NFFE-Backed Temporary Employment Reform Legislation Approved by Senate Committee
There may come a time when temporary employees actually have a career ladder!
“Thousands of wildland firefighters and other dedicated seasonal workers have been stuck for too long in dead-end jobs, not because of a lack of merit on their parts, but because of flawed regulations that do not recognize their years of service,” said Mark Davis, Vice President of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and past President of the NFFE Forest Service Council. “Many others leave and take their years of experience with them because of blocked career paths. After years of work, I’m optimistic that we are about to fix that.”
Of course, this is most directed towards firefighters, as so many timber temps have been jettisoned or have found “other employment”. Most temps would say that there is plenty of work to do, outside of their 1039 appointments but, that issue is not being addressed. The higher-ups choose to continue to embrace the 1039 appointments, thinking that policy is “good enough for Government work”. There really is nothing stopping the Forest Service from changing their policies on 1039 appointments. Truthfully, I’d like to see the temporary appointments scaled back to 800 hours, essentially forcing the Forest Service and other Agencies to hire more 13/13 permanent positions. Yep, make it too costly and “inconvenient” for them to continue using temps to do work that is needed, each and every year. It’s up to OPM to impose more rules, to stop the abuse of the temporary hiring authority.
Things seem a little quiet out there, so here is my response to Sharon’s asking what I think about “disappearing districts” on June 12. The problem I see with the approach of consolidating districts (and national forests) is that is an ad hoc and opportunistic response, and I haven’t seen much of an effort at long-term strategic planning for what the current and future agency should look like.
I think there are some good arguments for maintaining a local ‘face’ of the Forest Service responsible for implementing policies and programs. I think that could be done with many staff specialists located elsewhere and in different places. Something close to a “one person ranger district” might make sense again.
On the other hand, what purpose do national forest administrative units serve? There is a need for someone at a higher level and with a broader view to develop policies and programs. But is there really a need for a hundred-and-how-many different sets of policies? There is a historic and legislative basis for national forest boundaries, but I think that the decentralization of authority that has been tied to that works hard against the need to reduce government costs (as well as creating artificial cross-jurisdictional management problems).
I think that the Clinton Administration had the right idea that the Forest Service can’t afford four layers of bureaucracy. What would happen if we eliminated national forest supervisor offices? Or if that’s too many districts for a regional office to handle, a more reasonable alternative might be to reorganize based on states or multi-state units (like the BLM, which would make it easier to eventually merge with the BLM). This might even improve working relationships with the states.
26 years after “protected” forests burned, in Yosemite National Park, this is what we now have. Chances are, it will burn again, before conifer trees can become established enough to resist the next inevitable wildfire. You might notice that even the manzanita is having trouble surviving. I doubt that John Muir intended this on public lands. This landscape is probably the future of parts of the Rim Fire, within Yosemite National Park.
As you know, the Senate recently voted to acknowledge that climate change is real. In this story, one senator called it ‘a step forward’ for Republicans. What is most remarkable is that they must have been marching backwards since a much wiser Congress passed the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act in 1974. That law, recognizing “the necessity for a long term perspective in planning and undertaking related national renewable resource programs administered by the Forest Service,” required that the Secretary of Agriculture prepare a periodic renewable resource assessment that must include “an analysis of the rural and urban forestry opportunities to mitigate the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide and reduce the risk of global climate change.” (Draw your own conclusions – here.)
I recently drove over California’s Carson Pass and spent a day in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The weather was good, so I decided to save some money and camp out (!) for two nights (and spending $42 for a night in Reno).
My day at Tahoe began encased in ice, as moist and cold air flowed down the canyon I was camping in. I quickly gathered my frozen gear and stuffed it into the car, making my way to Truckee, and precious morning coffee. From there, I drove down Highway 89, which was very familiar to me, as I used to bicycle, hitch hike and drive it, many times a week, when I lived there, in the 80’s. I continued along the west shore of Lake Tahoe, to reach my first planned stop at Eagle Rock. I had last climbed it in the mid 80’s, and I didn’t know there were now two trails to the top. It was still a bit icy on top but the amazing views sure hadn’t changed. Eagle Rock is a post-glacial volcanic plug, where Blackwood Canyon meets Lake Tahoe.
It appears that the bark beetles haven’t yet arrived in Tahoe yet but, they sure are knocking on the door. I did see bug patches in the southern part of the Eldorado. I heard about one landowner who had 42 bug trees on their property.
I later visited the famous Emerald Bay, and you will see pictures of that in another post.
Along Highway 88, on the Eldorado National Forest, they have this interesting project being worked on, during the winter. I’m guessing that units have to find other ways to spend their timber bucks since litigation has returned diameter limits to the old unreasonable sizes imposed in 2000. It looks like this project is a highway strip, intended to be a quasi-fuelbreak. It does appear that some trees up to 9″ dbh were taken out, for spacing. There are going to be a ton of tiny piles to burn, and the California Air Resources Board has not been kind to the Forest Service in granting waivers on No-Burn days. And, yes, the piles are covered with burnable material that will keep the pile dry, so ignition will be easy.
Can we start calling these things “Big Thin Lies”? It is what people see, and they think all forests look like these cleanly thinned and piled forests.
The picture below was taken in April, within the Rim Fire, and shows how quickly the bearclover returns, after a fire. Even the manzanita and deer brush have difficulty when the bearclover is so entrenched. California Indians knew that old growth pine and bearclover were the best of their available land management outcomes. Those landscapes had great advantages for humans living in the mid elevations of the Sierra Nevada.
Deputy Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor Scott Tangenberg spoke before the Tuolumne County Supervisors this morning, and said the Forest Service has been contacted by several individuals, or groups, that will likely file litigation later this week.
Well, we all knew that was coming and who was opposing the project. While on the Rim Fire tour, and at the SAF meeting, it was funny to see the Forest Service tiptoeing their way around “those who shall not be named”. *smirk*
Natural gas drilling, seen here on top of the Roan Plateau, already encircles the wildlife-rich area. (Zach Ornitz | Special to the Denver Post)
While we’ve been having this discussion about settlements, I’ve been thinking a couple of things and following the newspaper on oil and gas in Colorado.
Let’s say there is way “a” of looking at things. NGOs have policy objectives. Litigating on NEPA, NFMA and ESA is a way of meeting those objectives. NEPA is convenient because you can find holes if you are smart and careful enough. This can delay people or make them give up, or negotiate with you, or if you wait long enough the material can lose its value, or the price of say, coal, can be too low and the project will not happen. NEPA claims seem to be used as a tool to delay or stop projects or make plans more in line with the plaintiff’s views.
Way “b” is articulated by others on this blog better than I, but is along the lines of “the FS does not follow the “rules” and NGO’s make them enforce the rules (related to the environment). Environmental impacts are said to depend on the intensity of impact, the frequency and the area impacted, so I am curious why some NGO’s choose the projects they do to worry about enforcing the rules. For example, hazard tree projects are a yawn in Colorado and a Big Deal in Montana. It doesn’t seem to me to do with the environmental impacts being all that different, nor the quality of the NEPA documents. So there must be a different explanation.
I thought some comparisons with oil and gas in Colorado might be helpful. Here there is some on the federal estate as well as private. There is no doubt about the value of the jobs and the funds given to communities and states.
First, here is a settlement discussed for the Roan Plateau. Now if the BLM has been working on this for all these years (since way before I retired) it seems like they could have done any NEPA that a judge required. Seems more like “A” to me; see my italics as to those “in the room.” Here’s a link to the story.
A proposed settlement that could free up some oil and gas leases within the Roan Plateau study area for drilling and do away with others should not come at the expense of future mineral lease payments to local governments, Gov. John Hickenlooper has pledged.
“The Hickenlooper administration believes a settlement that allows some energy development to proceed while protecting other areas of the Roan Plateau is in the interest of all parties,” Henry Sobanet, director of Hickenlooper’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting, wrote to state Rep. Bob Rankin.
Rankin, R-Carbondale, has been working with the governor’s office on a deal to prevent future federal mineral lease dollars from being withheld from local entities in order to refund about $28 million to Bill Barrett Corp.
The proposed settlement involving Barrett, environmental groups and the federal government has been touted as a potential “win-win” by those involved.
The exception has been local governments, including Garfield County, which have asked that they be held harmless in the deal.
Of particular concern is the state’s practice of withholding future federal mineral lease dollars, including royalties from producing wells, that normally would be distributed to local governments to help pay for impacts from energy development, instead of asking those entities to refund money that already has been paid out.
The deal could end several years of litigation over natural gas drilling on the Roan Plateau northwest of Rifle, where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has reopened the federal environmental impact review that led to leases being issued in 2008.
Under the proposed settlement, Barrett would be reimbursed some of its federal leases in the more pristine areas atop the Roan Plateau.
In exchange, Barrett and other lease holders would be allowed to develop less-controversial leases, including in areas that already have active gas wells.
There is also an issue of oil and gas development and regulations for towns and communities. Recently it looked like Governor Hickenlooper tried unsuccessfully to broker a solution. But what was on the table was litigation and legislation. Now, this is under the state’s jurisdiction, hence the legislation alternative. Here’s the link to one story:
At the statehouse news Monday conference, Hickenlooper and Polis outlined the compromise, which involves four steps.
The governor create the commission to make recommendations to the legislature — by a two-thirds vote.
Hickenlooper had tried for months to broker a legislative compromise, but that effort collapsed in July.
“This may be the template for what happens in the rest of the country,” Hickenlooper said, noting similar conflicts are roiling in Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania. “This is the way we do things in Colorado. We work through our differences and difficulties. Maybe no one is perfectly happy, but it serves all parties.”
Polis said it was “better to address these issue in rule or by legislation, but if that doesn’t work, you’ve got to go to the ballot box.”
Private land.. many people including diverse representatives of the public need to agree. Public land.. NGO’s Barrett, and the feds need to agree.
This is an “image” of space junk.I’m taking a break from posting the Festschrift paper to do some reflection on the topic of how people perceive the environmental situation. It’s interesting to me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that humans have lots of problems to work on and yet some seem to be uniquely pessimistic about the environment (not violence, hunger or disease, bullying, war, etc.) Since I am now in a business that seeks to do away with all bad things, I feel that the gloomy cloud that has settled around our perception of humans and the environment could use some further exploration.
There was an interesting article in New Scientist this week here about changing to a more sustainable future… I hope you can see all of it without a subscription, but below is an excerpt andhereis the essay in Word.
Still, that doesn’t tell us how to get there from here. Again there’s no shortage of ideas. Ecologists, economists and politicians have proposed many initiatives to foster sustainability. Most repurpose tools we are familiar with – international agreements, laws and regulations, taxes and subsidies, plus new technologies. Others are more radical, advocating structural changes to key institutions such as banking and finance, corporations, land and resource ownership, and government. Many individuals, grass-roots groups such as the Transition Network, businesses such as Unilever, universities, cities such as Vancouver, and a few nations, including Iceland and Bhutan, are putting these ideas into practice.
Of course, most of us are not green crusaders. Yet we are already changing our lives, our work patterns and what we consume in ways that suggest the drive for sustainability may be pushing at an open door. For a start, we are driving less. The annual distance travelled by UK car and van drivers fell by 7 per cent between 1995 and 2012. Germany, Australia, Japan and even the US all report the same trend. Why is that? Cost is a factor: young people are learning to drive later, put off by the price. We are also driving less to see friends and making fewer trips to the shops and to work by car – the rise in urban living, social media, online shopping and digital homeworking are seeing to that.
Driving less, and walking and cycling more are seen as positive lifestyle choices these days and are increasingly a feature of city living. Dense urban populations make recycling and other resource use more efficient, too. That doesn’t mean a return to slums. If building materials can be produced sustainably and houses can be designed to be carbon-neutral, people can still live in ample and comfortable homes, says Mary Ritter, head of the European Union’s climate innovation centre Climate KIC.
Porritt believes that the biggest changes will come in response to large popular movements galvanised by droughts, floods, famines and other crises. “Suddenly there’s a shock to the system, and re-evaluation kicks in big time,” he says. Yet some changes just happen and we hardly notice, such as putting out the recycling or insulating our lofts.
One of the most important is that we are having fewer children. Today the average woman has 2.43 children, fewer than half as many as 40 years ago. There is big population growth still to come in some places, especially sub-Saharan Africa where there is less access to contraception. But after quadrupling in the 20th century, the world’s population, currently at 7 billion, is unlikely to rise by more than 50 per cent before settling down. So we can think about how we do sustainability with a stable population, rather than one that is continually growing.
Population is only one part of the equation, of course. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, points out that the amount of stuff people use and the resources needed to produce that stuff are the other issues we need to worry about. In the developed world, at least, there is growing evidence that we have reached “peak stuff”. Individuals and society have got richer, and the rate at which we use resources has levelled off. Homes and factories are becoming more energy and water efficient and much of our new technology is smaller and lighter, reducing the amount of materials required to make them. So in many ways, the developed world is already dematerialising. The challenge is breaking the historic link between prosperity and energy and resource use fast enough.
This week I happened to spend a great deal of time organizing my electronic entertainment so this article highlighted some things I noticed… I used to drive around and shop, now I don’t. If RS is closer and has price match with BB, I won’t be driving to BB. Shelves of CDs are now on a jump drive. Shelves of sheet music are also on a jump drive.
But there are a couple of assumptions I would argue with.. 1) “cities are better for the environment and people” and 2) “meat is always worse” for the environment. If indeed transportation becomes based on renewable energy sources, I guess we would be reducing it by living in cities because.. (?) And locally meat may be the only food able to be locally produced due to cold or dryness or both.
That evening I was listening to WNYC (the Jonathan Channel, my favorite radio program) and ran across this:
Turn away from factory farmed meat. Instead of trying to get everyone to become a vegetarian, which is an impossible goal, Martins focuses on improving our food system and getting rid of factory farms. “It’s better to construct an action-based result.” Martins said. “ I believe in creating a solution rather than creating a utopia that will probably never exist.”
It seems like many things are getting better due to people’s awareness and economic drivers. Note the question at the end of the essay is whether the link between prosperity and energy and resource use will be broken “fast enough”. We have moved from worry about the ultimate condition being bad to worrying about the speed at which we approach a positive outcome, isn’t that something to celebrate. It does leave the question “not fast enough” for whom or what?
Here’s me giving my talk at the Festschrift.In this section, I focus on how producing droves of scientists has led to them forming smaller groups, or disciplinary splintering. This has, in turn, led to “reinventing the wheel” plus micro-disciplinary territorial disputes, all of which might be invisible to the naked policy eye. Policy makers, to my mind, must be aware of the sociology of these disputes to really understand what scientific information can contribute, or in some cases, cannot contribute. And I would argue that 15 years after I wrote this paper, we still know little about the environmental effects of genetically engineered organisms, compared to how widely they are dispersed into the environment. Follow the money, as they say, back to the groups who outline “priority research” and panels who decide how the funding is spent. I worked on one research program where bad vibes were given from above for actually including a stakeholder on research panels. Because it did not hold to the sacred NSF model that USDA was trying to emulate at the time, despite Congress’s clear direction for the program (the Fund for Rural America).
When a person in policy or management tries to arrange research developed by the current system into a package relevant to a real world problem, this can leave a somewhat awkward jumble of technologies and strategies as a pool of scientific information. An analogy might be designing a car by contacting a couple of hundred groups and asking them to work on car design. Some might work on door design, others engines. But perhaps no one works on steering or air conditioning. And there’s probably a few who decide that what’s really needed is a train or an airplane and work on that. And it’s no one’s job to ensure that the pieces are all there or that the pieces fit together. Within the research system, there is little to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation as journals, funding agencies and other power structures of research communities tend to be either disciplinary, or from a restrictive subset of disciplines (e.g., ecological economics). This makes the work of taking the discrete nuggets of scientific information and arraying them into a meaningful policy analysis another mix of science, art and intuition.
DIVERGENT SELECTION, INDIRECT SELECTION AND DISCIPLINARY DRIFT
Administrators in research have selected for certain traits in scientists. Certainly it is desirable to measure accomplishments. This has been done for number of papers and grants awarded. However two questions arise. First, are there undesirable indirect effects from this selection? Second, how divergent is this selection from selection in the policy arena, and how would such a divergence influence scientists working with policy makers?
No doubt there are other forces that cause disciplinary fragmentation, but there has been a proliferation of journals and symposia, associations and subdisciplinary communities. This is good for publication records, but difficult to individuals who want to keep up with or synthesize science findings. In terms of worldview, there tends to be some “disciplinary drift” as well.
Each scientific discipline contains the paradox that the more the circumstances are controlled to get accurate data, the less relevant the answer is to the real world. Science used to depend for its legitimacy on designed experiments, which could be replicated and tested. As issues like global climate change come under scrutiny, however, or even evolution, it is recognized that in most cases rerunning the clock is not possible, and even if it were, stochastic forces might lead to a variety of possible outcomes. Therefore, as problems get more complex, science grows less “scientific.” We depend more and more on a given scientific community, rather than reproducibility, to determine what is good science and bad science. But as disciplines splinter and recombine, the scientific communities may be mixing values and science in varying proportions with unquestioned approaches and unstated assumptions and paradigms. Thus in today’s complex world, there may be ultimately no quality control on this science.
In addition, focusing on the production of publications as an organizational target plus disciplinary drift can have the effect of scientists amplifying minor discoveries or reinventing what is commonly known in another discipline. There is also a tendency to make the simple arcane and esoteric so that it appears that the discovery is important. In policy, citizens and their predilections are the key. In research, both citizens and practitioners are often left out of decisions and not the target of communication. This is a major difference between the two worlds.
Scientists can become advocates for technologies they develop, or amplify threats (from someone else’s technology). In this environment, it is difficult for a policy maker to get around the self-serving nature of these debates and get information that is balanced. For example, Jasanoff (1990) cites the Ecological Society of America adopting an influential public position on assessing the risk of releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. According to Jasanoff, this action was prompted in large part by a desire to enhance the organization’s professional standing; significantly it postdates a report from the National Research Council, in which the institutionally more powerful community of molecular biologists and biochemists had articulated somewhat different principles, downplaying ecological consequences. Today, almost nine years later, with substantial sums of research funds invested in the interim, we are no closer to understanding the true environmental risks of GMO’s than we were nine years ago. This is clearly an indictment of the scientific establishment’s ability or desire to look beyond its interests in increased research funding by discipline and develop information useful to the citizens of the U.S.
http://nffe.org/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/105694
