Summary:
On Septemer 28, the House and Senate Conference Committee on the Interior Appropriations bill submitted their final report to Congress. The House had already passed it on the 29th, and the Senate is expected to follow suit. According to Minority Appropriation leader Representative Dave Obey, the White House was involved in the negotiations and is expected to sign the bill into law. The total Interior bill is for $18.8 billion-much higher than either the House or Senate versions (which were passed before the fire season). This includes $1.2 billion due to the public concern from the fires this summer. But even if these emergency dollars are not counted and if the numbers are adjusted for inflation, the Interior budget is one of the largest ever. The budget amounts are on the last page of this document. I've included other agecies for comparison.

The fires situation brought much attention to how the FS has downsized over the last seven years with the resulting hinderance of our ability to carry out stewardship goals. This attention has resulted in across the board budget increases for the FS as well as other landbased organizations. Though many of the fire dollars will probably not benefit much of agency, there will be spin-offs and the other budget increases are substantial. The challenge for the Union is make sure that this healthy budget gets to the ground. Congress has already indicated that they are also concerned about the lack of dollars to the field units. Now is the time for Unions to strongly oppose consolidations and downsizing on their Forests.

There is still a ways to go before we get our final budget on the ground, but the writing is clear that our budgets are going to go up more than the past couple years, and we may be able to may up for some of the dollars that we lost in the past eight years. Those will likely be the final appropriated dollars. Congress at a whole still has to pass the bill and theWhite House still has to sign it, but that appears very likely. The WO will still have to allocate dollars to the Regions, but this should start moving very fast with this early agreement and an election year coming up. These figures do not include non-appropriated dollars and when the WO computes these, the final budget increase will probably be reduced a bit, but no matter how you cut the pie, we should getting a strong budget increase. The White House proposal to remove trust funds went nowhere (thanks in part to our Union opposing that direction).

Bill Highlights:

Payment in Lieu of Taxes was increased to $150 million.

No funds shall be used to move or close any regional office.

NFS (National Forest System) restructuring as proposed by the House was accepted. NFS will be 10 item instead of the 20 that it used to be.

State and Private Forestry got very large increases, much of it for emergency pest management. They also got $25MM for State fire assistance.

Quincy Library group on was funded to the full $18 million.

Timber cut direction remains at 3.6 billion BF, the same as the last several years, Though Congress expects funding allocations in NFS to assure multiple use management by getting this figure fulfilled. The past sale offerings has been only about 2 billion BF due to inability of the FS to get over court hurdles and get the necessary monitoring done.

Much money is going into fire prepareness including rebuilding "the agency's rapidly deteriorating fire facilities". So some of this fire money will defintely be helping the rest of the Forest Service. Workforce concerns are addressed, including this wording: "recommendation for conversion of temporary seasonal employees to permanet seasanal status in order to encourage workforce retention". This is obviously very important wording, and best we've seen in years. There is also direction to increase the permanent work force by 500 (note that we have lost 6,900 PFTs in the last seven years). Wording is such that fire budget increases will continue in future years.

The Superior NF gets $6.9 million for wind storm damage. Minnesota and Wisconsin get addition emergency moneys for wind damage in addition.

The Sequoia gets $2.4 million for fuels reduction.

Some of the facility and land acquisitions: Franklin County Lake project in Mississippi, $2 million; Institute of Pacific Island Forestry, $2 million; Grey Towers, $500 thousand; Mount Taber Work center, $2 million; Wisconsin Wild Waterways, $2.5 million. DeSoto NF, $10.8 million; Plum Creek lands in WA, $8.6 million.

Concern has been expressed on the cost of obtaining green vehicles. Though white vehicle are not mandated, it is expected that the Agency will purchase vehicle in the "most cost effective manner".

Concern remains high on growth of the WO and the lack of funds to the field.

The White Mountain NF was not exempted from the Roadless initiative or fee demo.

$11 million on emergency funding will go to the Alaska Railroad and avalanche damage.

User fees for cabin owners is revamped and a special law written for that purpose.

There are many more details, and lots of money floating around. Any questions, give me a call.

Art Johnston
Legislative Chairperson, Forest Service Council
National Federation of Federal Employees

A few highlights regarding budget increase:

FS (w/o fire)    FY200 was 2,819,933    FY2001 3,055,188    8.3%increase
FS (w/ fire)    FY200 was 2,819,933    FY2001 3,612,361    28.1%increase
[Of all budget items, Wildland Fire Mgmt is up the most, 78.7%]

BLM (w/o fire)    FY200 was 1,231,402    FY2001 1,338,117    8.7%increase
BLM (w/ fire)    FY200 was 1,231,402    FY2001 1,672,673    35.8%increase

USFWS    FY200 was 875,093    FY2001 964,071    10.2%increase
NPS    FY200 was 1,803,874    FY2001 1,937,612    7.4%increase
DOE    FY200 was 1,226,393    FY2001 1,456,868    18.8%increase
Indian Health Services    FY200 was 2,390,728    FY2001 2,604,562 8.9%   increase