Groups claim outsourcing hurts wildfire ‘militia’
BOISE – A Bush administration study on whether some jobs and duties in the U.S. Forest Service could be done more efficiently by private contractors compromises the agency’s in-house firefighting force, say groups representing federal employees.
Administration officials dispute the claim. But the question of whether “competitive sourcing” studies – which determine whether nongovernment activities should be kept in-house or turned over to private firms – undermine the “fire militia” has caught the attention of Congress. The Government Accountability Office earlier this year began an inquiry after a bipartisan group of senators asked if the outsourcing competition studies give enough consideration to the Forest Service’s long-term ability to manage wildfires.
While Congress has prohibited the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior from studying outsourcing of federal jobs that are dedicated to fire suppression and management full time, there’s no similar protection for staffers in other jobs who are cross-trained in fire duties, say union officials, wildland firefighter associations and watchdog groups.
“If you outsource Clark Kent, what are you going to do when you need Superman?” said Mark Davis, a Forest Service chemist in Madison, Wis., who’s a member of the Forest Service Council, an arm of the union representing federal employees.
Some employees of federal land management agencies are summoned to fire duty from their regular jobs, such as wildlife biologists, payroll clerks and maintenance workers, when full-time and seasonal firefighters are in short supply. That happened this year, when the fire militia was activated in late July as the number and size of fires overwhelmed existing resources.
Almost all of the national and regional fire management teams directing suppression efforts on wildfires are made up of Forest Service and Interior Department employees who have been temporarily assigned from their “day jobs” to work fire duty.
Forest Service officials say the studies of potential public-private job competitions recognize fire suppression and management is “mission critical” to the agency.
If fire support is identified as part of a particular job, that requirement would be included in any proposal seeking outside contractors to do the work cheaper and more efficiently, said Jacqueline Myers, the Forest Service’s competitive sourcing director. Fire duty is a minor component of most Forest Service employees’ job performance, with less than 5 percent of their time actually dedicated to supporting the suppression mission, she said.
“It’s a myth those folks are out on fire lines all the time,” Myers said. “If we have more fires, we hire more temps and contractors. We don’t send everyday Forest Service employees out to do that stuff.”