Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Protest the sale of the public's forest land
From the RoundTable blog
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Charles Blankenship
Blankenship lives in Roanoke and is a retired forester with the U.S. Forest Service.
Scott Nelson's commentary concerning the sale of national forest land ("Selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge," March 2) was an accurate criticism of a very bad idea.
However, the blame does not rest with the appointees in the Washington office of the Forest Service. The Forest Service leaders in Washington are listening in agony to a proposal they have heard before. The Bush administration and specifically the U.S. Department of Agriculture are responsible for this proposal.
The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 expires at the end of 2006. This and similar acts of Congress have been funding local roads and schools since the early years of the agency. In the past, funding for these acts came from the general treasury.
In discussions with Congress to reauthorize the act, the administration took the position that it would support reauthorization only if budget offsets could be found to eliminate any impact on the treasury. This boiled down to further budget cuts for an underfunded agency or the sale of national forest lands to produce the offset.
The Payment In Lieu of Taxes Act of Oct. 20, 1976 (PL 94-565) authorized Congress to appropriate funds when national forest revenues were insufficient to fund local governments for schools and roads.
Make no mistake, this is part of three phases of a campaign to reduce the size of agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service. The first phase has been budget reductions since Vice President Al Gore started reinventing government. The second phase has been "competitive sourcing" and outsourcing critical functions within the agency. Radio, computer and telephone services as well as personnel management have been moved to Albuquerque, N.M. Now, in the next phase, 304,000 acres of the public's land will be sold unless the public objects.
This sale is a dangerous precedent and likely the first salvo of subsequent fundraising sales. This would seem unlikely except for the fact that the sale of even more National Forest land was considered in the latter years of the Reagan administration. Intelligent leaders convinced that president's people to abandon the proposal.
Today, this administration is more desperate and determined, but there are some Republican leaders in Congress who are vigorously opposing the sale of national forest lands.
On Feb. 28, a Federal Register notice requested comments on the continuation of the Secure Rural Schools Act and the sale of public lands to finance the act. You are invited to submit your comments by e-mail to SRS_Land_Sales@fs.fed.us or to write USDA Forest Service, SRS Comments, Lands 4 S, 1400 Independence Ave., S.W. Mailstop 1124, Washington, D.C. 20250-0003.
The deadline is March 28. Mailing a copy of your response to your congressman and U.S. senators would be a good idea.
