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Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
April 6, 2000, Thursday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 1400 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY April 06, 2000 LARRY CRAIG SENATOR SENATE ENERGY
& NATURAL RESOURCES FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS MANAGEMENT FOREST SERVICE
STRATEGRIC
BODY:
Opening Statement for Senator
Larry Craig Oversight Hearing on Forest Service. Draft Strategic Plan April 6,
2000 Good morning. Today the Subcommittee will conduct oversight on the U.S.
Forest Service's 2000 revision to the Strategic Plan required by the Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993. This revision changes the original
strategic plan developed by the Forest Service in 1997. The 2000 revision was
released in draft form in November of last year. Public comments were received
through the end of January. The draft 2000 revision is supposed to contain
long-term goals for the Agency, long-term objectives associated with those
goals, indicator measures tied to each objective, and strategies to achieve the
long-term goals and objectives. In this sense, the strategic plan and its
periodic revision, should be the one document that explains to the public and
the Congress: (1) where the Agency is headed; (2) how it proposes to get there;
and (3) what will happen as a result. Regrettably, the 2000 revision to the
strategic plan accomplishes none of these objectives. Indeed, it is even more
sketchy and un-informative than the original 1997 plan which was vigorously and
widely criticized by the General Accounting office and others for failing to
disclose information sufficiently specific to hold the Agency accountable as
envisioned by the Government Performance and Results Act. In fact, the strategic
plan revision is largely irrelevant to, and silent about, virtually all of the
major initiatives that the Forest Service is currently undertaking. -And since
the Forest Service is involved in an extraordinary number of major rule- makings
and initiatives at the present time, this silence is deafening. It calls into
question whether the 2000 revision to the strategic plan is a serious exercise,
or little more than the program equivalent of a "head Fake" by the Forest
Service. For example, even though both the original 1997 plan and the 2000
revision talk about transportation needs, not a single word is expended in the
revision about the proposed Forest Service roadless area
initiative and the related transportation policy. Nowhere in the strategic plan
is the public informed that these two major initiatives are actually going to
dictate the Agency's activities for the next five years or more. Similarly,
there is no mention of the long-awaited revisions to the National Forest
planning regulations. This is surprising in light of the fact that the planning
regulations propose (in very specific terms) a new set of goals for the National
Forest system that are largely ignored in the strategic plan. Along the same
lines, the 1997 strategic plan and the proposed revision discuss the health of
forested watersheds. Nowhere in this discussion is an explanation of the
proposed federal agency combined watershed regulations or the Environmental
Protection Agency's proposed regulations governing the development of total
maximum daily loads and the regulation of water pollution from forest management
activities. The latter rule-making in particular could fundamentally alter how
water pollution is addressed from forest management activities. But, not a word
of this is breathed in the strategic plan revision. Also, the Agency has
region-wide initiatives pending that will determine how the national forests and
Bureau of Land Management lands in the Sierra Nevada and the Columbia Basin
eco-systems are to be managed. Nevertheless, the relationship and importance of
these two initiatives to the Agency's strategic plan for the next five years are
largely ignored in this document. Finally, we have heard a great deal of Agency
testimony on the budget restructuring proposal submitted as part of the Fiscal
Year 2001 budget. Nevertheless, the measures of performance in that proposal are
different than those in the 2000 revision to the strategic plan. Moreover, the
measures of performance in the strategic plan are eithervague, not measurable,
or have little if anything to do with the objective being measured. Perhaps even
more problematic is the failure to reference the plan in the FY2001 budget
request. Most of the narrative in the budget request comes from the Chief s
Natural Resources Agenda which was developed between the time the first plan was
produced and this revision was proposed. Clearly, if the Agency ascribed any
meaning to the processes required under the Government Performance and Results
Act, there should have been some effort to conform the strategic plan to the
Chief s Natural Resources Agenda. However, even this minimal responsibility was
generally ignored by the Agency. Therefore, given the lack of importance and
priority that the Agency places on the use of this strategic plan, I have to ask
why it is worth the public's time to offer the Agency comments thereon. During
our hearing today, I plan to ask the Agency a number of questions in this area.
With that, let us begin the testimony.
LOAD-DATE: April
20, 2000, Thursday 
