You’ll remember that in the fall of 2024, the FS said that no temporaries would be hired for the summer of 2025, due to a budget deficit. The budget deficit was $750 mill, I had heard. Why did the deficit happen? I think it’s still relevant today because the numbers added in the last few years (5400) compared to the numbers lost (6K or so) don’t seem as different as the real pain units are feeling. So there are probably deeper layers to this story. Maybe only that the additions were not as vital as those who left via voluntary reductions, but even so..
At the Retiree Reunion in Missoula last fall, Chief Moore talked about it, and I thought it was interesting. You can see what he had to say on this video right around 1:38:28. It’s better to hear Randy talking, but for those who want, I took the Youtube transcript and did some editing for clarity and spelling.
Actually if you are interested in the Forest Service, hearing all the Chiefs talk and reminisce about their time is interesting. You can even download the Youtube and listen in the car or wherever. We can discuss in the comments. Anyway, back to Chief Moore. I am a big Chief Moore fan, and the venue of his retirement stories and celebration was not the place to get all the details. He’s painting a big picture and the broad sweep of events, which isn’t the same as a budget powerpoint or even a briefing paper.
My questions about his comments at the Retiree’s Reunion do not reflect at all on his legacy and leadership. I’m still trying to put the pieces together, and ask a question “were there other ways to reduce the deficit than reduce employee numbers? Or was the plan to continue into deficit?” One of the problems in finding this out was a complete lack of information from recent retirees. I have only heard second and third hand whispers, which is decidedly unusual for such an important issue. There have been no apparent leaks to the media or perhaps the media were not interested. If someone can help piece this together, it would be greatly appreciated.
Anyway, back to Randy’s talk:
This is my last statement. But I remember with Secretary Vilsack and he called us over and he wants to talk about what we were going to do because we’re going to be getting bipartisan infrastructure legislation and the inflation reduction act monies and the Forest Service got 10 billion dollars of those monies and we needed to do something with it, and so we were asked to develop a 10-year plan, and so we developed a 10-year plan is known as the Wildfire Crisis Strategy and we had 10 years to spend that money. Well, the election was coming around. We probably had to speed it up.
Back to history, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was signed into law on November 15, 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed on August 16, 2022, just nine months later. As we know, the Wildfire Crisis Strategy was developed in 2022.
It sounds like they felt they needed to spend all the 10 years worth of money in case the funding was retracted by Congress? Or maybe the election he mentions was the 2024 Presidential election?
And so what we did was that and it was at Secretary Vilsack’s request is that he said, you know, Chief, he says, we either got too much land or not enough money.
Now the FS did receive a substantial chunk of change from the IRA and the IIJA, although not all of it was for NFS and even then some was rather odd. I can’t find it right now, but I did a post on the numbers in the IRA.(e.g $100 mill for improving NEPA efficiency, not actually doing NEPA). I did two searches from different AIs and got different numbers for how much the FS received in IIJA and IRA funds, so gave up.
I said, we don’t have enough money, Mr. Secretary. And he said, well, no. He says, um, how much would you say that we’re doing based compared to what we’re being asked? And so we sent this around to all the regional foresters and station directors. And you, you all know us, you know, when you ask a question like that, we don’t always tell the complete truth when we respond back because here’s what came back. and and they were telling the truth. so I you know it was the real truth, but we get appropriated about $6 billion. When we looked at what we were being asked to do in the budget that we would need, it was about $33 billion.
So we were doing somewhere around 19% we were funded 19% of what we were being asked to do. And all of you probably know that, you know, because you people retire, you did their job and yours, you know, it just went cycle, cycle, cycle, you know, and and and so that was the first revealing piece is that we were underfunded and we’re being asked to do more and more and more, with less and less and less and it and it turned out to be truthful when we looked at what we’re being asked to do versus where we’re being funded.
But maybe IIJA and IRA added a bunch of bucks..so was it “less and less” at that point?
And so took that over to the Secretary. So he said, um, $33 billion. And I said, that’s that’s the answer to your question. And so he said, what if we just doubled what you had from 6 billion to 12 billion. I said, okay, we’ll do about 40% of what we’re being asked to do, but we needed to be grateful if we could get another $6 billion. That would be great. And so the Secretary Vilsack was making a move to do that with OPM
To put it in the President’s Budget Request?
and we ran out of time. But here’s what happened. We developed a plan because and we couldn’t in good conscience ask the workforce to do $10 billion more worth of work when we were clearly being underfunded. And so we hired 5,000 additional employees in the agency.
And you know us once we get going, we are very successful. We actually hired about 5,400 people, you know, we didn’t have a governor in there, you know. We it didn’t it didn’t just stop, you know. So 5,400 people.
And so when you talk about what the Forest Service was behind, it was never $700 million, what was mentioned. It was about $500 million. But here’s the thing. Our plan, we had 10 years to spend that money. More like eight years to spend that money. On the average, we lost about 2,000 employees a year through attrition. So, we know that at worst, we could reach that 5,000 employees over two and a half, three years. And that’s what we were looking at doing, but we needed to hire a lot of people to do that additional work that we’re being asked to do. And so, that’s why we hired the additional 5,000 people.
This seems to agree with the story “not enough people retired as we imagined” but with a different twist than “our model for retirement was wrong.” It also has the addition “we planned for them to retire over more years but we felt an urgency to hire lots more people .” It would also make sense to have some kind of “governor” in the system so agencies don’t overhire. At the same time, we remember mucho bucks being obligated to an array of the usual suspect Keystone and other NGOs, as well as ..others (the National Baptists.. for work in.. Arizona?).
Now, we had also needed to look at diversity. And so a part of what we did was try and move into areas that we have not been commonly moved into. And so of that 5,300 people, we had a lot of diversity, gender and ethnicity. And believe it or not, we went from a 18% diversity up to about 27- 28% diversity. And that was that was a record by far. and we moved the gender from about 34 to about 43. Now, what’s interesting is that now the 5,000 people that have left or lost their jobs represent the diversity and inclusion that we had reached through that effort. And I say this, I want to say that diversity and inclusion matters because a lot of the young people, a lot of our young people had the skill set to move us into this direction that I mentioned earlier. carbon sequestration, looking at developing a carbon standard, looking at our research and our science, looking at wood innovations that was what was represented in that 5,300 employees that we hired. And that’s what is being jeopardized with this latest move.
This was confusing to me when I heard it, as news stories in March said the probationary folks were being reinstated, and the Reunion was in . So who left? It appears that it was a mix of the newly hired but lots of older experienced folks. Some of the probationaries were field- working conversions from temporaries, but others had positions less directly involved with field work. At the time, field folks were complaining that the funding was being used to staff up ROs or hire chiefs of staff. I have seen recently hired hitherto unnecessary positions myself at GS-12 levels.
And just to make one point, there have been plenty of excellent people who know about carbon sequestration and carbon stuff in the FS for … at least 20 years.
As a female forester hired in 1979, I that if this is 2025 and the % women in the FS was at 34, there might be structural issues involved.. like if most of the budget is in wildfire, and wildfire folks have a smaller percentage of women, then.. we need to consider that. If fire has had trouble getting their numbers up.. does that mean everyone else has to have 70% women to balance out for the agency totals?
Inquiring minds might still wonder… was the deficit $750 or $500 mill? Why did the FS intentionally hire on more permanents than it could afford? What was the hurry to spend the money really about? What was the long-term plan for the Harris folks to have dealt with the over-hiring problem? Perhaps playing chicken with Congress and blaming future RIFs on not enough funding? Or maybe not having temporaries for more field seasons?
And what was the story with the Keystones and other large sums in grants- grantees who were hiring temp folks for positions that had formerly been permanent employees? And why has it been so hard to find out these things? There have been no leaks, no retirees speaking out, and no traditional media interest. It may have something to do with why the Trump Admin reductions have been so difficult and newsworthy for the FS, and not so much for other land management agencies.
As a one time industry timber buyer and at the time the timber sale contract A, B, and C clauses were seared in my brain, because I was not involved in resource availability, public forests management, of the machinations of the civil service deep state that ran things their way not matter who was looking on with askance. Hence, a lifetime observing government agencies managing turf, territory, size and numbers of agency employment and who was doing what to whom for whose benefit. It was always about USFS managing people, in the agency or the public. Layered conflicting ordered operational restrictions were at times insane. I remember a USFS designed spur road that I said was too tight for long log trailers with a reach that connected the trailer to the truck was designed to “lead” as well as follow. So a super to the inside for directing rain water to a ditch to a culvert would also lead the trailer into the ditch and the trailer wheels into the cutbank.
First load hung up. Truck could not back up. Fouled and fly blowed. Got on the “big set” and contacted RD engineering. No offered instructions. I got the 98 link belt to rumble up and unload the logs, replete with USFS load ticket. Load the trailer. Send the truck and three others home. Sent the rigging crew to logging and the shovel to decking. Got the hook tender in my rig and we drove until we found the D-7 parked where the lowboy was to haul it to the shop. Drove that up to the corner. Dug enough dirt to slope a ramp from the cutback to the running surface, “supering” the road to the right on the left hand super tight corner. The corner was a three way junction on a ridge top. So stole rock from the waste on the other road. Rocked the super in the hope it would pack and stay. It was summer. Get that little unit and another down the road logged and I could then tear out the ramp and some other outfit could hang their trucks up. Engineers are never wrong. Especially government agency engineers. All kinds of attempts to stop logging. All ignored. SO meeting. SO Dale Robertson advised the District Engineer and Ranger to write a MOU that we would remove the ramp, the out-slope to the center line of the road prism. Addenda to the contract.
I spent 25 years of my life keeping USFS plans from wrecking landscapes. More that that if you count the two years I cut the timber to make the first ski runs on Mt Ashland RD’s Mt Ashland ski area.
Got the “snow ranger” to widen runs so a skier could actually make a turn. The summer after the first open season, cut even more because it was a north slope and in the Ashland city watershed. No snow in the Shasta Red fir and true fir forest under timber when two feet was still in the north slope clear cut for a ski run. Improved the water budget and made the runs available to lesser ski talents.
Had a long discussion to get the snow ranger to NOT cut the Jeffery pines on the west end of the NW side of the Bowl, on the mound on the downhill side of the Bowl. Traded out for more alpine fir and hemlock under a wider area of Jeffery Pines. That made the ski run into a picturesque run and saved a Siskiyou Province native pine grove at near 7000 feet. Relics of the last interglacial period. Alpine fir and Mountain hemlock are as common as community college drop outs. Jeffery pine not so much. Worked with the snow ranger to move run boundaries to incorporate natural bumps and terrain changes. He got an award for his work. If I remember correctly Dave Keizer (sp?) was the Ashland RD Ranger. Clint Ekstein the snow ranger. Laid the groundwork for the success of the 1963-64 opening of the ski area. Dave later became Tony Lausman’s KOGAP Medford mill forester. Lausman (sp?) was a Hood River guy, originally, and Dave a former Ranger at ZigZag on the Mt Hood NF.
Circa 1950s and beyond.
My working career started at a time when the USFS was making payments to the Treasury as it was self supporting selling timber, grazing rights, and special use permits and gross revenue “sharing” with “for profit” users like guides for rafting, hunting, leasing USFS land for ski areas. Oregon once had a lot of undeveloped skiing. Now it is all in Wilderness and too much south and west slope that is warmer and wetter. Now annual wilderness fire and resulting dead fall and suspended logs make the hike in skiing too dangerous.
I have an adult nephew currently skiing in rural, remote Japan. Got pics of a cloud of “cold smoke” with a ski pole sticking up as the only thing not white. $6 train tickets. $16 dollar daily lift tickets. B&Bs and small lodging opportunities. Meals are as inexpensive. He is in heaven. I told my sister there are 10,000,000 empty rural homes built of Hinoki (my attempt naming the white cedar native to Japan) and a tiny birth rate and Gen Z in high rise 10 tatami apartments inner city. Its own ecosystem for human support. A person living there unlikely to know more than 500 meters from his street level building entry place. Exploration is beyond that space. And of course, by high speed mechanized transportation but a few minutes
away.
An illiterate WWII vet, white, from N.C., who was a laborer on a job where I was also working at age 15, , told me when you are in a hole and not finding what is supposed to be there, first quit digging and then go ask someone in charge what to do next. PhDs don’t give that degree of good advice today. Apparently the USFS just keeps on planning and planning. Eating up the money to pay for materials and labor.
And it is never enough. Quit digging. Go to Sec. Ag and ask what to do? She should go to POTUS, and explain. He should gather the House and Senate leadership and tell them what they need is not possible unless they budget for it. 50 or more urban Democrats in NY, CA, IL, NJ, SF etc will always get it wrong. Live with it. We who no longer like, or depend upon, their wisdom wish them well with the conundrums of their own creation. Enough unfilled holes will someday trap a mammoth or an urban member of Congress. Most will fill with water. Nurture mosquitos. Blind eyes and deaf ears might be blessed with un-intended plunges into holes of their own creation, giving credence to some form of Karma. and a lot of itches to scratch.
Nope, I don’t buy it; I was doing some backgrounding on FS employees last week and here is what I found. 1949 – 7,484 employees, 1979 – 21,993, 1990 – 32,375, 2000 – 24,605, 2002 (National Fire Plan hires) – 30,000, 2010 – 42, 350 ( an anomaly but most of these numbers came from official FS reports), 2020 – 36,920, September 2024 – 39,284.
So what does this mean? Here are my thoughts; ASC has, and is a dismal failure that’s causing time away from tasks to do the self-biz ops function! HR hires, discipline and business functions are endless holes for stuffing people who contribute little. DEI? Meh, should not be an issue if the candidates are vetted and truly ready to do their job. I’ve personally seen HR/leadership trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, causing mountains of work to try and salvage reputations, or implementing the “who you know” axiom.
Probably the biggest factor is having everyone glued to the one-eyed monster (computer) to “check their emails” all day long, or shopping online…I forgot the program that’s used to monitor where employees were looking on the internet but I’ve forgot that acronym…. I’ve had employees circa 2012, who could not read or write, taking half a day to fill out their time (paycheck)! They were salt of the earth employees but their circumstances were such ….crap happens.
What do all these people do? Why do we need 8 to 18,000 more folk to do less? Unfortunately, the FS has become the butt of many jokes and stories, circulating in industry, and worse yet – the general public! 500 million, 750 million $ overspent? Same accountability as wayward Rx burns wiping out neighborhoods and private property….. Jees…….
I agree with you on ASC being a dismal failure. There is all kinds of work being shifted onto field employees that we never used to have to do – lots of burden shift of administrative types of work onto field employees. Very few people at ASC understand what the FS does – they are all about process. When those folks used to work on a district, they understood what was important. Now that link no longer exists. And they think that everyone needs to do more process…it is tough as a supervisor to try to push back on the burden shift and the increase in process.
Can you imagine; a burdening failure that has celebrated its 25 years of ineptness – if that’s a word? Talk about the elephant in the room, more like an aircraft carrier! I’d guess all that centralization costs effectiveness in the range of 25-35% of time on tasks. Add to that, the so called “collateral duties” requirement and no wonder the Agency had to add 15,000 folk. It was well known at the time of transition, that some of the best and brightest in the HR realm told the FS to pound sand! What folks would not give to have an HR staffer just down the hall in Supervisors offices across the country…..
I have a good friend who always told me “they’ll (FS WO) continue to throw money at ASC until it eventually works, or they run out of money”. What a disgrace!
Jim, it’s a mystery to me how a unit can have so many problems for so long and never be fixed. I’ve probably told the story of when Dan Dallas was a new supe, he wasn’t getting paid and our RF Rick Cables looked down the road from our RO at the nearby BLM HR folks and wondered if we could do a deal to work through them instead. Wouldn’t it have made sense somewhere along the lines to have some kind of formal comparison (both federal, both multiple-use agencies) of the two units with recommendations to fix ASC?
As to the HR folks leaving… many of them were female and local, which had associated impacts on unit diversity and economic impacts.
In my work in the RO, the HR, employee relations, and civil rights folks got me through many hairy experiences with my employees and supervisors.
Absolutely Sharon, an “ A-76” was supposedly done but the arrogance of ASC put the kibosh to any real improvements. When I went to the Ochoco, my life and health insurance was lost in the transition along the way. It took Gene Cyrus (HR) four months to get it back! Having him in the SO was certainly a blessing – good guy too.
You are correct on the local HR folks being more diverse and actually connected to the community they serve! What a waste of talent. I’ve told the story before about a Chief being let go due to shenanigans over an ASC early development staffer. Funny thing is, I can no longer find the investigation on the Net; I did find one almost as telling.
I was off by five years on ASC, it’s only the 20th anniversary of the complete build out.
However, I’m hearing and seeing shortages of field employees and especially firefighters on a nationwide basis. I know of some RD’s that are woefully understaffed and living the “more with less” motto. I think the reduction in employees was from leaving the back door open and retirees spooked, then bolted for the door…..
I think part of the problem was that a) they tried to get rid of the new 5K hires, probably thinking that the recent hires were less experienced (and sometimes with “diverse” but not necessarily practical backgrounds). But also that was the Admin’s idea more broadly.. removing probationaries. So in a pushback to the Admin, a court case said you can’t do that with probationaries. Which the Admin took to “OK then voluntaries” which lead to encouraging people to voluntarily remove themselves. And those people tended to be longer in the organization, older and more experienced, leaving gaping holes in important places, which may be hard to fill with the skills of some of the protected probationaries. What a mess!
I remember when ASC was getting started and I worked for FS research- the station director said that scientists were hired to do science, not administrative process work and he was going to keep it that way. Sure wish folks in NFS would stand up for their employees that way!
The thing that’s still baffling to me is that we’ve been hearing for the last few months, from the Regional Forester, that the agency is still overstaffed by 1500 – 2000 people for what we can afford, and that’s AFTER all the departures in 2025. I don’t understand how the agency could have been so overstaffed that even after losing something like 10% in 2025 we’re still that many over? IRA/IIJA hiring and fewer retirements than expected just doesn’t explain these numbers. I’ve been scratching my head about this one for months. Also, it’s sounding like we’re going to be able to bring on roughly 2000 1039s this year, so I’m also curious how we can do that when we’re supposedly overstaffed by 2000? Something not adding up…
Just say “Hell No!” to being a Temp. It doesn’t pay well. It doesn’t lead to better jobs. It doesn’t garner any respect. It doesn’t lead to better forest management. It takes away real jobs, with real pay, with real opportunities. It solidifies the idea of peasants, doing the manual labor of the ruling class.
A. I understand. If only we had a record through time of ft perm, different perm part time and temps, broken out by fire or not fire, and by individual forest, RO and the WO.. over time, and welll, maybe we could develop a format and ask the FS for the info.