Lands Commissioner Belcher Vs. Mackey: Fight Centers On Timber Cutting

The contest between Democratic Lands Commissioner Jennifer Belcher and challenger Bruce Mackey has turned nasty as only a battle between a boss and former employee can.

Mackey, a Republican from Olympia, was one of Belcher’s top resource managers when he quit the Department of Natural Resources in May. He said he could no longer stand working for the first-term commissioner, whose job is to oversee and manage 5 million acres of state land.

“I resigned and decided to run for lands commissioner because I believe the agency is being torn apart,” Mackey says in a recent mailing.

In an interview, Mackey contended that Belcher, 52, a former state lawmaker whose specialty was natural-resource issues, “doesn’t know a fir tree from a pine tree.” He said he was “outraged by her controlling and compulsive management style.”

Belcher, who had mostly ignored her former manager’s jabs, finally responded in a recent interview.

“This is a Republican employee hired by my predecessor who wants to get things back to the way they were in the 1980s,” she says.

“All of his rhetoric is the same old stuff. ‘You can cut more timber. You can do it all and still have it all.’ His support is almost exclusively family, friends and the timber industry.”

Rancor notwithstanding, the race for the $86,600-a-year post comes down to a fundamental disagreement.

Revenue from timber produced on state lands goes to state schools, universities, prisons and charities.

Mackey, 51, believes the state is cutting too little of its timber, thus costing public schools millions.

Belcher’s view of the issue is more complicated, but basically, she believes Mackey and other critics are living in the past.

It is folly, Belcher says, for a state with such rapid population growth to rely so heavily on these revenues for schools. She has long advocated seeking other revenue sources to spread the burden.

Belcher contends state forests are now yielding a healthy and reasonable timber harvest after a slow start after her 1992 election.