Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Another round of cuts proposed for non-fire programs

The Bush administration is proposing nearly $800 million in cuts to the Forest Service and Interior Department in fiscal 2009, although wildfire-related spending continues to increase.

In his final budget proposal, President Bush continues cuts to land acquisition and agency spending that have become commonplace with land management agencies over the past eight years.

The White House also once again calls for oil drilling on the north slope of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Lease sales beginning in 2010 could bring in $7 billion in bonus bids to be split between the state and federal governments, the administration says.

However, the White House did give up a plan to sell up to 300,000 acres of national forest land in order to provide money for counties under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

The 2000 law paid out billions to compensate Western counties for the steep decline in timber sales on federal lands in the 1990s, but the final checks went out last year. The administration had proposed a highly unpopular land sale plan the last two years, but the fiscal 2009 budget proposal goes in a different direction.

The proposal would provide $200 million above the current baseline for rural schools funding, targeted to the most affected areas, and then capped and adjusted downward each year until the money runs out in four years. Offsets are provided from within the top line of the budget throughout the Agriculture Department, meaning that if the budget were adopted without changes, checks would be mailed from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2012.

For fiscal 2008, the White House said it "continues to be prepared to work with the Congress to identify mutually agreeable offsets."

For the Forest Service, non-fire programs once again see major cuts. The agency would see a $337 million cut to $4.1 million in fiscal 2009. Wildland fire management programs, however would see a $34 million increase to just under $2 billion.

The budget would provide $297 million for hazardous fuels reduction projects, down from $310 million in fiscal 2008, although the White House notes its figure is "more than a fourfold increase" from 2000. Per a settlement agreement, the budget proposes full funding for Northwest Forest Plan timber sales at a goal of offering 800 million board feet of timber.

A USFS legislative proposal would create up to five "ecosystem services demonstration projects" designed to use federal, state, tribal and private partnerships to restore watersheds and other lands damaged by catastrophic events and study the "flow and value of ecosystem services from each project."

Interior proposal

At the Interior Department, the Bush administration proposed $10.6 billion for fiscal 2009, down from $11 billion in fiscal 2008. Most agencies are kept stable or receive slight cuts.

The Fish and Wildlife Service would be cut $65 million to $1.302 billion, although the budget includes $9 million to create a migratory bird initiative. President Bush announced a series of new bird conservation initiatives last fall, including a habitat conservation bank, increased funding for habitat protection in Mexico and more money for "joint ventures" projects to protect wetlands and other habitat in the United States.

Non-wildfire programs at the Bureau of Land Management would fall more than $100 million to $865 million in fiscal 2009, with wildland fire costs reaching $850 million, up $42 million from fiscal 2008.

The BLM budget carries over two legislative proposals that have proven unpopular on the Hill thus far: a plan to eliminate the $10 million range improvement fund and a proposal to expand sales of public lands.

At issue is the Federal Lands Transactions Facilitation Act, which provides for selling BLM lands classified for disposal under resource management plans at the time the law was signed in 2000. The law allows Interior to spend proceeds for land acquisitions of high-value areas in national parks, wildlife refuges and national monuments. Under its land management plans, BLM identifies lands the agency proposes to sell or exchange.

The budget plan would allow BLM to increase the number of acres it would sell, with 70 percent of revenue going to the federal Treasury. Interior would be allowed to keep 30 percent, but no more than $60 million in a year.

Another legislative proposal would make "permanent" a 2 percent cut in a state's share of federal onshore mineral leasing activity. States and the federal government previously split such revenues 50-50, but the administration last year proposed, and Congress agreed to, reducing the states' share to 48 percent. The White House wants to extend that arrangement.

Last week, a bipartisan group of Western lawmakers asked Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle to drop the plan this year.

"It is unconscionable that the department of the Interior and the Office of Management and Budget would propose to take money from states used to pay for important priorities, including educational improvements, to pay for more program administration," the lawmakers wrote. "This appropriation does not serve the taxpayers who fund the government nor does it serve the states who allow for energy production to happen within their borders."

The National Park Service would see a $17 million cut to $2.404 billion, primarily due to proposed cuts in the construction budget. The operations budget would increase from $1.97 billion to $2.13 billion, part of the White House's Centennial Challenge.

Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT), which compensates states for lost tax revenue from federal lands, would receive $195 million, down from $244 million last year. PILT is particularly important to Western states such as Nevada, Utah and Idaho with large percentages of public lands that are not eligible to be taxed by state and local governments.

Elsewhere at Interior: