Mike Edrington wondered what we are thinking about the Wildfire Agency EO and the President’s budget and why we haven’t had more discussion. I know I’m not a Fire Person so haven’t wanted to wade in too much, but on the other hand I have been listening to different fire people and others’ views, questions and fears. So I’m going to touch on some random thoughts I’ve had about the situation and please add your own.
There seem to be many moving parts, the EO, the President’s Budget and a Senate bill.
1. What we think we know about the “coordination” of wildfire work in the EO as opposed to “reorganization” efforts seems to be that it is more Service-First-y than reorganization. So I think there are a bunch of people over the summer working to figure out how to fix coordination problems. There have been news stories that have not been accurate about that.. Marc Heller of E&E News caught the nuance in the new EO, so shout-out to him.
2. Everyone (but me) seems to be fan of joining forces via a Wildfire Intelligence Center. I am dubious of placing shark agencies in the pool with minnow agencies like FS R&D- the ones who are doing a great deal of useful work. Plus there’s the NOAA- NASA- military contractor axis. Plus zeroing out FS R&D in the President’s budget.. it could be a rare case of partisan alignment, but not necessarily in the interests of people currently doing the heavy lifting in the wildfire R&D space nor those benefitting from their work.
3. I don’t this we know where the linkage with land management agencies would be in any proposed reorganization. Some have said that prescribed fire and mechanical treatment would go with the new agency. As I’ve said before, I think this would be problematic as trust is key to successful prescribed fire programs and many local folks are getting involved in prescribed fire. Plus I don’t think any new agency really wants to do NEPA, plus the Interior Solicitors probably don’t want to have the FS PF and MT workload. Plus many projects I look at tend to be combos of activities that would fall in and out of fuel-ish purpose and needs. Finally, I don’t think the work of doing NEPA and the organizational culture of wildfire suppression are necessarily compatible. See the AI image above.
4. Suppose you left everything else with the land management agency, and just took prescribed fire and gave it to the Wildfire Agency. A District finishes a NEPA doc and is ready to go. Perhaps it takes a ticket and gets in a virtual line to get a PF crew.. but by the time their number comes up conditions are not good. It just doesn’t seem very realistic.
5. I’ve suggested that a possible linkage would be “if a fire needs full fledged suppression stat, then call in the new agency”, but someone said that that’s kind of the way it works now.
6. Keeping PF and MT in the land management agencies would lead to two sets of people who work with fire and have fire knowledge. I don’t see this as a problem, perhaps it’s a strength? If the Fire Agency gets overwhelmed, it would be able to tap into those folks, and maybe other state and community folks working in PF if appropriately certified.
7. I find any ideas about fire decisions being changed from what they are now and put under Interior to be of concern. What do we know about Interior compared to Ag? It seems to me that they can be comparatively partisan. But don’t take my word for it.. Here’s the Wyoming D Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming as noted in 2010 for the BLM in a letter to Secretary Salazar:
Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. seems to go from pillar to post to placate what is perceived as a key constituency. I only half-heartedly joke with those in industry that, during the prior administration, their names were chiseled above the chairs outside the office of the Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. With the changes announced yesterday, I fear that we are merely swapping the names above those same chairs to environmental interests, giving them a stranglehold on an already cumbersome process.
My experience is that there is something about USDA that tends to buffer partisan political drama. Think of Jim Hubbard compared to Tracy Stone-Manning. My argument for either party would be “fix the broken parts, but do you want to risk politicizing wildfire response?” Or maybe I’ve just made an argument for moving BLM to USDA? After all, there’s lots of grazing on BLM, and who does research on cows, diseases, nutrition and so on?
8. Well-meaning folks like those at MegaFire Action probably look at the situation and logically say “these agencies are similar so let’s put them in the same department.” Of course factions in Interior would like to acquire more land, budget and power. But centralizing power further, in an overtly politicized agency, may have negative consequences. Not to put too fine a point on it, and welcoming new philanthropic, technology and other entities into this space, many of these new folks are Coastals of one coast or another with associated views, which can diverge from interior kinds of views. And where is fire country, generally?
9. Certainly wildfire decisions have some political overtones (remember air tankers to Long Island during the Clinton Admin?), yet I think trust in government institutions, and their working well for everyone is something that both parties can agree on. So I would hope that these more touchy-feely cultural and trust considerations make their way into the dialogue.
10. Remember Service-First? I think that that’s more the way to go. See this GAO report from (sigh) 2000:
The colocation of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) units provides the best opportunity for the agencies to jointly serve the public, effect operational efficiencies, and improve land management. The Service First Initiative is designed to improve the operations of these two agencies by combining resources and providing “one-stop shopping” services for the public. Since the initiative has been in operation, the number of shared projects between BLM and the Forest Service has increased from 15 in fiscal year 1996 to 272 in mid-fiscal year 2000. Many of the projects involve shared personnel, shared equipment, and joint training projects. Although there have been some successes in achieving efficient government operations, there are many legal and regulatory barriers that prevent the full integration of the agencies’ resources. The full integration of the agencies’ operations depends on resolution of these barriers.
Where would we be today if it hadn’t gotten derailed? Maybe hiring would have been centralized with the most effective agency. We can imagine all kinds of possibilities.. harmonizing regulations that apply to both agencies, like FOIA. We actually did one joint review of the San Juan Public Lands Center with FS and BLM, and had a joint LMP/RMP going for awhile. Perhaps coordinate assessments and measurements? So many possibilities broader than Fire.
11. I haven’t heard this discussed much, but I recall that sometimes Fire people could do things that the rest of us couldn’t do because it was an “interagency” decision by NIFC. So perhaps in reality NIFC could act more as “one fire agency” in other key areas without reorganization (I’m really out of my depth here.)
If I had a single critique of the FS and government agencies that I’ve known, it would be the lack of consistent approaches to improvement through time. One Admin will think of something (e.g. Service First) employees will assiduously work on it and then it is slowly attacked and removed by organizational antibodies to change. And politicals tend to be interested in pleasing constituents (can’t argue with that) so improvement efforts tend to fall by the wayside. I think we can do better.
I guess, referring to Mike’s post, that I’m probably on Team Titanic. A couple of semi-random observations:
1) I’m not sure exactly what problem(s) consolidation is supposed to solve. What metrics will improve as a result of this effort? The EO somewhat humourously has it backwards – let’s smoosh the fire functions together first and then come up with some metrics afterwards. This seems suboptimal.
2) Sharon said:
“Plus I don’t think any new agency really wants to do NEPA, plus the Interior Solicitors probably don’t want to have the FS PF and MT workload.”
I think this is a key point. Each agency, and each agency’s lawyers, have developed working relationships in the fire space over the course of many years. Those relationships may or may not have been successful – I’m sure your mileage may vary – but they at least have established a relatively predictable set of expectations among all concerned. Suddenly moving all these boxes around on the org chart is going to throw a lot of uncertainty and, at least in the short term, inefficiency into those relationships, potentially leading to slower and less consistent execution.
Surely lawyer-client relationships within the new fire agency are among the least significant of the problems the new agency will confront. The point is that there are countless potential points of friction like these that do not at present exist, or that have been managed, that will be exacerbated by the reorganization. I’d be surprised if anyone is planning for that.
As I’ve bloviated before, reorgs are much, much easier to get wrong than right. Sharon might be correct – this could all end up defaulting to something like Fireservice First, and that would be no bad thing. It would be better, though, if that actually was the plan.
Rich J., when you talk about attorneys for the various agencies, I wonder whether there is such a thing as “too much change at once that affects the same people”- here I’m thinking of the new NEPA regs (so far not that exciting but could be) and possibly new case law, plus getting a new bunch of obstreperous clients with different regs and case law. Maybe for these folks (attorneys), we should avoid making more change for the time being.
In my experience (for some minerals cases) it did seem like overkill on a case to need FS NEPA, minerals, OGC and BLM NEPA, minerals and Solicitors at the same meetings and at the day, we agreed more than we disagreed. But this kind of thing wouldn’t be helped by a) a Fire Service nor b) moving the FS to Interior (except for the OGC/solicitors). It might be helped by something Service-First-ish.
I agree that this sort of staff overload could really be a problem at the best of times, and given the current turmoil around federal employees, these probably aren’t the best of times.
I think you have summed things up fairly well. It really seems to me like a solution in search of a problem. While it could provide some benefits, I think the balance would be to create more problems. I like the Service First approach. When I was the Fire Staff Officer on the Kaibab NF, we had a District fire organization on the North Kaibab (north side of the Grand Canyon), and the Park Service had a fire organization for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. They were both essentially doing the same thing, right next to each other and it made a lot of sense for them to work together as a matter of doing business. We signed a Service First agreement with the Grand Canyon NP and developed an FMO position to manage the whole north side of the Grand Canyon. We had a few kinks to work out, but it seemed to work out pretty well to me. We saved money and were more efficient. I think that something like this is a much better way to go and may accomplish what they are looking for without doing a major reorganization. Line Officers on both sides were still fully engaged as well as both Agencies.
This is a really good point – different fire jurisdictions both within and outside the federal government have been entering into these kinds of agreements for years, mostly (as far as I can tell) with considerable success. Certainly cost-sharing disputes can arise between feds and nonfeds on big fires, but at least in my admittedly limited experience, the work on the ground generally goes pretty well.
Really bad idea. Forest Service fire crews when not fighting fires are thinning forests, conducting prescribed burns, training, and many other tasks. In CA they coordinate well with state agencies and with other federal agencies. Centralization will not improve effectiveness. There can be some communication improvements such as coordinated communication channels.
“I think trust in government institutions, and their working well for everyone is something that both parties can agree on…”
In normal times, of course. But as long as the party in power doesn’t trust government institutions, and their priority is “breaking things,” I don’t think we should expect things to work well. You have some good points, but I think we’ll be in damage control mode for awhile.