Budget

President’s USDA Budget and R&D: Missing the Forest and the Trees

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I agree with the idea of consolidating duplicative programs, or at least checking to see if they are duplicative.

I have to point out two areas in which I think the Budget write-up is wrong, as well as inconsistent. It is also against the intentions that I think this Admin has.. which is to focus on what we might call “science for the people” or scientific work of practical value, that answers questions that folks in forest management and farmers want to know. In my view, by targeting forumula funds and FSR&D, they are actually short-circuiting opportunities for the public to influence research priorities and design, and in fact, produce practical research. It leaves people further divorced from direct influence over research priorities. It seems to me based on the stated goals of this Admin, it would be better to identify more direct methods of people influencing R&D portfolios rather than getting rid of the ones that are working.

This comes from my experience at NIFA and with the Fund for Rural America, a research, education and extension program that Congress funded in the hope that it would generate some useful information. The utility of USG research has been a long-standing concern of theirs.

1. NIFA

The Budget eliminates wasteful, woke programming in NIFA, such as activities related to climate change, renewable energy, and promoting DEI in education that were prioritized under the Biden Administration.

My only thought is that if certain Admins prioritize things, then other Admins can de-prioritize them. I’d prefer a system that focuses on non-partisanized topics, but that’s just me.

In addition, the Budget reduces funding for formula grants because they generally do not achieve the same results as competitive programs.< Instead, the Budget focuses on the President’s goal of advancing the competitiveness of American agriculture through the merit-based Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. The Budget protects funding to youth and K-12 programs such as 4-H clubs, tribal colleges, and universities. This investment would help prepare future generations of farmers. It also ensures HBCUs are amply funded.

What does the bolded piece even mean? I remember when employees came over from NSF to tell us at NIFA that formula funds were old hat, and the cool new way of doing business was better.bringing combos of scientists in to decide funding. It seemed to me one of those beliefs which needed to be taken on faith, as I never saw a formal analysis. Having seen both sides, I think it depends on how each is administered, and of course, what you think are the appropriate results (who interprets “better”?). Users are not allowed on the panels, and there was no separate way for us to hear from them what issues were important to work on. Individuals or groups decide and submit proposals.

There can be good formula and bad formula administration. Before formula funds were diverted into competitive grants (and there was a sizeable chunk of funding), some schools used to have formal groups of users advising them on issues that they thought needed research. So if a state was beleaguered by some pest, for example, they didn’t have to enter a US wide competition (where scientists alone rated proposals) to get grant funds. Deans would figure out a way to get it done with the research and extension capacity available. Of course, that was at its best- it could also be a slush fund for the Dean to award to his or her favorites, or to use to recruit scientists, or I’m sure there were other uses.

On the other hand, competitive grants can be more scientist generated.. what scientists think is useful. And there can be quite a gap between what scientists think is useful compared to what forest managers or farmers think is useful. For example, Chelsea Pennick is trying to round up funds to research “why previous biomass efforts haven’t been successful” and Frank Carroll has questions about managed fire, to whom does he take them? At least in the old days, you could sit down with a human being (Dean or substitute) and make your case.

As I looked into this, I noted that some odd things about how forests are included, for example in the NAREEEAB board (it’s interesting that social scientists and economists don’t count as “academic or research societies”, they instead count as “industry, consumer or rural interests.” And there is one position out of 15 for a forest person. Also interesting is that the NAREEEAB has subcommittees, apparently at the behest of Congress. This sounds like a great idea..but I don’t know how it has worked out.

SCC studies the scope and effectiveness of research, extension and economics programs affecting the specialty crop industry. It reports its research findings and makes recommendations for improving these programs, with the goal of making U.S. specialty crop production more efficient, productive and profitable.

But wouldn’t it make more sense to study such things for forest research across agencies (perhaps there can’t be an interagency FACA committee?). Within the USDA, there is the Forestry Research Advisory Committee or FRAC. However, on the FRAC webpage I didn’t see anything recent. This could be a broken link problem.. hard to tell.

2. Other Intramural USDA (ARS, NASS and ERS)

It’s interesting that giving money to land-grants to decide is bad (formula funds) but giving it intramurally via ARS is fine. Which is not to criticize ARS nor FS intramural. And looking back, I wonder if part of the formula funding critiques were really about other universities getting access to USDA funds.

The Administration is committed to prioritizing research that supports American agriculture. However, many of the current ARS facilities are in disrepair. The Budget reduces funding for research sites across the Nation that have exceeded their ideal lifespan and reduces funding for research projects that are not of the highest national priority. The Budget also makes small reductions to the Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service to stop climate-politicized additional scopes added by the Biden Administration while ensuring all critical analysis and data collection continues.

I wonder who is deciding which research is of “the highest priority”? It seems to me that university administrators and faculty have to thread the needle of “what the scientific community thinks is currently cool to study” “what farmers and land managers in the State need” and “what is fundable by the current mix of programs among federal agencies.” I don’t envy them.

3. Intramural Forest Service (Forest Service R&D)

The President has pledged to manage national forests for their intended purpose of producing timber. The Budget reduces funding for the Forest and Rangeland Research program because it is out of step with the practical needs of forest management for timber production, but maintains funding for Forest Inventory and Analysis, a longstanding census of forest resources and conditions.

You’ve gotta be kidding! For some of us, getting an FS researcher interested is our only hope. How can the Admin say that the ARS is doing useful work and the FS is not? It’s just bizarre. I wonder if anyone actually believes that. Of course, some projects are more useful, in that sense, than others. But I’m sure that’s equally true of competitive grants funded by NIFA and intramural research at ARS.

Finally, we have to leave USDA because there is some overlap between what USGS does and what FS R&D does.
4. USGS

USGS provides science information on natural hazards, ecosystems, water, energy and mineral resources, and mapping of Earth’s features. The Budget eliminates programs that provide grants to universities, duplicate other Federal research programs and focus on social agendas (e.g., climate change) to instead focus on achieving dominance in energy and critical minerals.

Now some of us remember when agencies like BLM lost their R&D arms with the combo into USGS. Which meant again, that there is no institutional link between what managers feel they need and getting research done. At the time, it was kind of the same with Forest Health folks and FS R&D. “Your problems are too practical for us.” “OK, we’ll do the work ourselves.” “You can’t because that’s research and you are not funded to do research.”

My broader point is that if, as I think, some USGS research overlaps with FSR&D, then it won’t anymore if FS R&D is gone.

Of course, NSF is also in the mix. Check out this project at Univ of Montana. It sounds good (although, in this abstract, kind of nebulous), but you could see the FS funding it.

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on precision forestry and rangeland management. It will be a new economic driver in the Northern Rockies/Northern Plains region by applying technology, tools, and data to the emerging field of precision forestry and rangeland management. This project, led by the University of Montana, brings together researchers and partners from the Plains University Innovation Alliance, the Montana Wood Products Association, the Nature Conservancy, the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in addition to state Climate Offices, economic and workforce offices in the Montana Governor’s Office, and venture capital firms. Through this innovative partnership between public institutions, Tribal Community Universities, and private industry, the team will create a dynamic economic development ecosystem and an expert knowledge base that will address critical issues related to land management with national and global relevance. As a key aspect of the effort, the Development Award will demonstrate the application of recent and emerging technologies to manage the land to maximize the economic benefit of federal, Tribal, and private forests and rangelands while minimizing ecological impacts such as fire, drought, and flood. Technologies such as lidar, autonomous aerial systems, satellite imagery, sensor arrays, and predictive modeling can increase forest and rangeland production by improving the available data for use by land managers. This will enable more precise policy and decision-making and improve environmental risk mitigation.

For Sale – half million acres of federal lands

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La Citta Vita, Flickr

The ball is rolling on selling federal lands for housing with the creation of a task force that would identify federal land that would be suitable for housing.  The task force would be run by the Departments of the Interior and Housing and Urban Development.

“The aim of Trump’s new task force is to identify the land parcels suitable for building. It will then transfer or lease them out to public-housing authorities, nonprofits or local governments to develop homes.  The land might occasionally be sold to private developers, according to a HUD representative.  The federal agencies would determine that on a “case-by-case basis” in coordination with the local government.”

Really?  One might suspect this money-grubbing Administration would sell the most valuable land and to the highest bidder.  Especially if this is going to be used to finance its sovereign wealth fund.

No mention here of whether the Forest Service or national forest lands would be involved – it could be limited to lands not otherwise “designated,” including national forests.  The other interesting thing is this:

“Developing even 512,000 acres of the Bureau of Land Management’s lots could yield between three million and four million new homes across western states such as Nevada, Utah, California and Arizona, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., center-right think tank.”

It’s hard to picture where those acres would not be, given that …

“Only a small portion of U.S. government-owned land is near cities with housing shortages. About 47 million acres, or 7.3% of all federal land, falls within metropolitan areas that need more homes, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of government land maps and housing-shortage data from the National Association of Realtors.

In a few cases, local housing shortages overlap with an abundance of federal land in the area, such as Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.  This policy could make a big difference for those housing markets.”

But what about Seattle, Portland, Spokane and … Missoula.  The prices in many northwestern national forest-adjacent cities (and towns) indicate a housing shortage in these places.  This article says the Secretaries want “affordable” housing, but it’s hard to imagine what kind of constraints that would put on the process – anywhere that has a housing shortage has an affordable housing shortage, and I can’t imagine this federal government adding requirements to local real estate deals to ensure housing affordability.  Given the lack of guardrails being recognized by this Administration, I can  imagine that any community that is interested could be coming into some new real estate.

“HUD will pinpoint where housing needs are most pressing,” and Interior “will identify locations that can support homes while carefully considering environmental impact and land-use restrictions,” the agencies’ secretaries wrote in the Journal’s opinion piece.

So they say.  Will they consider the effects on national forest management of expanding the WUI?  Land management plans should have identified lands suitable for disposal (or maybe a process for doing that) – would this matter?  (Maybe someone with a WSJ subscription can pry out some more details about what these Secretaries have in mind.)

‘Litany of problems’ awaits Forest Service leaders in 2025: E&E News

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There’s much of interest in this story.  Here are two new things I don’t think we’ve discussed before.

The biggest discrepancy was over money spent on salary and other overhead expenses in state and private forestry accounts. The USDA’s inspector general in August reported that the Forest Service exceeded a $9.16 million annual limitation on such spending by as much as $37 million, or about three times as much as was allowed.

Forest Service officials disagreed with the inspector general’s interpretation and with auditors’ recommendation to implement new accounting controls.

Then, in December, the Office of Inspector General questioned $13.2 million in Forest Service spending in Region 6 — the Pacific Northwest — on roads and trails with funding from the infrastructure law. The agency couldn’t verify that it spent the money on projects in line with the law’s requirements, the OIG said. Auditors recommended the agency recover as much as $632,427 that appeared to be spent on work that wasn’t eligible for Infrastructure Act funding.

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But we have to acknowledge the big black knowledge hole here.  We can’t blame Randy for shoveling out FS bucks to Department-favored NGOs which is part of the budget crisis.  I just think we need to be careful about what we blame on career folks and what on Admins. Because there might be tendency in some circles to blame all bad things during D admins on the agencies, and all bad things in R admins on the Admin, or the Prez himself.  What would be a career person’s rationale for obligating bucks to favored NGOs so the bucks intentionally couldn’t be “clawed back” or reallocated by Congress? Because a career person could easily explain “the bucks went away and so did our outputs.” No, something else was afoot.   Like outsourcing government work without competition to favored groups.  What folks might call “corruption” if the shoe were on the other foot.  Anyway, here’s the rest of the article.

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Forest Service Chief Randy Moore hasn’t revealed his plans, but a new agency head would face tight budgets, reduced hiring and ongoing challenges.

GREENWIRE | The Forest Service enters the new year with an array of headaches: worsening wildfires, destructive storm damage to Southeast forests and a budget gap so deep that the agency’s stopped hiring seasonal workers to help maintain its 193 million acres of forest.

And if history is a guide, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore will soon hand off those challenges to a successor.

As the second Trump administration prepares to sweep in later this month, the Forest Service faces a transition as well. Groups and lobbyists who follow the agency say the top tasks include fixing the agency’s finances, righting some bureaucratic stumbles and managing forests for wildfire risks. Some former Forest Service employees, as well as lawmakers, suggest a reorganization may be in order.

“The reality is, things aren’t going swimmingly,” said a representative for an outside group that works regularly with the Forest Service, requesting anonymity to speak openly about the agency’s struggles. “It’s a litany of problems.”

Dave Mertz, a retired Forest Service natural resources employee in the Black Hills National Forest who’s been critical of the agency’s fiscal management, laid the troubles at Moore’s feet.

“I guess I feel that Randy Moore has not done well,” Mertz said, adding, “It’s certainly not all his fault, but he’s the captain of the ship.”

Looking forward, Mertz said, the Forest Service “desperately needs some strong leadership and from someone that knows the agency.”

Others give Moore some slack, noting that he inherited an agency that wasn’t fully staffed to handle the unprecedented rush of billions of dollars in new appropriations from Congress.

“That’s what fell in his lap,” said Steve Ellis, chairman of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees and a former deputy director at the Bureau of Land Management, who cautioned against sweeping changes at the agency. “You need to look at the picture of the whole thing.”

Moore hasn’t publicly stated his intentions, and a Forest Service spokesperson declined to speculate on his plans. But outside groups said Moore, a career Forest Service employee, was already drawn away from potential retirement as a regional forester to take the top job early in the Biden administration.

Forest Service chiefs — who aren’t political appointees — have left the position just months into new administrations since at least the Clinton administration, more than two decades ago.

In a post on the Forest Service website, Moore said he’s looking forward to an all-employee call in the new year — a normal annual practice that might shed light on his direction — but such a call hasn’t been scheduled, said an agency spokesperson, Alan Abernethy.

Moore said in the post, “As always, this year was filled to the brim with achievements, all made possible by the work you’ve accomplished in conjunction with our partners and communities,” citing work from reforestation to improving firefighter pay and benefits and tackling wildfire risks.

A career or political appointment?

A Forest Service chief would typically be named after a new Agriculture undersecretary for natural resources and environment is nominated; the undersecretary slot wouldn’t be filled until a new secretary is confirmed by the Senate.

Brooke Rollins, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Agriculture secretary, hasn’t run into any obstacles on Capitol Hill. For the undersecretary’s position — which oversees the Forest Service — several outside groups have written to the Trump transition team and Rollins endorsing Thomas Schultz, chief of staff and vice president of resources and government affairs for the Idaho Forest Group, a wood products company.

Schultz was formerly director of the Idaho Department of Lands and worked for 14 years at the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

For years, the Forest Service chief has been a career employee for the agency. Administrations often tap regional foresters like Moore, who ran agency operations in California for years ahead of the promotion. But there’s no guarantee the tradition will hold; outside groups said the ranks of regional foresters are thinner on experience than in the past, and the Trump team is anything but traditional in filling leadership roles.

In the Senate, incoming Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) has called for ditching past practice entirely and making the job a political appointment subject to Senate confirmation. There’s been no indication his recent introduction of a bill to do that will gain traction this year, however.

A discussion of Lee’s proposal on the forest policy blog “The Smokey Wire” started with the headline “The Worst Idea Ever?”

The blog, popular with former Forest Service employees, has also hosted recent discussions about reorganizing the Forest Service’s leadership structure and possibly consolidating some of the agency’s nine regional offices (Alaska is Region 10, but there there is no Region 7, which was eliminated in the 1960s).

Ellis said a wholesale restructuring would be too disruptive and costly, and probably not fix the problems it’s meant to address.

“The question you’ve got to ask is, ‘What’s broke?’” Ellis said. “When employees hear ‘reorganize,’ they want to duck and cover.”

Budget gaps and criticism over spending

Whoever leads the agency will immediately confront tight budgets and criticism that the Forest Service fumbled money from the Biden administration’s big spending packages: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Officials have scrambled to plug a budget gap estimated at $750 million, mainly through reduced hiring. That includes suspending hiring of non-fire-related seasonal and temporary workers, whose duties include maintaining national forests — an area that’s been stuck in a backlog for years.

Moore has attributed some of the trouble to mandatory cost-of-living increases for employees, although other federal agencies have absorbed those costs without such dire outcomes.

The agency’s use of Infrastructure Act funds has faced scrutiny, too, that could carry over into Forest Service practices in the new administration.

The biggest discrepancy was over money spent on salary and other overhead expenses in state and private forestry accounts. The USDA’s inspector general in August reported that the Forest Service exceeded a $9.16 million annual limitation on such spending by as much as $37 million, or about three times as much as was allowed.

Forest Service officials disagreed with the inspector general’s interpretation and with auditors’ recommendation to implement new accounting controls.

Then, in December, the Office of Inspector General questioned $13.2 million in Forest Service spending in Region 6 — the Pacific Northwest — on roads and trails with funding from the infrastructure law. The agency couldn’t verify that it spent the money on projects in line with the law’s requirements, the OIG said. Auditors recommended the agency recover as much as $632,427 that appeared to be spent on work that wasn’t eligible for Infrastructure Act funding.

This year, the Forest Service will begin to direct billions of dollars — recently appropriated by Congress — toward Southeast forests damaged by storms. The biggest hit was to the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina, where Tropical Storm Helene in September brought catastrophic flooding that will take years to recover from.

The Forest Service, for its part, pointed to accomplishments during Moore’s term.

“Chief Moore and his team led the agency through a complex and challenging year that resulted in the agency making substantial contributions towards USDA’s top priorities,” said Forest Service spokesperson Wade Muehlhof in a statement.

Those priorities include reducing threats of catastrophic wildfires in high-risk firesheds, improved health and resiliency of forests, providing the nation with timber and wood products, and working toward better wildland firefighter pay and benefits, Muehlhof said.

Under Moore’s leadership, the Forest Service exceeded its acreage goals for forest treatments — such as thinning and prescribed fire — to reduce potential fuel for wildfire. The agency sold 2.88 billion board-feet of timber in the most recent year, Muehlhof said, although questions linger about how trees cut for firewood should be counted in such statistics.

Ellis said Moore’s long Forest Service resume before he came into the job should set an example for the selection of a new chief, whenever that happens.

“The Forest Service, they’ve got a really complex mission, and you’ve got to have someone who’s been around,” Ellis said.

Direct Contracting Bad, Contracting by Grantees Good?: E&E News Story

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The headline of this E&E News story is “Trump downsizing may speed Forest Service outsourcing”.  Now, if our source is correct, and it’s really a $1 bill deficit achieved under the Biden Admin, is it too early to be blaming Trump? I’ve heard of pre-bunking, but is this pre-blaming?

Already struggling to close a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog on lands it manages, the Forest Service may have to rely more on private donors and contractors to care for the national forest system under the second Trump administration, people who work with the agency say.

Congress created the NFF in the early 1990s to provide a way for nonfederal partners such as corporations to support work on national forests. It also receives direct funding from the Forest Service and saw a big boost from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Since 2020, the NFF has received $587 million in grants, contracts and related funds from the Department of Agriculture for tree planting and various conservation work. The organization in turn contracts with other groups such as Conservation Legacy for work on the ground.

Interesting that the maintenance backlog is mentioned, but not the self or political-generated(we don’t know) financial crisis.  And to paraphrase the old quote (attributed to Everett Dirksen but apparently printed in the NY Times in 1938).. “half a billion here, half a billion there, pretty soon it begins to add up to real money.”

My view on this is that  “both things are true”; partners do useful work that is helpful (yay!, thank you!), AND we can question whether this is the most effective tool for getting it done.. versus hiring people, and contracting directly. Especially when there is no match requirement.

If the short-term problem is not enough Contracting Officers and an atrociously inept government-wide hiring system, there are a variety of different solutions that could be imagined. If hiring and contracting requirements are necessary for good government, why should we allow grantees to effectively evade them? Maybe all the requirements the FS has aren’t necessary and some are ideas that sound great on paper but aren’t working in practice.  Thinking that “bad” contractors need to be watched carefully and “good” partners hardly need to be watched at all might lead us into accountability issues, leading to Congress not wanting to give the FS more bucks..and a funding death spiral.

Big corporate donors to the NFF in 2023 included Polaris Industries and Tellurian, each of which contributed $1 million or more, according to the foundation’s 2023 annual report.

Other corporate supporters included the recreational vehicle maker Airstream, REI Co-Op, Verizon and Exxon Mobil.

Government support still outpaced such contributions, with the organization reporting $30 million in government grants and contracts, compared to slightly more than $20 million in contributions and pledges. Together, the funding helped the NFF issue 311 grants or contracts for work on 3,114 miles of national forest system trails, among many other jobs. One of those recipients is Conservation Legacy, based in Durango, Colorado, where President Amy Sovocool told POLITICO’s E&E News the organization performs almost any task in the forest other than fighting wildfires.

(my bold)  Inquiring minds might ask, “why didn’t the FS fund Conservation Legacy directly?”. Is there 10% overhead for each organization? So maybe 20% total?

Advocacy and lobbying groups such as the Nature Conservancy, the National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited have seen their roles expand, too, through ongoing arrangements with the Forest Service to thin forests, conduct prescribed burns and harvest timber.
The NWTF has a 20-year master stewardship agreement signed with the Forest Service in 2022 and has been among the leading purchasers of timber from national forests.

There are two things I think are interesting about the discussion below.  The most massive transfer of work outside the Forest Service, with reduced accountability compared to contracting, was the Biden Admin’s Keystone and other agreements (like the Coconino-Southern Baptist Convention project).   Yet the article seems more worried about future Republican-generated contracting.

And Andy Stahl and Jim Furnish weigh in:

But officials’ growing reliance on outside groups for a multitude of jobs is drawing scrutiny from some people close to forest policy.

The new administration, with a Republican congressional majority to back it, may seek to accelerate privatization in national forests, said Andy Stahl, executive director of
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. It’s tempting to support such moves, Stahl said, given the agency’s management challenges in juggling wildfire and other priorities. But there’s also a danger of “mission creep” as the type of work the Forest Service hires out expands.

I’d add “knowledge and expertise loss.”

Groups like the NWTF support forest management targeted at maintaining hunting grounds, which sometimes means clear-cutting to create more favorable habitat. That’s drawn criticism from environmental groups. Relying heavily on contractors “creates these sort of perverse financial incentives for logging,” said Ellen Montgomery, public lands campaign director for Environment America, an environmental group based in Denver.

I think these folks have to pick a lane also.. if you think the NWTF might influence the FS to do things it wouldn’t otherwise do, why not Trout Unlimited?

Others question whether outsourcing actually saves the government money. In 2012, the Center for American Progress published a report suggesting the federal government could save money by bringing some contract employees on as federal hires.

So CAP thinks contracting not good, granting is good.  At least we can infer that CAP thinks that because they seemed to be running the Biden Admin, which encouraged the FS to flood NGOS with BIL and IRA megabucks via grants.  And the grantees generally contract to do the work, so it’s still contracting, though not directly. So CAPs analysis would still fit? Puzzling.

To Furnish, the former deputy chief, the Forest Service lost some accountability in turning over so much work and money from the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act to outside groups. The Inflation Reduction Act alone provided $5 billion to the agency, but the agency now finds itself in the budget squeeze that’s resulted in reduced hiring.

Forest Service officials blame lower-than-expected job attrition, mandatory cost-of- living increases for employees and inflation, among other factors. And they’re predicting more need for help from outside. Furnish said he has a hard time making sense of the situation. “It just kind of boggles my mind to think how things went from a pot of gold to a budget shortfall.”

I agree with Jim on all those points.  Maybe someday, as Rich J. suggested in a comment, we’ll get some kind of story about what happened to cause the budget crisis that makes sense.

 

 

Forest Service Reduces Budget Gap to $50 Mill: Report by The Hotshot Wakeup

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The Hotshot Wakeup is doing a much better job of covering the FS budget crisis than I am so here’s a link to his latest:

Reducing a budget gap of this size by $700M is no easy task, and the Forest Service did it relatively quickly. However, this did not come without tough decisions. In communications with Forest Leadership last week, the FS said, “The Forest Service has made tremendous progress regarding the budget for FY25 and has reduced the $750M salary budget gap down to $50M.”

They continue saying that this was accomplished through personnel actions and permanent employee actions and was greatly assisted with trust funds and contract adjustments.

As we already know, no non-Fire seasonal hires will happen in fiscal year 2025, likely freeing up a tremendous amount of money. There have also been discussions about providing buy-out opportunities for “close to retirement” employees. I don’t know what this would look like, but multiple employees have come forward saying they have received “hypothetical” offers.

It’s not a huge surprise to hear they utilized trust funds, and contract adjustments were likely coming down the pipe anyway. I think this just really forced their hand.

Andy Explains Forest Bonds For You

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I don’t have a brain that works all that well with financial instruments, so I asked our resident forest economist, Andy Stahl, to explain how they work.

For example, here is the story I reached out to him about.

“Blue Forest, a non-profit conservation finance organization working in collaboration with the USDA Forest Service, Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Washington DNR), Chelan County, and Chelan Public Utility District (Chelan PUD), proudly announces the launch of the first Forest Resilience Bond (FRB) in the Evergreen state. The Upper Wenatchee I FRB is dedicated to funding fuel reduction activities on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, alongside crucial aquatics work. The project is financed by mission-driven investors through Blue Forest’s FRB Catalyst Facility.

“Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do and instrumental to the success of our Forest Resilience Bond model,” says Kim Seipp, Blue Forest’s Managing Director of Science and Research. “That is one reason why we, along with our partners, are excited to launch the Upper Wenatchee I FRB. Through this collaborative effort, we are catalyzing the funds necessary to ensure wildfire mitigation work starts now, not in a decade. Together, we are creating a more resilient landscape and safeguarding communities.”

The FRB, co-developed by Blue Forest, the World Resources Institute, USDA Forest Service, and National Forest Foundation, is an innovative financing mechanism that taps into private capital to finance forest restoration projects on public lands to protect communities, ecosystem benefits, and rural livelihoods.

Funding contributions from the USDA Forest Service, Washington DNR, Chelan County, and Chelan PUD will accelerate the pace and scale of wildfire mitigation efforts in these high-risk areas, completing activities that would have otherwise likely faced delays of eight to 10 years.”

It seems like a terrific idea, and reflects what I heard on an NGO call a few months ago  “we can’t reach the pace and scale needed without private financing.”  Not that I agree with it, but it seems to be a popular idea. Which made me reflect on the forest road needs that Mike brought up in Creede, and maybe private financing could be used for that.  But what do the people financing get out of it?  And why don’t the private entities just give the FS the money and write it off on their taxes?

That’s when I called on Andy.  My questions are in italics.

What do the people financing the work get out of it?  And why don’t the private entities just give the FS the money and write it off on their taxes?

Andy:

What you really need is an investment broker, but, I’ll take a shot at it.

First things first, here’s a handy definition of a “bond”:

Bond financing is a type of long-term borrowing that state and local governments frequently use to raise money, primarily for long-lived infrastructure assets. They obtain this money by selling bonds to investors. In exchange, they promise to repay this money, with interest, according to specified schedules. The interest the state has to pay investors on the bonds it issues for public infrastructure is exempt from their federal and state income taxes, which makes the state’s interest cost on the bonds less than it otherwise would be.

Step 1: An “investor” enters into a contract, e.g., a promissory note, with Blue Forest. Under the contract’s terms, the investor gives Blue Forest a lump sum (let’s say $10 million), which Blue Forest agrees to pay back to the investor over a longish period of time, say 10 or 20 years, at an interest rate sufficiently favorable to entice the investor, say 5-10% annually. I suspect the investor has little control over how the money is spent, although Blue Forest uses lots of cool buzz words to get the investor interested. What the investor really cares about is Blue Forest’s liquidity cash flow, i.e., will Blue Forest make its payments, and is the interest rate competitive with what the investor could make elsewhere, taking into account risk. That is, the higher the risk Blue Forest reneges on the deal, the higher the interest rate Blue Forest is going to have to pay to attract investors. I think (but am not sure) that Blue Forest persuaded the California legislature to allow Blue Forest to issue forest bonds with the investor’s interest earnings exempt from state tax, just like a California municipal bond issued by a city.

Step 2: Blue Forest then enters into contracts with “beneficiaries” who agree to borrow money from the Blue Forest Fund to pay for forest restoration work that the beneficiaries would like to see happen. The key attribute required of a beneficiary is having cash-flow sufficient to pay back the Fund’s money plus interest. Blue Forest has persuaded electrical utilities (their cash flow comes from selling power to customers) and insurance companies (cash flow comes from homeowner premium payments) to agree to pay back the Fund the borrowed money. The key point is that it is the beneficiary’s customers who actually pay back the money as the beneficiary passes through the bond costs to its homeowners and power buyers. Do the beneficiary’s customers (homeowners and ratepayers) even know they are borrowing these dollars? I do wonder . . .

Step 3: Blue Forest then contracts with an “implementation coordinator” to do the actual work in the forest. Note that the coordinator can also be a pass-through, e.g., NFF, which then hires the bubbas who do the actual brush removal work.

 

Check out  Blue Forest’s money flow-chart:

Clear as mud?

Sharon: This is helpful indeed. It’s an improvement for beneficiaries rather than paying the work themselves, because… ??? 

The beneficiaries DO pay for the work. They pay for it on an installment plan with interest, just like owning (sic) a house with a mortgage.

However, unlike the homeowner, who actually knows she bought her own home and thought it a good idea to do so, the beneficiaries are consumers of electricity, purchased from a monopoly utility, who probably have no idea that a portion of their monthly payment is being used to thin some forest property that may be in another county. Same for the homeowner whose insurance premiums went up because the insurance company thinks it’s a good idea to thin forests, figuring that might reduce home loss pay-outs. The homeowner likely has no idea, nor any say in the matter, of whether her dollars should be used on fuel treatments far from her house.

The only entities that are sure to benefit are the investors who earn interest for the use of their money, Blue Forest, which skims administrative expenses and can get rich as there is no meaningful oversight of its staff salaries, and the implementation coordinator who gets more overhead rake-off for passing through the dollars to Bubba. Oh, Bubba makes minimum wage (if lucky) to rake the forest.

Perhaps someone has decided that getting the work done sooner is worth the insurance companies and monopolies paying the interest? Are those analyses reviewed by regulators?

Yes, the beneficiary — insurance company, utility, city government or whoever has access to a steady cash flow from consumers/taxpayers — has decided that it’s worth borrowing money now to do the work and paying the associated interest costs. Who oversees that borrowing decision? Not the ratepayers, not the homeowners, and not the taxpayers who are footing the bill. Although insurance companies and utilities are regulated by states, I doubt that state regulators drill down deeply into these types of financing decisions.

A variation on this theme, which cuts out some of the middle players (e.g., Blue Forest), is Flagstaff’s Watershed Protection Project, which is financed by a $10 million municipal bond voted on by Flagstaff residents (74% of voters approved the bond). Flagstaff property taxes pay back the bond. The City of Flagstaff uses the money to pay Bubba to rake the forest.

Note that most (all?) of the forest raking financed by Flagstaff’s property taxpayers is national forest. Analogy . . . imagine your neighbor’s property was piled high in flammable, noxious garbage, which your neighbor refused to clean-up. In desperation, you offer to pay the clean-up costs to lessen the risks to your home. Your neighbor, quite sensibly, agrees.

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Now I don’t want to get all classist again, but in the interests of social and environmental justice, I’m wondering about another approach that would focus on paying people who work in the woods decent wages, and cutting out unnecessary layers of overhead.   Which should be just as true for externals as for the FS (which I agree could do much better and has tried intermittently).  Not to dis the people who work at these outfits, who are great, knowledgeable, and well-meaning, it’s the instrument, not the folks, I wonder about.

 

 

 

 

Update on FS Budget: R-6 Letter and NFFE Letter on New Wildland Firefighter Series

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My plans to attend the SAF Convention have changed, so I will be around posting here after all.

.. in the words of Robert Burns in his poem “To A Mouse”

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

This continues to be true of plans and policies, full of unintended consequences, that’s why the idea of being able to adjust- a la adaptive management- seems so beneficial.  Speaking of adapting, TSW readers sent in a few items of interest on the FS budget.
Below is a letter from Region 6. I’m curious as to what other Regions are doing and saying. Please tell us in comments or email me.
Letter from Region 6:

As we move into FY 2025, it’s important that there is clarity and consistency in our Region for hiring non-fire temporary employees (1039s) and tours for fire and non-fire Permanent Seasonal Employees (PSEs or 18/8s and 13/13s).

As you know, the Forest Service has worked over the last two years to stabilize and strategically grow our workforce. One important action we took nationally was to convert approximately 1,400 non-fire temporary (1039) employees to permanent status. Region 6 held a significant number of those conversions. That change helped provide these employees certainty and better benefits, as well as helping to ensure the agency benefits from a more permanent workforce to accomplish work on behalf of the American people.

We are likely confronting a very budget-limited environment in FY 2025. As leaders, it is our responsibility to plan for the most conservative funding picture. We need to make the best decisions we can now with the information we have. As such, we are planning to use the House Interior Subcommittee funding levels proposed for FY 2025. In addition to focusing on that proposed funding level, we are also navigating the exhaustion of the supplemental funding we received through both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Additionally, over the last two years, we have absorbed two cost of living increases totaling close to 10%. All these factors mean we are contending with less funding overall in FY 2025 and we need to make adjustments and accommodations.

We are navigating the challenges we face by anchoring to our core values as the guide in our decision making while prioritizing the collective financial health of the agency. As such, in Region 6 the following direction is now in place:
Temporary (1039) Employees
• In FY 2025 we will not be hiring (1039) temporary employees outside of fire.
• Temporary, non-fire employees hired and onboarded in FY 2024, with tours that go into FY 2025, will complete their tours.
Permanent Seasonal Employees (e.g., 13/13s and 18/8s)
• For fire (i.e, employees who charge base 8 salary to WFSE) and non-fire employees, existing tours will not be extended.

• Under certain circumstances when fire activity warrants, extensions may be granted for fire and non-fire PSE extensions. Additional guidance will be forthcoming that will
clarify how employees charge their time if/when their extensions are granted.
• For any Permanent Seasonal employees whose tours cross fiscal years, tours will be honored as specified in individual agreements.

This is a difficult change. Our entire workforce helps us live our core value of Service – to each other and to the public. The services we provide are critical to our Region and the people who live and visit our Forests and Grasslands. We are also all interdependent and we will work to adjust to this change by working together internally as well as our partners communities, volunteers, members of other agencies and Tribes.

As our workforce changes, the amount and type of work we will do will be different than in the past. I know we will all do the best work we can with the resources we have, but it’s a simple reality that producing the same outputs and outcomes with fewer employees isn’t feasible.
However, we will remain focused on our key priority work, especially in our 5 Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes. We are putting this hiring direction into place immediately.
Thank you for all that you do to make Region 6 such a success.

Letter from NFFE to USDA and FS on Wildland Firefighter Occupational Series, here’s a link to the letter.

The letter talks about issues around their involvement in the new occupational series, and also draws a line between budget concerns and problems with the series.  I’m not so sure they’re related, and I’m interested in the FS side of the story.

It is our opinion that the Forest Service sought to adopt what amounts to largely a “title change only” new occupational series to avoid a devastating budget shortfall by continuing the exploitation of its workforce. Ultimately, it is management’s responsibility to manage the workforce and address the serious issues employees have raised through the union. We did our best to influence and encourage good decision-making. Now we leave it to the members to determine whether the new series works for them.
We will be recommending that employees do not opt-in to the new series to receive the new title. Employees must apply and compete for an opportunity to be placed in a new career ladder under the 0456 series. The Union intends to use early engagement with the Agency to secure fair opportunity for current employees to be selected for any new career ladder positions. We will educate our members on their right to request desk audits once in the new series. It is unfortunate this effort will result in so many desk audits. Desk audits are administratively burdensome, time consuming and results may not be satisfactory. We asked management to make clear what duties are required of a position and what
duties employees may rightfully refuse to perform without fear of retaliation or discipline. Our union will make sure employees have the knowledge needed to navigate the irregularities within the new job series, if they choose to opt-in.
We will also be approaching Congress regarding our critical need for increased appropriations to support the wildland firefighting effort. Congress has oversight on the implementation of the new occupational series and we anticipate legislative inquiries will result from this letter. We have copied Members of Congress on this letter who support wildland firefighters to this end.
We ask OPM to become directly involved to address our raised issues as appropriate. We call on Congress to act and appropriate the necessary additional funds to pay wildland firefighters fairly and correctly for their work. Until federal wildland firefighters are paid at least commensurate with cooperators, we will continue to be short staffed and under-resourced to meet our nation’s forest management goals.

FWIW I submitted the same list of questions that we crowd-sourced here on the budget to USDA Press Office, as requested by the FS Press Office, and have not received an acknowledgement, which the FS Press Office is usually good about.
I wonder whether, if only fire people are hired, we might have a sort of “reverse militia” in which fire folks are trained to do other peoples’ work?
Anyway, please share any further information you have on the budget and related topics.
There’s apparently an employee webinar on the budget on Monday September 16. It would be great if someone would take notes, or even record it, for the rest of us.

The FS Budget Deficit, the Attrition Factor and Generational Change (in Recreation?)

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Hopefully more knowledgeable people will correct or add. Here is what I’ve been hearing.

  1. The Department told the FS that they had act as if the current House budget numbers for 2025 were going to be final. This usually isn’t ultimately the case, but is conservative.

My view if this is true: well, the Department has to pick a number for now, and I can’t argue for any number, over any other as being more realistic.  Plus it’s their call. Here’s what Government Exec said about the numbers.

The Forest Service asked for $8.9 billion in funding in the president’s fiscal 2025 budget request in March.

The House version of the Department of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, released on July 11, includes $8.4 billion for the Forest Service, with a projected 3.5% cut from fiscal 2024 levels, but a 4% increase for wildland fire management.

2.  Not as many people retired as predicted. This is also what Gov Exec reported.

“following the findings of a strategic hiring assessment, workforce attrition was “well below 5%,” which signaled the need for more measured hiring plans.

“On one hand, we should celebrate that our staff are staying because they feel connected to the mission, they feel heard, and they are committed to improving our nation’s forests and grasslands,” said Moore. “To stay within budget and continue to deliver on our core mission, we must implement tighter controls on both internal and external hiring.”

Moore said that the Forest Service will move forward with 157 tentative job offers already made to external candidates and will continue to prioritize internal hiring to promote advancement for agency employees, but will focus future outside hiring on “the highest priority positions”.

Those positions include public health and safety roles, those needed to fulfill critical mission deliverables and highly specialized or difficult-to-fill jobs internally. Moore said the Office of the Chief would approve external hiring based on criteria, including converting permanent Forest Service positions from current student employment programs.”

I’m a little puzzled by how making student positions permanent is also “hiring on the highest priority positions.”  A few more sentences to connect the dots would have been helpful.

If it’s the potential retirees who haven’t retired who are responsible, I think that it’s particularly interesting.  My first guess, as a retiree, is that if I were working now I would be a bit spooked by the recent inflation.  For us oldsters who remember inflation, it hasn’t been a thing for so long that we may have forgotten.  It was a wake-up call, for sure.

Like the Chief said, “people not leaving,” in general, is a good thing. And some of us remember encouragements to retire, such as early-outs and bonuses, and some folks being in retirement limbo waiting for these.  I don’t know if that’s still a motivation.

But having that in the back of my mind, (the generations), I ran across a few other related articles.

First, an op-ed from the WaPo.  Title:

A big problem for young workers: 70- and 80-year-olds who won’t retire

With five generations in the workforce, it’s harder for beginners to get hired or promoted.

Paul McCartney and Al Pacino aren’t the only octogenarians with no intention of retiring. Older workers are increasingly postponing retirement, often because they simply don’t want to quit. As a result, the U.S. workforce is now packed with five generations — from the silent generation down to Gen Z.

There are benefits to having so many experienced workers still active, but for younger people, it can be a major hurdle. The career ladder has become crowded at the top, and this dims professional prospects for those at every rung below. Young workers find it harder to launch their careers and to get promoted. The demographic traffic jam also harms societal cohesion by leaving younger groups behind, according to economists Gabriele Guaitoli and Roberto Pancrazi, who study the issue.
The WaPo op-ed has this interesting chart.

Now if I added up all the workers, and calculated the percentage of 70 and older, I’d get 3%. Let’s go back to the headline.  I don’t think the 3% is the “big problem.” It looks to me, in fact, as if the 45 to 64s are the problem. Of course people don’t retire if they like their job, they need the money (to support other, younger, family members?), or they think economic conditions might get iffy (or iffier).

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Another generational story:

Second, from the Denver Post about visitation to the 14ers going down over the past few years.

Fewer people climbed Colorado 14ers in 2023 than in any year since 2015

Last year’s figure was 37% below the pandemic summer of 2020

Athearn said it’s hard to know what is driving the decline, but he has two theories: Slower population growth in Colorado and changing age demographics.

Colorado’s population grew nearly 15% from 2010 to 2020, according to census figures, but the influx of newcomers slowed over the past two years. Also, Athearn suspects that the baby boomers who popularized backpacking and peakbagging are aging out of the fourteener culture.

“My Millennial colleagues — another massive generation — are buying houses, having kids and taking on more work responsibilities,” Athearn wrote in a follow-up email. “That likely translates into less time or money to get out to play regularly. Meanwhile, my son is in that Gen Z age group. While his friends are all pretty athletic and outdoor-oriented, I know many of his peers are not.

“We may be in a period of shifting age booms and busts,” Athearn added, “where those who have been large cohorts of active folks with time, money and health to be out climbing peaks are now facing lack of time, money or compliant bodies to do this physically demanding stuff.”