Congressional Panels Jump On Forest Service House Members Demand To Know How Problems Will Be Fixed; Dombeck Says It Will Take Time

Members of three House panels demanded an explanation Thursday for a decade’s worth of problems at the U.S. Forest Service.

Northwest Republicans on the House Budget, Appropriations and Resources committees chided the agency and its chief, Mike Dombeck, for poor spending and management decisions.

Two investigative offices, the General Accounting Office and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s inspector general, backed up the congressional complaints with numerous reports on the agency’s mismanagement.

The agency can’t keep track of its money, its managers are inept and no one takes responsibility, the inspectors said.

The Forest Service is working to correct the problems, Dombeck said. But it will take time.

“It will take several years to turn the situation around,” Dombeck told members of the three committees.

Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., said she’s not willing to give the service more time.

Promising to fix problems in 10 years “would not be acceptable anywhere else but in government,” Smith said.

The Forest Service is the only federal agency entrusted with billions of dollars in assets that ended the past fiscal year over budget due to poor management, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, charged. She was angry that the agency keeps asking Congress for bigger budgets.

“The GAO outlines problem after problem with the Forest Service’s lack of financial and performance accountability, and the Forest Service has nothing to offer but empty promises to improve if simply given more time,” Chenoweth said.

The agency costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year in waste and inefficiency by not asking a fair price for its goods and services, said GAO Associate Director Barry Hill.

As he testified, Hill was almost hidden from committee members by a 3-foot stack of reports critical of the service.

A November 1995 report shows Forest Service practices are so inefficient they cost the agency as much as $100 million a year, Hill said. In fiscal 1995, the service could not explain how it spent $215 million of its budget. In fiscal 1996, weak contracting practices left a total of $443 million vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.

The service has promised the GAO to take corrective action, but never has, Hill said.

When Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., asked how the Forest Service could improve quickly, Hill suggested coming up with a clear schedule of what needs to be done and identifying “what’s broken.”

Hill also agreed with a suggestion from Smith to bring in an outside group to run the service.

Dombeck admitted his agency does have the problems outlined in auditors’ reports. He told the panel the service was making progress, but it would take time for the changes to become visible.

“We are formulating a plan of action to continue to address these and other concerns,” he said. “What was created over a decade or more cannot be fixed in a year.”

Since he was named chief 15 months ago, Dombeck said, he has installed new managers, improved the service’s accounting, simplified procedures and held employees accountable for their actions.

His strategy for fixing ongoing problems is to continue those changes, he said.

Chenoweth asked Dombeck four times how he planned to cut costs and raise revenues within his agency.

Dombeck offered no such plan.

The Forest Service’s objective is not to run at a profit, he said, but to protect the land. But he will try to increase efficiency, get a better handle on the resources it manages and continue timber harvests.

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