One of the ongoing mysteries about the Forest Service during the Biden Administration is “how exactly did it happen that they overspent such that they were $740 mill in the hole?”It seems to me that our professional reporter friends were remarkably incurious about how it all went down. Here we were also curious about “why did they hire 6K new folks on soft money?” and “why did they send so many bucks to traditional partner NGOs and also and non-experienced groups (according to the Retiree Info Network, at the behest of one Representative Clyburn) if they were going to end up short?” Was it a serious of choices by politicals, or was there some Department of War-like budget malfunction that still might be a problem today?
There are two basic questions that come to mind. First, how did it happen? What decisions were made and why? The second is what the Biden Administration folks were planning to do about it. Certainly enough FOIAing might have shed some light.
Conveniently, though, we did get a bit of new insight yesterday on question 2 when the Deputy Undersecretary posted this on X.
Today, I sent a response letter to the Senate regarding the reorganization of @forestservice . Sometimes, the truth hurts. The Biden Administration overhired—by thousands—knowing the funding stream was temporary. And on January 17, 2025, Secretary Vilsack received approval to separate 7,000 Forest Service employees. At one point, the Biden USDA even contemplated selling Federal lands to solve their spending problem! They generated hundreds of pages of memoranda, emails, and presentations on how to fix a problem THEY created with their irresponsible spending, prioritization of DEI, and gimmicks for their Democrat friends.
Vaden also attached four images, one is above and the rest below. Marc Heller of E&E News covered this and checked in former Secretary Vilsack and the new FSEEE Director, Kevin Hood.
“Dep. Sec Stephen Vaden is correct in that the Biden Administration overhired while Covid funding was rampant,” Hood said in an email Monday. “The current FS reorganization was triggered by the prior administration in large part to remedy this over budget situation, and then this administration came aboard and made the reorganization part of their own government downsizing effort.” Hood added, “There was definitely a need to reconcile the existing agency structure with the post-Covid congressional budget — some sort of reorganization was coming.”
Maybe I’m missing something, but I thought that the FS ramped up with IRA and IIJA bucks, putatively for climate and infrastructure, respectively. I wonder how Covid fits?
Vilsack on Monday pushed back on Vaden’s assertions, telling POLITICO’s E&E News that the deputy secretary had taken some information out of context, particularly on the fate of public lands.
Vilsack, who’s now CEO of the charitable organization World Food Prize, said he’d spoken internally to USDA staff about how to persuade Congress to boost funding for forest management, such as thinning forests to remove potential fuel for wildfires. The pitch to lawmakers could be, “If you’re not going to invest in it, you shouldn’t have it,” Vilsack recalled telling staff. “I said it to our internal team,” he said, “I thought it was time for us to put the issue on the table.”
If we go back to what Chief Randy Moore said at the Retiree Reunion last year, I quoted a bunch of what he said in this post and here’s what seems to fit with what Vilsack told Heller:
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 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.
Chief Moore says later that because the FS couldn’t really stop hiring once it got going, they actually hired 5300. Anyway, the common thread is that “Congress isn’t giving the FS enough money, despite ginormous chunks of IRA and IIJA, so.. let’s hire 5K ish people and play budget chicken with Congress?” It still doesn’t add up.
To some of us, it remained mysterious exactly what the Biden Admin planned to do (other than get rid of temps for 2025) to solve the problem., but apparently Vaden found the plans, to reduce staff and reorganize.
On the Forest Service staffing issue, the agency’s budget troubles were widely reported in 2024, when then-Chief Randy Moore announced that seasonal hiring would be suspended to help fill a gap of as much as $750 million. The Forest Service’s troubles were tied to legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which the service used to hire staff to support increased forest work. The Inflation Reduction Act, directed $5 billion to the Forest Service for various projects, many with a focus on climate change and ecosystem recovery.
Vilsack said Monday that those jobs were always considered temporary, although officials hoped some people could stay on as permanent employees left through attrition. “This was well thought-out,” Vilsack said. “When we hired those people, we had the resources because Congress provided them.”
They were always considered to be temporary, although they were permanent hires? The other odd thing about Vilsack’s statement here is that one reason there was such a budget problem was that the Department had asked the FS to use House marks at the time to plan the budget, because the budget bill hadn’t been passed. Whereas generally agencies plan based on last year’s final budget. So they asked the FS to use an intentionally smaller budget than realistic for planning. I would have asked Vilsack “if it was so “well thought-out” then.. what happened? Then why did they ask for the approval to separate 7K employees? And why is the document Vaden posted dated 1/17/2025- after the election but right before inauguration, what exactly was the point? For me, Vaden’s paperwork revelations raise more questions and the Vilsack story still doesn’t add up. Ultimately, we’ll find out, even if we have to wait for some career fed to retire and tell all.
Sorry, all, these images Vaden tweeted are fairly small. I asked him for copies of his trove of info, so we’ll see.
Oh come on Sharon, there is no Dept of War. Dept of Defense was established in statute! And news flash, it is still the Gulf of Mexico.
But other than that it is interesting how the FS created the mess.
Congress was “Awash” in money, enough to pay $5.45 BILLION to victims of HermitsPeak/Calf Canyon escaped prescribed set firesApril 2022, in New Mexico’s Sante Fe NF. Speaker Pelosi presented the bill to do that to the appropriations committee with “do pass” instructions . Senate President did the same. The bill was attached to the FY 2022 Dept of Defense “emergency aid to Ukraine appropriations bill. Biden signed it (or someone told “Otto Penn” to in Joe’s name) on Sept 30, 2022. $3.45 billion (the $1.5 billion for non economic damages came from a U.S. District Court for New Mexico to pay people inconvenienced by smoke. Former NM. Congresswoman Deb Haaland was Interior Secretary. Majority rules pork slathered over New Mexico.
FEMA head Sec of Homeland Security Majorca’s was tasked by Congress to identify victims and losses, and pay out the money. It is not known if there were any lost “Learing Centers” or Autism Day Care grifts but if there were, who would surprised? And nobody has asked if “The Tribes” got the $2.0 Billion promised at the introduction of the emergency aid to Ukraine appropriations bill. Bait and switch. Speaker Pelosi must have learned that from San Francisco fisher families in her district.