[Sore Feet]

I think the more accurate statement would be "politicians attitudes that the only true American is a rich American and all others are not deserving" would be more accurate, but again, just in some cases. The stereotype certainly leans towards the conservative end of the spectrum when one thinks of pompous rich snobby people, and there certainly is some accuracy there, but you don't have to belong to a political party to be a rich snob... Back to the fee issue, my problem with the whole situatuion is that with the government budget growing increasingly larger every year, the forest service is not being appropriated the money they need. I'm not necessarily saying that Social Security or Military spending needs to be drasticly slashed (but neither would be a bad thing, imo), but there is SOOOO much wasteful spending in the government, if our elected officials were held more accountable for what they spend, allegedly on our behalf (that's a whole 'nother can of nuts), we wouldn't have to put up with things like fee demo.

[MCaver]

I know of about $87 billion they can redirect.

[hikermike]

Here! Here! Except we got those people into that mess so we owe them to get them out, Maybe Haliburton, certain oil companies and the others benefitting from this venture should foot the bill and not us.

[Tom]

Let's try to stay on topic. Thx.

[STUMP]

When you see highly educated, multi-degreed rangers working the entry gates and info desks you might wonder if outsourcing is such a bad idea. I know of one felllow who retired early from the fed service and is now working on his second retirement with the state. His biggest complaint working for the fed was dumping trash cans with a masters degree in his hip pocket and twenty years senority. I would love to know the percentage of FS budget that goes to retirement. Public audits don't seem to be a high priority, even with republicans.

[frankm3]

So all our discussion sent me off to the USFS website to do some research- What an exercise in contradictions the whole experience has been. There is a bit on the history of the USFS here- http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/meetfs.shtml They mention the primary reasons for establishing the USFS was "Congress established the Forest Service in 1905 to provide quality water and timber for the Nation’s benefit", it goes on to mention that managing multiple uses is more of a recent development. They also mention (elsewhere on the site) that the amount of forested land in the US is in excess of what it has been in the past, and, similarly, the demands on timber in general are not as significant as they once were. And that per capita metals use (who the hell figures this out anyway?) is declining. These statements, by implication anyway, make me think that demands for the traditional types of uses would be declining. I went on and read through their strategic plan document- it is a huge .pdf and outlines their goals and objectives through 2006. Here's a link to that: http://www.fs.fed.us/plan/ They clearly recognize that recreation is now the highest demand on the USFS nowadays. In measuring their own performance, they set no goals for themselves beyond "a 5% increase in user satisfaction". There's no mention anywhere really of taking any specific action whatsoever to do anything in support of the increased activity beyond registering a better score in a survey. Huh? So they recognize this trend towards increasing recreational users, and then go on to predict a 50% decrease in the amount of revenue they get from recreational users (5% future vs. 10% now). BTW, mining and timber is about 80% of where their money presently comes from per this document. The major contradiction to this is they then go on to discuss the 'downstream economic effects' (I'm not sure how they figure this) of people going out and using forest lands for various purposes. Recreational uses, according to their own statements, offer the greatest downstream economic benefits (as far as campers buying tents, etc). The document also mentions that in the past the USFS has been criticized for poor accounting practices, and poor contracting practices as well. They do actually have goals for better accountability and independent financial analysis which is encouraging to me. Reading all the rest of it made me more sensitive to what some of you guys were mentioning in regard to misappropriation. It seems as though they don't really have a clear direction, in spite of recognizing recreation is 'the wave of the future'. It's really disappointing to see no milestones for performance beyond a 'telephone survey' yardstick. Interested to hear what any of you guys think. I bet they spent a lot of our money to put this together, and I'm not really sure I see a lot of encouraging stuff there. Frank

[hikermike]

Timber and mining are major sources of income yet they aren't charged what they're worth for those resources. If they charged appropriately then there would be a better revenue source. Because of this, Local income to the communities is actually higher from recreation sources, I'd like to say that that is why the forest service came up with the trailhead fees, to tap thia source, but this is not true, it came from Congress and the Forest Service didn't have a clue. When I was hiking in Montana a few years back, they thought it was a joke, said they had plenty of money for their trails and, frankly, their trails were in much better shape and so were the trailhead parking areas. When I worked for the WSU Forestry Dept in the mid '60s, we travelled all over the Northwest and even then you could tell a big difference in management from one forest to another. After awhile I could tell which Forest I was in by the condition of the roads and signage etc. My boss then complained about the great waste of money. It's not that anyone is lining their pockets, it's just that they haven't a clue as to where it is or where it's going. For instance, in the '80s, for every dollar from a tree they were paid, they spent two dollars building the roads to get the lumber out. Obviously private companies would not get very far with this accounting. I'm not suggesting privatising as I feel that would be a giveaway, just good oversite. Forestry men are trained in forestry and not business.

[kiliki]

I think one huge problem in the FS is that while you may have trained, educated foresters and other scientists and resource managers making up most of the ranks, the FS head is a political appointee, and the agency is subject to congressional mandates. Every few years the agency could be directed to have a drastically different focus than it did under the last administration, and with Congress passing bills like the healthy forest initiative or fire management directives (that have more to do with politics than effective forest management), it must be almost impossible for FS workers to establish and reach goals that really make sense for forest management.

[Stefan]

[Malachai Constant]

[frankm3]

[Slugman]

That Ranger with the Masters degree forgot to metion the benefits he received from his choices. He did what he loved, at least I hope he did, and I'm sure he had a more intersting career than, say, a CPA. That has value, if not in dollars, then in job satisfaction. The NFS is under the Department of Agriculture, so the "culture" is extraction and tree farming. It needs to be moved to the Department of the Interior, along with the NPS. The land that is to be used as defacto tree farms could be split off and put under the BLM, which would swap land to be preserved to the "new" NFS. Right now, Agriculture is managing wilderness areas. It makes no sense.

[kiliki]

The DOI's no picnic either-the primary job of most of their agencies deals with resource extraction (USGS, Office of Surface Mining, Minerals Mgmt Service, BuRec, BLM), when it comes down to it. Their director not long ago called the NPS the "world's largest lawn care service." He's obviously not very in tune with what National Parks are about.

[frankm3]

[Slugman]

While 80% of their money may come from extraction, I'm sure at least that percentage of their expenditures go to extraction as well. By splitting off the wilderness areas from the logging areas, revenue change would be in bookkeeping only. I like my idea less since I read kiliki's response, which pointed out the deficiencies of Interior. I just think a reorganization is in order, with NFS wilderness areas being in the same department as the NPS. Please refer to my about-to-be-created thread "How to solve all of society's problems, or most of them anyway", in the saloon. It is (or is about to be) totally non-partisan! I promise!