Andrus: Chenoweth Sabotaging Symposium Republican Subpoenas Forest Service Chief

Former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus contends Republican U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth is purposely undermining a symposium of top federal land managers he will host on Wednesday - a charge Chenoweth called “a big political tempest in a teapot.”

Andrus has called on Chenoweth to lift a subpoena for Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck to appear Thursday before her House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.

Chenoweth’s subpoena will force Dombeck to leave Boise at 4 p.m. Wednesday to return to Washington, D.C., from the public lands symposium sponsored by the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University.

Andrus had wanted Dombeck, who will appear with Bureau of Land Management Director Patrick Shea and National Park Service Director Bob Stanton, to stay for a dinner and question-and-answer session later Wednesday.

“She’s known for months that we were having this conference,” Andrus said Friday.

But Chenoweth said Andrus was making an issue out of nothing since Dombeck would be able to spend most of the day in Boise. And House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young, an Alaska Republican, issued a statement Friday telling the former Carter administration Interior secretary “to get his facts straight and quit playing political games.”

Young said it was important for Dombeck to testify before the House panel about the rights of gun owners on federal land, and that the Forest Service chief “never said one word to me or my committee regarding a scheduling conflict when he received the subpoena. I would have been more than willing to try to resolve the issue if he had contacted me. But he didn’t.”

In any case, Chenoweth said, there was nothing she could do.

Andrus dismissed that reasoning.

“I know how this works,” he said. “If she wanted to excuse him, she could.”