Consolidating the Forest Service

In 2006, the Forest Service hired a consultant to study its work involved in satisfying the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  The goal was to come up with recommendations for improving efficiency and saving money, with an eye towards possibly privatizing the work.  The resulting feasibility study (here) hasn't exactly impressed the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  Here are the calmer parts of the press release...

The U.S. Forest Service is on the verge of approving a massive restructuring that will remove land management planning from individual forests, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The resulting reorganization will affect one in four agency jobs, shrink its on-the-ground firefighting militia and rigidify resource planning.

The plan, called a “Business Process Reengineering,” would consolidate virtually all work performed under NEPA, the basic planning law that shapes significant agency resource management actions. Altogether, nearly 8,000 employees out of the agency’s 30,000 person workforce now perform NEPA-related work. Almost all of this work is done at the forest level.

Under the Business Process Reengineering, all of these functions would be moved into six “eco-based Service Centers” where forest planning would be standardized. This agency-wide displacement would--

• Remove thousands of employees with fire-fighting responsibilities from national forests and relocate them in far-away service centers. Nearly half (3,564) of all Forest Service employees doing NEPA work have collateral all-hazard duties; and

• Result in likely job cuts, as a main objective of the Reengineering is to combine work now done on 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The agency’s Feasibility Study, dated August 1, 2007, projects a nearly 20% reduction in environmental positions.

Where would those six service centers be?  By design, in affordable college towns that are central to the forests being managed.

The study tallied the man-hours and found that there are 3,552 full time equivalent (FTE) positions devoted to NEPA tasks.  Regions 5 (California) and 6 (Oregon & Washington) devote a much higher number of FTEs to NEPA tasks than the rest.

Most of the NEPA tasks--3,295 FTEs--were determined to be "commercial in nature" and thus suitable for A-76 competition.  A-76 is an outsourcing process in which the federal government gets to bid against interested contractors to keep the work in-house (been there, done that--more than once).  If the organization in question doesn't cut itself rather deeply, it won't win the competitive bid.  You either cut some employees or lose them all...with both results triggering ripples of more senior employees bumping others throughout--in this case--the Forest Service.  And if a contractor wins the bid, it will likely try to hire some of the employees who are losing their jobs.

The recommended restructuring only requires 2,675 FTEs for NEPA work, saving $88 million per year, much of it via the 620-employee reduction.  The A-76 process is thought to be the means that offers the best chance of achieving such savings. 

In her September 21, 2007 transmittal letter to her top management, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell wrote “I support all the study findings and request your comments on the proposed implementation method.” The full original plan, however, called for restructuring NEPA functions followed by inviting private consulting firms to bid for the newly consolidated work. But Congress cut off any more funding for outsourcing of Forest Service jobs in the FY 2008 omnibus appropriations law. Nonetheless, the agency appears set to proceed with the recommended centralization and downsizing.

“It is awfully late in the Bush administration to begin a gigantic game of bureaucratic musical chairs with thousands of people’s jobs that may be reversed by the next Forest Service Chief,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch...

Musical chairs?  Ruch clearly doesn't understand how hard it is to undo an outsourcing once it's done.  As soon as the government commits to an A-76 process, budgets and manpower documents reflect the savings after the anticipated award date.  Whether the government wins or loses--and it usually loses, lots of lives are changed.  Workers can be faced with relocating, losing grades, going into jobs for which they're not well-prepared, etc.  Contractors fight for the opportunity to win--and keep--A-76 contracts.  The real property folks will busily try to reduce the resulting excess office space at the national forests.  And so on...

In recent years, the Forests Service has lost a long string of environmental lawsuits brought under NEPA, among other statutes. Plaintiffs win NEPA suits by showing that the agency did not consider major potential impacts of its plans. While the NEPA Feasibility Study notes that “The vast majority of Forest Service projects require familiarity with conditions on the ground where the activities take place,” the plan it recommends would remove virtually all of the agency experts from the places they know.

When the status quo isn't working, change is in order...and this would certainly be a big change.  Other than some data collectors, the NEPA functions would disappear from the national forests on a day-to-day basis.  That seems like an overcorrection.  And if it's done via A-76...that process is really painful all by itself.

And yes, the centralization would reduce the numbers available to help deal with fire season.  But if we're going to let more of the forests suffer major conflagrations and pretend it's natural...      

Comments

[SSG Jeff (USAR)]

Affordable college towns? It is but to laugh. College towns are NOT affordable. cf. Corvallis, OR.

[Ten Bears]

No love lost twixt the Piss Firs and this Old Logger, but that's just plain insane.

On the other hand, as it all devolves and goes to hell, and need be run to the less 'managed' high country...

[Mike]

The plan to centralize NEPA sounded odd to me at first, but it might make sense. NEPA is so arcane that most of the docs ought to be written by quasi-legal specialists. It's a big legal game. The local on-the-ground conditions rarely matter in court, anyway. Cases are decided on wording, not anything in the real world.

The USFS should hire the best atty's, too. But I'm not sure I see any virtue in six centers; why not just one? And I think a few hundred personnel would be plenty.

Then the local staff could get out in the woods, boots on the ground, and do some actual management or whatever. Good foresters rarely make good paper pushers, or else it's just that they would rather not.

Do forestry instead of write about it. That's the ticket.

Of course, the best plan would be to revise NEPA or throw it out, but that would require an Act of Congress and they don't.

Another thing -- look at who is all exercised about it. Enviro litigious obstructionist NEPA lawyers!!!!!!!!

That alone makes it seem like a good idea. Strong endorsement, anyway.

[bear bait]

So the NEPA folks for R6 would be in Eugene, near the UofO law school, instead of Corvallis, with the natural resource research centered OSU, and expensive housing. Also, there is a big new Federal courthouse in YewGene. So, since it is about lawyers, anyway, what a better place than YewGene.

[Mike]

And now Mark Rey denies the whole maryann! Public Land News reports:

-- Under Secretary of Agriculture Mark Rey told PLN this week no such action is being contemplated. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said. “I don’t think we found anything in the way of savings that would justify doing it. We’re not going to do that.”

A Forest Service spokesman agreed with Rey that no reorganization was imminent. “They (PEER) are really off the mark,” said service spokesman Joe Walsh. For one thing, he said, Congress forbids the service from spending any money that could involve outsourcing. --

So the situation is murky. Which cup is the pea under?

[RoguePundit]

Gee, if USFS can't spend any money that could involve outsourcing, I guess the consultant must have done all of that A-76 groundwork in the feasibility study for free.