Forest Service Budget Q&A’s

Here are the original questions I sent to the Forest Service collected from folks on TSW:

During the Town Hall, the Chief said “BLM has a COLA” that allows BLMers to get more money than FS folks in the same building.  He implied that that was due to energy funding to the BLM in some way.

1.       My understanding is that both locality pay and COLAs are government-wide and set by OPM.  The Chief implied that he couldn’t bring influence to bear on OPM, nor (he implied) could the Secretary.  What exactly is he asking OPM to do or not do?

2.       My understanding is that rents on Forest Service buildings are set by GSA. Is that correct? How are rental rates determined, and do local units have any flexibility on them?

3.       How much funding has gone to the Keystone and Navigators agreements? It seems like that could alleviate some of the problems if they haven’t spent it all.  Is it possible for the currently unspent funds in these coop agreements to be returned?

4.       Does the Forest Service have an explanation for why the shortfall occurred? Were the results of the audit a surprise?

a.       The structural issues (e.g. pay increases, COLAs) are common to all land management agencies; does the Forest Service have an explanation for why they have a uniquely large deficit?

5.       Has there been direction to use KV and BD funds to offset payroll shortfalls?

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The Press Office was helpful in telling me that it wasn’t a Town Hall but rather this session, the Housing Update Information Session which occurred July 15 and was posted August 19. There may be answers related to our questions on the Sharepoint site, but that isn’t available to non-employees as far as I know.

I asked to see those Q&A’s and the Press Office said:

“We don’t have any additional information to provide beyond Chief Moore’s recent budget remarks (Fiscal year 2025 budget updates | US Forest Service (usda.gov)). We won’t speculate beyond what’s already provided in the remarks. Questions related to the budget should be directed to the Department of Agriculture.”

Meanwhile the Hotshot Wakeup posted this on his Substack. I will keep everyone posted as I hear more, if you have more info please email me. Thank you!

In the Rocky Mountain Region, they announced that all seasonal positions or 1039 appointments will be cut, and no extensions will be offered starting October 1st. On top of that, I’ve heard there are conversations about perm staff cutting hours if a 2025 budget is not passed by October as well.

This comes after years of pressing the workforce to stay on longer to complete prescribed burning that was funded in the billions of dollars by the Infrastructure Bill. It seems that will take a back seat now, as it was announced October 1st will be the cutoff, no matter the funding source for the employee’s wages.

Here is the memo that went out to the Rocky Mountain Employees:

Good Afternoon All,

As an agency it is our responsibility and number one priority to pay our employees. In working through the budget challenges, we are currently facing; a decision has been made that no 1039 appointments will be extended beyond the end of the fiscal year regardless of funding source. This applies to all 1039 appointments in the Rocky Mountain Region with no exceptions.