
that must end. The budget we are going to talk about today sets the framework
for the Congress, the Administration, the States, local governments, and private
parties to begin working together in a new way to collaboratively resolve
conservation conflicts. The central premise of our approach is that by restoring
and maintaining a healthy land base on public and private lands alike, we can
ensure that our children, and their children's children enjoy the benefits of
land and water. Mr. Chairman, with healthy watersheds as a foundation, there is
room for a reasonable flow of outputs; timber and livestock specifically, but
many other products also. There is and will be the ability to produce cleaner
water. There is a land base which will allow us to set aside additional places
untrammeled by human beings, and there is an ability and a necessity to preserve
now and for generations to come, additional open spaces before such spaces are
fragmented or degraded due to private land development, urban sprawl, and other
such issues. For those who advocate a return to timber outputs of 10 years ago,
or those who advocate a "zero cut" philosophy, I say it is time to inject
realism into the debate. The President's budget provides funding for outputs
which are consistent with land health. I can not visualize a circumstance when
such outputs will ever be at the level of 10 years ago, but I say to the other
side of the spectrum, timber harvest will, and should continue. The President's
budget contains innovations that recognize the ability of people to restore
ecosvstems from those already degraded, using modern -science and technology-,
where people have either contributed to poor land health by over using the land,
built roads in unstable or overly steep terrain, or prevented natural processes
such as fire. we can improve the health of these areas, and do so by not only
allowing the removal of forest products but by demonstrating in some cases such
activities can contribute to forest health. The more timber harvest contributes
to ecological sustainability, the more predictable timber outputs will be. This
budget presents a solid balance that if enacted will help accomplish these
goals. The Forest Service serves many people. With our 192 million acres,
383,000 miles of roads, $30 billion infrastructure, 74,000 authorized land uses,
23,000 developed recreation sites, tens of thousands of dispersed recreation
sites, and 35 million acres of wilderness, the national forests are many things
to many people. The Forest Service has the premier Forest and Rangeland Research
organization in the world which is involved in research to improve land health
and to improve the experiences enjoyed on the land by Americans. Specifics of
the President's Budget The President's budget creates a new focus on State and
Private Forestry programs. Over time, our leadership capacity to assist those
who manage the more than 500 million acres of forests outside of the national
forest system has diminished. one of our greatest contributions to society will
be our ability to bring people together to provide technical assistance and
scientific information to states, private landowners, and other nations of the
world. The fiscal year 2000 proposed budget contains an increase of $80 million
in State and Private Forestry, and $37 million in Forest and Rangeland Research
to increase our involvement in this critical collaborative role. Consider that
we have been spending about $2 billion annually to manage the 192 million acres
of national forest land, yet spend less than $200 million in support of the 500
million acres of state managed and privately owned lands. With this budget,
support to state and locally managed lands and non-industrial private lands
dramatically increases. The budget proposes $218 million for the Lands Legacy
Initiative, which will make new tools available to work with states, tribes,
local governments, and private partners to protect great places, to conserve
open space for recreation, and wildlife habitat; and to preserve forest,
farmlands, and coastal areas. This $218 million is part of the President's bold
government wide initiative to provide $1 billion for the Lands Legacy
Initiative. The President's budget also continues support for key programs
initiated with the fiscal year 1999 budget by targeting an increase of $89.4
million for the Clean Water Action Plan to maintain priority attention to the
health of watersheds on federal, state, and private lands. The budget also
proposes $6 million to support the Climate Change Technology Initiative and an
increase of $6 million for the Global Change Initiative, both of which are aimed
at improving the long term health of the climate that supports life on this
planet. Forest and Rangeland Research programs are an important aspect of
emphasis in the President's budget. In addition to funds to support global
climate issues, an additional $14 million is proposed for the Integrated Science
for Ecosystem Challenges project which addresses science and technology needs
related to ecological systems. The President is also proposing as part of this
budget several new legislative initiatives. Most notably, a proposal similar to
one put forward last year, to stabilize payments to states and counties by
separating payments to counties from a reliance on receipts generated by
commodity production. At the beginning of my testimony, I noted the need to
manage outputs from the national forests in a manner consistent with land
health. In doing so, emphasis for producing those outputs has changed. For
example, today a significant number of timber sales are sold for stewardship
purposes rather than pure commodity objectives. There is an increase in the sale
of dead or dying timber. In these cases receipts are less than were experienced
several years ago. I expect this trend to continue particularly in the west.
What we are asking is, why should the richest country in the nation finance the
education of rural schoolchildren on the back of a controversial federal timber
program? The Forest Service has a stewardship responsibility to collaborate with
citizens to promote land health. Collaborative stewardship implies an obligation
to help provide communities with economic diversity and resiliency so they are
not dependent on the results of litigation, the whims of nature or unrelated
social values to educate their children and pave their roads. We need to work
together so states and counties can anticipate predictable payments on which to
base education and road management decisions. Several other legislative
proposals are also soon to be submitted including proposals to transfer timber
sale preparation costs to timber purchasers through user fees, a proposal to
reform concession management, increased emphasis on obtaining fair market value
for land uses and timber, and establishing a fund to manage the sale of special
forest products. Natural Resource Agenda The President's budget contains many
important initiatives. it also cont-a4ns a broad program of funding for
management of national forest lands. Just one year ago I announced the Natural
Resource Agenda, which is a comprehensive science based agenda that will lead
management of the agency into the 21st century. As an integral partner with the
Government Performance and Results Act, this agenda focus on four areas; 1)
watershed health and restoration, 2) sustainable forest and grassland ecosystem
management, 3) the national forest road system, and 4) recreation. I want to
highlight briefly our emphasis in each of these areas. A retired Forest Service
employee offered me some advice a while back. He said, "if you just take care of
soil and water, everything else will be Ok. Multiple use does not mean we should
do everything on every acre simply because we can. We must protect the last best
places and restore the rest. Forest Service lands are truly the headwaters of
America, supplying river systems and recharging aquifers. They contain riparian,
wetland, and coastal areas that are essential for the nation's water supply and
prosperity. The President's budget provides an increase of $48.6 million
included in programs such as wildlife habitat management, watershed
improvements, fisheries habitat management, rangeland vegetation management,
threatened and endangered species habitat management,-and state and private
forest health programs. These increases will allow the Forest Service to make
important watershed restoration and protection efforts. Restoration and
maintenance of watershed health is contingent on quality land management
planning. As you know, the Committee of Scientists will issue their final
recommendations on forest planning soon. I expect they will suggest that we
focus planning efforts on long-term sustainability, more effectively link forest
planning to budget and funding priorities, practice collaborative stewardship
through use of diverse and balanced advisory groups, and allow for adaptive
management through monitoring. I look forward to issuance of the Committee of
Scientists Report from which revised forest planning regulations will be
developed in late Spring. I believe new planning regulations will be invaluable
in breaking the forest planning gridlock that is hampering national forest
management in so many areas. A second area of the Natural Resource Agenda is
sustainable forest and grassland management. The President is proposing a
billion dollar initiative to protect open space, benefit urban forests, and
improve the quality of life for the 80% of Americans living in urban and
suburban areas. Through sustainable forest and grassland management, the Forest
Service will play an essential role in accomplishment of this initiative. The
President's budget provides an increase of $113 million in State and Private and
Research programs which are integral to protecting and restoring the lands and
waters that sustain us. We will collaborate with state fish and wildlife
agencies, state foresters, tribes, and others to develop conservation and
stewardship plans for an additional 740,000 acres of non-industrial private
forestland. We will help states protect an estimated 135,000 additional acres of
forestland through acquisitions and conservation easements. We will acquire
environmentally sensitive lands through the Land and Water Conservation Fund,
and we will include nearly 800 more communities in efforts to conserve urban and
community forests. In addition, 300,000 more hours of conservation training will
be provided to local communities. Mr. Chairman, I am truly excited about
budgetary emphasis in sustainable forest and grassland management through
cooperation and collaboration. This emphasis will carry into many programs
including fire management where we will employ fire as a tool to meet integrated
resource and societal objectives across landscapes. We will give priority to
high-risk wildland/urban interface areas where people, homes and personal
property are at risk. We will employ fire as a tool to aid threatened and
endangered species conservation and recovery, to reduce accumulated fuels within
and adjacent to wilderness and reduce fuels to he!- lower long term costs of
suppressing wildfires. Now I would like to turn to one of the more challenging
aspects of the Natural Resource Agenda. That involves management of the National
Forest Road System. As you know, on February 11, I announced an interim
suspension of road construction in most roadless areas of the
national forest system. We offer this time-out to reduce the controversy of
roadless area entries in order to reduce damage to a road
system which is already in disrepair. A personal source of frustration is that
few people or interest groups are focused on the issue of our existing road
system as opposed to the roadless area issue. Yet if we care
about restoring the ecological fabric of the landscape and the health of our
watersheds, we must concentrate on areas that are roaded in addition to those
that are not. The President's budget proposes a $22.6 million increase in the
road budget, primarily for maintenance. The agency has an estimated road
maintenance backlog of over $8 billion. Meanwhile we are only maintaining 18
percent of our roads to the safety and environmental standards to which they
were built. With the proposed funding level in the fiscal year 2000 budget, we
will increase by 50% from 1998, the miles of road to be decommissioned or
stabilized. We will increase the percentage of forest roads maintained to
standard from 18 percent to 24 percent. With roads that could encircle the globe
many times, our road system is largely complete. our challenge is to shrink the
system to a size we can afford to maintain while still providing for efficient
and safe public access in a manner that protects land health. Over the next 18
months, we will develop a long term road policy with three primary objectives:
1) develop new analytical tools to help managers determine where, when or if to
build new roads, 2) decommission old, unneeded, unauthorized, and other roads
that degrade the environment, and 3) selectively upgrade certain roads to help
meet changing use patterns on forests and grasslands. Management of roads is
very important to local communities that rely heavily on these roads for
livelihoods and rural transportation. I expect decisions about local roads to be
made by local managers systems. We will obviously continue to provide access to
and through forests. However, it is clear that we simply cannot afford our
existing road system. The fourth element of the Natural Resource Agenda involves
recreation. The President's budget provides strong support to the recreation
program. With appropriated funds totaling $288 million, and additional funds
provided from the recreation fee demonstration project receipts and the ten
percent road and trail fund, this program will continue to provide strong
support to the 800 million annual visitors which we expect to increase to 1.2
billion over the next 50 years. The Forest Service recreation strategy focuses
on providing customer service and opportunities for all people. The successful
recreation fee demonstration program has served many people at the sites
operated under the program through improved visitor experiences and repair and
upgrade facilities which were badly in need of attention. I strongly support
continuation of this program. I do want to pass on one caution lest this program
is viewed as an answer to reducing future recreation discretionary funds. The
recreation fee demonstration program serves many people in a limited number of
recreation sites. The Forest Service recreation program is highly dispersed. It
is the place for a family drive or hike on a Sunday afternoon, a weekend camping
trip, or a week long grueling hike in the rugged backcountry. Many of these
experiences do not lend themselves to a recreation fee demonstration type
program. In fact, less than 10 percent of forest recreation visits occur at fee
demonstration sites. As the backyard playground for many Americans, it is
essential we maintain a recreation program that allows enjoyment of the national
forests without charge in addition to fee programs in limited areas. A key part
of enhancing this dispersed recreation is through our wilderness management
program. The President's budget includes an increase of $7 million for
protection and restoration of natural conditions in wilderness and to mitigate
the impacts of high use areas adjacent to large population centers. The
wilderness legacy is a crown jewel. I am committed to increasing the Forest
Service commitment to the Wilderness Act and intend to give more emphasis
through increased land management planning and re-establishment of a national
wilderness field advisory group. Each of the four emphasis areas of the Natural
Resource Agenda links directly to one or more of the goals of the Results Act
Strategic Plan. I am pleased that the President's budget supports this plan for
moving forward. Forest Service Accountability Successful implementation of the
President's initiatives and the Natural Resource Agenda is dependent on having
the trust of Congress and the American people. To be trusted, we have to be
accountable for our performance. We have to be able to identify where our funds
are being spent, and what America is, receiving in return. We have to do this as
efficiently as possible in order to assure that a maximum amount of funds are
spent on the ground for intended purposes without being diverted for unnecessary
overhead. Mr. Chairman, as you know, the Forest Service has had problems with
accountability in the past. we have been the subject of more than 20 oversight
reports and internal studies. we have been resoundingly criticized for having
poor decision making, either bloated or inaccurate overhead costs, and
non-responsive accounting systems. While some of this may be exaggerated, I
fully acknowledge that some is true. We've got the message. We will improve
dramatically. Let me highlight several initiatives that are now underway. First
and most importantly, I have made it clear through organization changes and
personal statements that the business and financial management functions of this
agency are equally as important as attention to managing the resources. I have
placed business management professionals in operations and financial management
positions. we have established a Chief Operating Officer at the Associate Chief
level which reports directly to me, thus placing our business management
functions on an operating level equal to that of our natural resource functions.
We have brought in a new Chief Financial Officer at the Deputy Chief level to
implement the Foundation Financial Information System. This is her top priority,
with a goal of achieving a clean financial opinion from the General Accounting
Office as soon as possible. It is also time to reform our budget structure. I
want to work with the Congress and the Administration to design a budget
structure that reflects the work we do and the Results Act Strategic Plan on
which the Natural Resource Agenda is based. The current budget structure does
not support the integrated work necessary to restore and maintain land health
while promoting ecological sustainability. In order to ensure accountability
while implementing a new budget structure, we will employ land health
performance measures to demonstrate that we can have a simplified budget and
improve water quality, protect and restore more habitat, and improve forest
ecosystem health. An important aspect of improving our financial management
accountability is to assure we are applying the proper methods and resources to
reform implementation. Mr. Chairman, as requested by this Subcommittee, we have
contracted with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to review
the agency's efforts to improve accountability. we look forward to working with
NAPA as this assessment is conducted, and are confident that the findings will
be valuable as we strive to improve our financial management. In fiscal year
2000 we will begin to implement reforms to our trust funds. We will examine
alternatives for trust fund management in the future to avoid unintended
incentives to pursue forest management activities that are not consistent with
land health objectives. For the first time, at the direction of Congress, we
have developed and implemented standard definitions for indirect costs which are
in full compliance with the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board. These
definitions have been reviewed by several oversight groups. Based on these
definitions, for the first time we have accurately determined indirect expenses
for the agency, which during fiscal year 2000 we project to be 18.9 percent. As
you know, the issue of indirect costs, often referred to as overhead, received
extensive attention during the 105th Congress, as did the poor quality of our
financial system and records. I want to make a specific request as your
Committee examines our budget in the coming year, T ask for your patience and
support in rectifying much of our accountability problems. The Forest Service's
financial management and reporting of overhead took a decade or more to fall
into disrepair. It will take more than a year to fix the problem. Let me
emphasize that we are devoting extensive resources to implementing new financial
systems, improving our audit processes, and improving decision making. The
resources we devote to make these fixes involves expenditures of an overhead
type nature. As we concentrate on cleaning up our problems, we need to have
flexibility without legislated limitations which could prevent us from being
successful. In my testimony today, I have reviewed the President's initiatives,
discussed the Natural Resource Agenda, and described our intent to improve
agency accountability. In conclusion, I want to say that a Forest Service that
meets the needs of the American people and restores and preserves the health of
the nations forests and rangelands, is a goal we all strive for. I'll leave you
with some thoughts based on Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac; the same words I
left with our employees in Missoula during my state of the Forest Service
speech. Let us recommit ourselves to an invigorated nation and land ethic. An
ethic that recognized that we cannot meet the needs of people without first
securing the health, diversity, and productivity of our lands and waters. An
ethic that understands the need to reconnect our communities -both urban and
rural- to the lands and waters that sustain them. An ethic that respects that
the choices we make today influence the legacy that we bequeath to our children
and their children's children. That concludes my remarks. I would be pleased to
answer any questions you may have.
LOAD-DATE: April 13,
1999 
