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GAO FINDS COSTS OF FOREST SERVICE'S LOGGING PROGRAM "IMPRACTICAL, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE" TO DETERMINE

By Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Rep. George Miller (October 24, 2001)

(U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney is a Democrat from Georgia. U.S. Rep. George Miller is a Democrat from California.)

The Bush Administration recently put federal agencies on notice: instead of business as usual, the bottom-line would be a top priority. A memo by the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs asserted its prerogative of reviewing new federal regulations and actions by carefully weighing the cost against the benefits. A General Accounting Office (GAO) report released October 22 suggests that the commercial logging program of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is a perfect candidate for a thorough review of its costs and benefits, to the taxpayer and the environment.

Conservationists have long criticized the Forest Service for its ecological mismanagement of 191 million acres of National Forests. As Members of Congress responsible for ensuring that federal tax dollars are spent wisely, we requested last year that the GAO prepare a report detailing the budgetary impact of the USFS timber sale program. After a year and half of investigation, we received an answer: the GAO concluded that it was "impractical, if not impossible, for us or anyone to accurately determine the Forest Service's timber sales program cost."

After discovering that the USFS used accounting practices that distorted program cost data, the GAO had to abandon a bottom-line analysis and focus its audit on the size and scope of the agency's ineptitude at accounting. As Members of Congress charged with the oversight of federal agency actions, we found the conclusions in the GAO report deeply disturbing. The GAO described accounting practices that would be unheard of in private industry. One practice, known as "retroactive redistribution" enabled the Forest Service to conceal the actual amount of money spent on the timber sale program by charging program costs to another program, such as recreation.

Another practice the GAO discovered was known as "charged as budgeted." This allowed staff time to be charged to a program based on the amount of time that an employee was budgeted to that program, regardless of the actual time spent working on that program. Again, costs of the timber sale program could be hidden by charging employee time to another account. The GAO noted that these practices prevent the USFS from providing accurate and reliable cost information.

Why would a public agency fail to fully and accurately disclose its use of taxpayer money? Perhaps it is because the truth would be too shocking. By the Forest Service's own admission -- and even with its shoddy accounting -- the agency lost $126 million as a result of logging our national forests in 1998. Delivered as subsidies to timber companies, the program generated $546 million but cost $672 million to operate. Past GAO reports have estimated that losses from this program are actually much higher than USFS reports -- approximately $2 billion between 1992 and 1997.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this alarming report from the GAO, the Forest Service has decided to terminate the Timber Sales Program Information Reporting System, the only public disclosure of the logging program's costs. The USFS justified this decision by noting that these reports have only been produced because of directives of Congress, and have never been legally mandated. They also admitted that the information they have produced is known to be inaccurate. The agency further claims the timber harvest has dwindled, making the accounting program less important. But in actuality, logging has been ramped up in the name of restoration making it is as important as ever to have accurate accounting and reporting.

While the Bush Administration's new emphasis on evaluating the costs and benefits of federal actions is fraught with potential pitfalls for the environment, it might just be what the Forest Service needs to clean up its act. To date, any objective analysis of the timber program has shown that the costs far outweigh the benefits. Even the agency's own fuzzy math leads to this conclusion.

We believe it is time to end the Forest Service's commercial logging program and make better use of taxpayer money by restoring National Forests. There are immeasurable benefits of intact forest ecosystems that filter pollution out of our water, prevent flooding, provide wildlife habitat and a place for us to play and find a little peace of mind. The elimination of taxpayer funded industrial-type forest management would save taxpayers money by avoiding the cost of mitigating for the environmental damage caused by commercial logging. Whether we are measuring the value of functioning forest ecosystems now or in the future, the only type of wise forest management is to leave something behind.