Forest Service PR plan called legal
The U.S. Forest Service broke no laws in paying a public relations firm to promote its plan to triple logging in Sierra Nevada forests, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.
"An agency has a legitimate right to explain and defend its policies and respond to attacks on that policy," said the report, which echoed conclusions reached in May by the Agriculture Department's inspector general.
At issue was a $90,000 contract the USFS gave to OneWorld Communications to work on a "Forests with a Future" campaign justifying increased logging as necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires.
Democratic lawmakers said the contract violated federal laws prohibiting spending for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress.
The GAO disagreed. "While the Forest Service policy is controversial, the materials explaining the policy do not constitute prohibited publicity or propaganda," the report said, according to the Associated Press.
The report also exonerated the Forest Service for the way it labeled a series of photographs in a brochure that appeared to show increasing tree density in the Sierra Nevada from 1909 until 1989. The forest shown was in Montana, not California, and the first photo in the series was taken immediately after the area was logged. The Forest Service revised the labeling on the brochure after criticism.
"Although the Forest Service could have been more careful in its labeling of the pictures to eliminate any inference that the logged 1909 forest was a more natural state of the forest, the Forest Service's failure to do so does not constitute a violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition," the GAO said.
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