In calling for a forest chief nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, Lee revisits a debate that has surfaced from time to time in the Forest Service’s history.
Legislation to do so has been introduced in the past but was never enacted.
“From grazing and recreation to timber harvesting and wildfire management, the Chief of the Forest Service has an immense influence on the daily lives of Americans,” Lee said in a release. “It’s time for this position to be accountable to the people affected by its decisions through their elected representatives in Congress.”
Umm..confirmation is one point in time. I’m all for accountability to Congress, but one point in time is not the way to achieve it. Let’s take for example, the Senate-confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning. Now many folks in the West, including Governors, Congressfolk, and so on have taken issue with the Public Lands Rule. The way to hold her accountable would be to pass legislation not allowing it. There are other issues, like the Rock Springs RMP, and the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which went directly against the wishes of local and State elected officials. It just seems likely to me that politicals, whose next job might depend on the goodwill of externals, may be more likely to “reward their friends and punish their enemies” or poke sharp sticks in the eye of, say, western R elected officials, than career folks who have to deal with the aftermath. For me, as a citizen, “sharp stick in the eye-hood” promotes bad public policy, promotes division, and wastes time and morale of federal employees, and tax dollars. So stop. But at least let’s not start doing more. In fact, if I were Senator Lee, my experience would make me want to pass legislation to make the BLM Director a career slot. Yes, accountability requires paying attention and reacting over time. It would be easy if it were simply “confirm and go.” But it’s not.
The incoming chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Lee said the Forest Service’s mission has expanded beyond the logging mission that dominated its early years and into managing “vast natural resources and public lands.” The proposal would require the nominee have “substantial experience and demonstrated competence” in forest and natural resource management.
According to some of my retired BLM friends, FLPMA requires “broad background and substantial experience in public land and natural resource management.” I’m sure that I could equally write a few paragraphs for anyone from Pendley to Stone-Manning on how they meet those criteria. But some retirees feel that Bob Abbey and Jim Caswell were the only two of the bunch to meet the criteria. Anyway, my point being that if a party can get the votes, any mildly related experience will do the trick.
Anyway, back to the E&E News story:
While the chief’s position has never been subject to confirmation — the Agriculture secretary typically makes the hire — it hasn’t been completely nonpolitical.
President Bill Clinton picked Jack Ward Thomas for the job in 1993, the first political appointment since Henry Graves in 1910, according to the Forest History Society in Durham, North Carolina. Thomas had worked for the Forest Service as a research wildlife biologist and had a long career in conservation but quit in 1996 as the political stresses of the job mounted.
Clinton’s decision to make the choice himself fed debate at the time about whether a Senate-confirmed role would make more sense.
In my experience, “political” is more of a sliding scale. Jack was a Forest Service employee who hadn’t gone through the usual chairs. As a WO drone at the time, whose job included briefing the Chief, he didn’t strike me as “political” as Chief Dombeck, who had more hired advisors from outside the agency and hadn’t spent as much time in the Forest Service. If this seems kind of subjective.. well, I suppose it is. And I wonder if the hired advisors were created because of sensed pushback from career folks, or career folks weren’t enthused because , to them, the new additions got in the way of traditional relationships. Some possible chicken and eggery there.
My BLM friends tell me that it’s not just the political at the top who becomes a problem, there is a cascading effect. Pretty soon there’s a front office full of non-confirmed appointees. Why not an associate chief? Why not Regional Foresters? We note that the current BLM State Director is Ag Secretary Vilsack’s son. And it just gets worse with every succeeding Admin, as in “if they could do it, so can we!.” No new Admin steps in and says “wait, where does this end? or does it?. ”
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The undersecretary for natural resources and environment at the time, Jim Lyons, told a House subcommittee in September 1997 that the agency already faces substantial congressional oversight and that appointing from within gives the Forest Service continuity. On the other hand, Lyons said, making the position subject to confirmation would align it with Interior agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
“In this regard, an active role for Congress in reviewing the president’s appointment for the Forest Service is apt,” Lyons said. Usually, Forest Service career employees fill the role, as the current chief, Randy Moore, did at the start of the Biden administration. Moore was regional forester for the Pacific Southwest region, covering 18 forests in California. He’d held that job for 14 years.
In recent history, Forest Service chiefs have left the post near the beginning of the subsequent administration. Lee’s bill spells out that the president would nominate a new chief within a month of the legislation’s enactment. The president of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, Steve Ellis, urged caution for the proposal.
“In our experience, the public has been better served by having a seasoned professional run the Forest Service, one that has had years of practical, hands-on experience, that understands the science and the tools of land management,” Ellis said in a statement.“This is a ‘be careful what you wish for’ situation,” he said. “As we’ve seen with the BLM, a political appointee at the helm has, at times, tried to move the agency to political extremes, only to have the next administration’s appointee overturn the previous administration’s policies and positions.”
In 1988, while attending Harvard, this issue was discussed in detail. One of the conclusions was the Forest Service is at a disadvantage by having a career employee as the Chief. I expressed my opinion. My issue is quality of the person; workable knowledge. Most political appointees do not know what they do not know about sustainable natural resources conservation. 30 years of my Forest Service career was at the SES level. I worked directly with a lot of political appointees over a very extended period of time. I know of what I say. While I have been a bit critical of late regarding the fire suppression policy, I remain grateful that this giant of an agency had/has a Chief that is a conservation leader. Sure, there are great Chiefs and some perhaps not so great. But all that I have worked for — there has been 9 Chiefs that I have had the honor to work with — all are so much superior than any non-careerist that I have ever known regarding the mission of the USDA Forest Service. I plead, be careful. Currently, the Forest Service is the greatest conservation agency in the world. Please do not mess with this great success over much more than a Century. If you care for the land and the people this land serves along a complex rural to urban land gradient, tell Mr. Lee, respectfully, do not do this. I strongly believe this action of naming a political appointee as Chief of the Forest Service would have a terrible consequence not only in America, but planet Earth. Very respectfully,
Thanks for contributing your views, Michael! You certainly have more experience with more Chiefs working more closely than most of us, so you speak from a depth of experience.
I’ll take the other side and support a Presidential appointment and a confirmation hearing for the position of chief. In Mr. Lee’s proposed legislation, I would hope that there are minimum qualifications for a nominee to meet such as a degree in any of the myriad natural resource fields that past chiefs possessed. A Presidential appointment would not preclude agency career people from being nominated and then confirmed. Of course someone could come in from the outside, but is that a bad thing? They may bring in beneficial change. And this works for both D’s and R’s.
The benefits of a Senate confirmation hearing on a nominee would allow their record to be disclosed. For example, if the “rising star” is the former forest supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest, shouldn’t the public know about that “rising star’s” role and performance during the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon and Cerro Pelado fires of 2022?
Without a confirmation hearing, the Nation would not have known about BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning’s “deep ecology roots” as a moll for Earth First! and her ecoterrorism in the tree spiking of a Clearwater National Forest timber sale. Without the disclosure surrounding the nomination and subsequent hearing the people would not have known of her vitriolic attitude toward government and law enforcement.
Senate confirmation can have its benefits for the public.
Yes, an ultimately even those disclosures on Stone-Manning did not affect her confirmation. the vote https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00401.htm looks entirely party line-ish. Now my guess is that most Ds didn’t care enough about the BLM to buck their party. Or they all believed she was qualified, and what you point out as her “attitude toward government and law enforcement” did not bother them.
I feel like we probably would have had that info brought out by people who remember, even if there had not been a confirmation hearing.
One person’s timber industry shill is another’s ecoterrorist.
Anyone who believes the next Forest Service chief won’t be a political appointee is delusional. $20 says it will be Jim Neiman.
Or even worse, Chip Neiman….
The section of this article “According to some of my retired BLM friends, FLPMA requires “broad background and substantial experience in public land and natural resource management” – jumped out to me. It is a sad reality that many political appointees, or elected officials, can have such little knowledge of the subject matter they are responsible for managing. I see this a lot with elected Mayors of certain towns where they are not cut out for leadership, and are only there for their own gains, and that’s sad to see. Then its great to see how a good elected or appointed official can make a positive difference so quickly if they are the right person for the job. Nice article!