March 25, 1999
The Honorable C.W. Bill Young
Chairman, Committee on Appropriations
The Honorable Ralph Regula
Chairman, Subcommittee on Interior
Committee on Appropriations Committee on Appropriations
Dear Chairman Young and Chairman Regula,
We write to express our views on the FY00 budget of the U.S.D.A. Forest Service. As members of the authorizing committee with primary jurisdiction over the Forest Service, we feel it important to make you aware of a number of concerns we share based on our review of the budget.
First, we are concerned about the agency’s lack of basic financial and performance accountability. Since July of 1996, the U.S.D.A. Office of Inspector General has issued four successive adverse opinions or disclaimers on the agency’s financial statements. In January of 1999, the General Accounting Office added the Forest Service to its list of agencies at "high risk" of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement due to the unreliability of the agency’s financial statements. According to the GAO "inefficiency and waste throughout USDA’s Forest Service’s operations and organization have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars," and the agency is "still far from achieving financial accountability and possibly a decade or more away from being fully accountable for its performance."
Given this track record, we have serious reservations about the agency’s request for an increase of $172 million in discretionary funding over the FY99 enacted level. Congress should not increase taxpayer contributions to an agency that is unable to safeguard public investments.
Second, we strongly believe that the highest resource management priority of the Forest Service should be to use existing funding and management tools to address the growing restoration and maintenance backlog within the national forest system. According to the Forest Service, forty million acres of national forest are presently at a high risk of catastrophic wildfire. Twenty-six million acres are at high risk of insect and disease infestation. Deferred road reconstruction and maintenance total an estimated $8.4 billion, and unattended maintenance on recreational facilities exceeds $1 billion. This backlog jeopardizes the ecological integrity of our forests and their ability to provide a full range of benefits to the taxpaying public.
Yet, the Forest Service budget promotes a number of new initiatives and programs that have little or nothing to do with managing the national forest system to reduce the backlog and, in fact, compete with backlog reduction for priority emphasis. Chief among these is a proposal to spend $118 million – nearly 70% of the requested funding increase – for the acquisition of new federal land. This proposed funding competes in priority with wildfire prevention, vegetation management, insect and disease control, recreational facilities maintenance, road reconstruction, and a host of other programs vital to restoring the health, safety, accessibility and long-term productivity of our national forests.
The Forest Service should not expend taxpayer dollars to acquire more federal land at a time when it is unable to appropriately manage its existing land holdings. We urge you to table the agency’s land acquisition proposal for now and, instead, direct funding toward resource management programs and activities that reduce the restoration and maintenance backlog and improve public use and enjoyment of our national forests.
Finally, we note with great interest that the Forest Service’s budget request includes several legislative proposals intended to generate savings or offsetting revenues totaling $111 million. We fully intend to review these proposals if, and when, the agency transmits them to our committee. To this end we request that you inform and consult with us should the Forest Service request you to include any of them in the Interior appropriations bill.
We appreciate your consideration of these views and look forward to continuing our joint efforts to make the Forest Service a better manager of our national forests and the taxpayer investments that sustain them.
Sincerely,
Larry Combest
Chairman, House Committee on Agriculture
Charlie Stenholm
Ranking Member
Bob Goodlatte
Chairman, Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition
and Forestry
Eva Clayton
Subcommittee Ranking Member