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USFS facing 25 percent budget cut over three years, chief warns
BY DAN BERMAN, GREENWIRE, 01/29/07
The White House and Congress are not expected to do the Forest Service any favors with future budgets, so the agency's Washington headquarters and nine regional offices will have to cut costs by 25 percent over the next three years, USFS Chief Dale Bosworth told employees last week.
"We know prospective operating budgets will continue to be 'flat' or reduced, creating erosion in buying power that affects our ability to accomplish our work," Bosworth wrote in a Jan. 21 memo. "And while funding declines, our fixed costs are rising. These factors make it critical to increase our efficiency and make organizational changes, even in the face of potential impacts to our workforce."
Bosworth, who is retiring Friday, said 2006 was a rough year for the Forest Service. "During the past year, providing sufficient funds to the field for on-the-ground work has been exceptionally difficult," Bosworth wrote. "This year has been a wake-up call to all of us who care about the mission of the Forest Service."
USFS and the Interior Department spent nearly $2 billion fighting wildfires that burned over 9.7 million acres in 2006, and the agencies exhausted a $500 million reserve account and had to secure an additional $200 million from Congress last fall.
Despite clean audits on financial statements and improvements made thus far, further cuts will be necessary, Bosworth said, including 25 percent cuts to the operating costs of the Washington office and nine regional offices from fiscal 2006 levels by the end of fiscal 2009. "During the next several months we will undertake a significant restructuring of the Washington and regional offices," the chief wrote.
Part of the reorganization program is already under way as the Forest Service centralized its human resources services in Albuquerque, N.M., last year. Hundreds of employees from individual forests around the country as well as from USFS headquarters will transfer to the new Forest Service Albuquerque Service Center.
The Forest Service has already reduced its operating costs by $43 million, and that figure is expected to increase to $78 million in fiscal 2007, as the transition is completed (Land Letter, Dec. 7, 2006).
In his memo, Bosworth said the agency can become more efficient by using new technology in order to expand the number of field units but have a smaller overhead organization. "A recent organization assessment of the [Washington office] demonstrated that extensive savings could be realized if services to the field were consolidated by integrating program leadership functions currently performed" in the Washington and regional offices, Bosworth wrote.
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