GAO Rips USFS Finances

The author of a General Accounting Office assessment of the U.S. Forest Service's financial management on 3/26 "blasted" the agency at a rare joint congressional hearing, reports National Public Radio.

GAO's Barry Hill: "Forgone revenue, inefficiency and waste throughout the Forest Service's operations and organization have cost taxpayers hundreds of million of dollars."

Speaking at a hearing convened by the House Appropriations, Budget and Resources committees, Hill went on to describe the USFS's bookkeeping as "totally unreliable."

A GAO report found that the agency failed to account for $215 million of its fiscal 1996 operating budget.

Some House members, including Resources Committee Chair Don Young, R-Alaska, said that the GAO conclusions suggest that Congress should rein in USFS spending (John Nielson, NPR's "Morning Edition," 3/27).

Republicans in both the House and Senate have expressed skepticism over the agency's request for a $43 million budget increase in FY 1999.

Some of the critics at the hearing, including Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, "hinted it was time to turn the agency's financial affairs over to an outside control board."

"The attacks reflect the growing antipathy" of the Republican conservatives toward USFS Chief Michael Dombeck, "whose emphasis on conservation and recreation in the national forests has put him on a collision course with Westerners with large timber constituencies." Dombeck was the first chief to announce a net loss in revenue from timber sales, though receipts from sales have "been declining for years," and his proposed moratorium on roadbuilding in roadless areas of most national forests has also "angered timber interests."

At the hearing, Dombeck agreed that the agency's accounting system "must be improved." He said that he would implement the findings of an independent accounting firm that recommended modernizing outdated practices and streamlining services.

In a letter last week to "key Republicans," Dombeck said that timber production will continue in national forests but must "take place within the context of maintaining and restoring watershed health" (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 3/31).