D.C. wildfire funds rebuked, then restored

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By Stephen Dinan

Congressional lawmakers Wednesday rebuked the Forest Service for spending stimulus forest firefighting money on D.C. green-jobs programs, but gave the city the money anyway.

The decision reverses a vote of the full Senate, which last month stripped the $2.8 million in wildland fire-management funds for the District, calling it a waste of critical firefighting funds.

House and Senate negotiators made the move while hammering out a final public lands spending bill. They said they didn't want to recall the money, but in strongly worded language blasted the Forest Service for a "lack of transparency" and insisted future funds be spent solely to reduce fire threats.

But the fact that they allowed the D.C. money to be spent on jobs programs in a city with a low risk of forest fires angered lawmakers who called it an affront to Western states scorched by wildfires this year.

"Is that a lot of Washington double-speak or what?" said Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, who sponsored the Senate amendment that cut the funds in the first place. "It's offensive they would take this position. This is wasteful spending on important money that should be going to fight wildland fires."

In their official report, the negotiators said all future stimulus firefighting spending will have to "be devoted to activities that directly reduce fire hazards on public and private lands." Both chambers will have to vote on the compromise bill before the week ends, because the measure also contains stopgap funding to keep the government open until December.

The Washington Times first reported that part of the $500 million in stimulus money set aside for wildland fire management was going to D.C. jobs programs. The $787 billion stimulus bill that said the firefighting money should go to forest health programs and the Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department, used the money for two D.C. programs: $90,000 for a city government summer green job corps program and $2.7 million for Washington Parks & People, a nonprofit, to start a green job corps.

House and Senate spending negotiators said the Forest Service followed the letter of the law, which included funding urban forestry, so the money shouldn't be withdrawn. But they said that in the future all firefighting money will have to actually be aimed at reducing fire dangers.

The negotiators also demanded a full report on how the Forest Service chose the projects it spent money on.

"The conferees remain troubled by the lack of transparency and the lack of communication from the [Forest] Service and the Department of Agriculture related to the project selection process," they wrote in a report that accompanies the final spending bill.