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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Forest Service Accounting May Leave It Short Of Cash

Associated Press

Contradictory accounting and spending for salvage logging operations at national forests could lead to shortfalls of cash for some Forest Service programs, a government audit warned Wednesday.

None of four forests checked by General Accounting Office auditors distributed the money in the same way or followed priorities set by Forest Service headquarters, the audit issued Wednesday said.

The GAO reviewed the service’s money management this summer at the request of Rep. Sidney Yates, D-Ill. He was interested because the Forest Service increasingly relies on salvage logging of dead and dying trees as a principal component of its timber production program.

Auditors found that Homochitto forest in Mississippi, Clearwater in Idaho, Stanislaus in California and Umatilla in Oregon each calculated the cost of the logging differently. “If the Umatilla National Forest had used the three-year average method utilized by the Stanislaus National Forest, the identified costs would have been $1.3 million instead of the $367,223 actually claimed,” the audit said.

“By selecting a method that incorrectly estimates the program’s cost, a forest runs the risk of not setting aside the amount necessary to finance the program in the future,” it said.

Salvage programs generate revenue for states, pay for roads and trails and finance reforestation as well as future salvage operations.

Forest Service spokesman Dick Fitzgerald said new guidelines were developed since the audit to bring about more uniform treatment of the individual forests’ salvage programs.

The report follows a GAO audit released in September detailing questionable money transfers between salvage and reforestation accounts that said almost bankrupted the Forest Service’s national forest fund last year.

The auditors in that case criticized the agency’s slow response and warned that the problems “are an illustration of the much larger fiscal accountability problems facing the Forest Service.”