Budget Battle Brewing
Republicans Wield the Budget Axe over Forest Service

From the May Issue of The Forestry Source

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A recent congressional report that criticized the USDA Forest Service's financial accountability was pounced on by Republican lawmakers eager to criticize the policies of the agency. According to conservative members of the Republican majority, the accounting failures call into question the agency's fiscal year 1999 budget requests.

The report, which pulls together conclusions from more than 100 General Accounting Office studies, was the focus of a recent rare joint oversight hearing convened by the House Appropriations, Budget, and Resources committees. At the hearing, the committees heard testimony from the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, the inspector general of the US Department of Agriculture, and USDA Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck.

"Forgone revenue, inefficiency, and waste throughout the Forest Service's operations and organization have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars," said Barry Hill, associate director of energy, resource, and science issues for the General Accounting Office. "The agency's financial statements are unreliable, and the expenditure of significant accounts cannot be accounted for."

Dombeck, in his testimony, agreed that the agency's accounting system has serious problems and "must be improved." However, he cited some of the accountability improvements made in his first 15 months on the job and said that he intends to implement the findings of an independent accounting firm that in February recommended modernizing outdated data-collection practices and streamlining services. But that will take time, Dombeck said.

"Many of the accountability issues we face were years, even decades, in the making," said Dombeck. "We have already make progress in addressing concerns regarding the agency's management and financial condition. But we still have a long way to go."

Republican lawmakers, however, were not in a generous mood.

In light of the GAO report, House Resources Committee chair Don Young (R-AK) criticized the agency for requesting a $43 million budget increase in its FY 1999 proposal.

"The Forest Service lacks the most basic elements of standard accounting practices," said Young. "These shortcomings mean that the agency and Congress do not have accurate financial statement data to help make informed decisions about future funding. Yet despite all of this, the Forest Service is now demanding that Congress increase its budget by $43 million."

Other lawmakers at the hearing said the Forest Service's critics were less interested in the agency's bookkeeping than in the amount of board feet and dollars generated by the forest system each year.

"There's 100 percent agreement in this room that we all love our national forests," said Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA), a member of the Resources Committee in his third term. "But 50 percent of us love them vertical, and the rest wants to see them horizontal."

Frustrated by years of declining timber harvests, lawmakers from timber-rich states have begun flexing their budget oversight muscles in order to force the Clinton administration to change its forest management policies. The legislators, mostly from the Republican majority, are becoming increasingly unhappy with the policies of Dombeck, who has sought to promote a policy for national forests that puts watershed and habitat protection on an even footing with timber production. Although harvesting on national forests has been declining for years, Dombeck was the first chief to announce a net loss in revenue from timber sales. Dombeck further angered the legislators this year by announcing a moratorium on the construction of new roads in roadless areas of national forests, a policy that will further decrease timber harvest levels.