Logging Transition Funds Misspent, Union Says Craig Calls For Probe Into Claims That Money Isn’t Reaching Suffering Areas
Sen. Larry Craig said Monday he’ll seek a congressional investigation of labor union claims that President Clinton’s economic-transition package is failing Northwest timber towns hit hard by logging cutbacks.
Leaders of the Western Council of Industrial Workers told a Senate subcommittee that they are working on a report that shows much of the millions of dollars for job training and economic diversification is failing to reach the smallest rural communities that are suffering most.
Two-thirds of the money in the Old-Growth Diversification Fund from 1994-96 “went to programs that had nothing to do with the community’s existing timber resource,” said Mike Pieti, executive secretary of the Portlandbased council, an arm of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.
“Instead, money was given for projects such as a basketball academy, Victorian street lights, an antique car show and a feasibility project for a boarding school for wealthy urban students in one of the most remote areas of the state,” he said.
Working with the Independent Forest Products Association, also based in Portland, the union examined about a third of the outlays under the assistance program, created by Clinton to soften the blow of timber-harvest reductions tied to protection of the threatened northern spotted owl and other wildlife dependent on old-growth forests.
In addition to the approximately $16 million spent in each of the three years for the diversification fund, the pending report also examines $135 million in loan guarantees approved by the Small Business Administration in 1997.
“We found that under the SBA program, bankers largely targeted guaranteed loans to communities that already enjoy diversified economies - such as Eugene, Salem and Oregon - and to already viable businesses or to doctors, lawyers, dentists and other medical groups,” Pieti said.
“The towns which least needed assistance benefited more than those towns which truly deserved help,” he told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on forests and public land management.
Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the panel, said he would encourage Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the full committee, to join him in a request for a review of the program by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
“If we are going to target money to people in communities and displaced workers, then that is where the money ought to go,” Craig said.
“The preliminary look shows that is not where it is going.”
Tom Tuchmann, director of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman’s western office in Portland, said he welcomes any third-party review of the forestry or economic-assistance programs linked to Clinton’s Northwest forest plan.
xxxx WHERE THE MONEY WENT A list of the questionable projects: $100,000 grant for a basketball camp near Blue River, Ore., which is expected to create 25 full-time jobs by March 31, 1998. $9,000 grant to beautify historic downtown Brownsville, Ore., through installation of Victorian street lights. $38,000 loan and $2,000 grant to relocate a public television show, “The World of Collector Cars,” from California to Klamath Falls, Ore. Undetermined amount for study to determine feasibility of a boarding school in Fossil, Ore.