Big boost in USFS wildfire budget likely to wait another year

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Congress is unlikely to give the Forest Service all the money it needs up front to more efficiently fight wildfires on national forests this summer and fall, a top Bush administration official said Monday.

But faster, more detailed accounting of firefighting costs this season should help persuade lawmakers to provide more money in the near future, said Mark Rey, U.S. agriculture undersecretary in charge of the Forest Service.

And the agency should be able to hold its own until more money can be made available, as long as Mother Nature cooperates with a fire season that begins later that last year's record outbreaks, as expected, he said in an interview.

"We are probably not going to find an alternative to the way we fund firefighting in this budget cycle (fiscal 2004). It will probably be something we have to tackle in 2005," Rey said in an interview.

"But I think there is sort of a broad awareness that the current spend, borrow and repay system isn't working ideally any longer," he told The Associated Press.

Last year, officials spent $1.6 billion to fight fires -- four times the budgeted amount. Much of the spending was borrowed from accounts meant for other objectives, such as restoration, reduction of hazardous fuels and research.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was among those pushing to increase spending on the National Fire Plan to $3.1 billion in the coming year. But last month, House-Senate budget negotiators trimmed that to $2.6 billion.

Rey said Monday early indications are that drought has all but ended in the Southeast and that the fire season will be slower to start across much of the Southwest and West this year.

"Last year we had already spent money on large incident fires by late May," he said.

"The bad news is that in the Northern Rockies, Oregon and Washington and to some extent the Sierra, it doesn't look as good. The Sierra has been wet but the question is what will it look like in late summer and fall?"

In addition, Minnesota and the northern Great Lakes areas are showing unusually high fire risks, he said.

On the bright side, he said, this is a non-election year, "so Congress will probably be in longer.

"So if we have to borrow money, it's more likely to be repaid in the fall. The system is still not ideal but the way it's working out this year should be better than 2002," Rey said.

"The big problem with 2002 was we started borrowing early and often. Most of our other programs were delayed significantly," he said.

"It's not costing anymore money but it is diminishing our ability to perform in other areas because we have to shift program funds in order to do this work," he said.

Rey said they are taking steps to establish "real-time" reporting from the field "so we can know with more precision what we're spending.

"That is going to be important to take to Congress to show we can track and control the costs as they are incurred," he said.

"We'll be able to show them this isn't a blank check, not only in tracking costs but containing them, while of course ultimately understanding we are dealing with a force of nature."

In borrowing from other funds, the agency typically begins with trust funds where the money is not already targeted.

"Then we go into things that are discretionary, like land acquisitions. Then things that are external, like contracts and grants that can be postponed," Rey said.

"We've tried to keep fuels reduction as one of the last things we borrowed from, but inevitably we had to borrow from that too before the year was out."

Rey said one of the problems this year is that a number of new chairmen filled slots on budget and appropriation committees in Congress.

"And this is something that is probably going to require people to go through a cycle and then sit down and say, there's got to be a better way to do this," he said.

"It also would help if we had a little bit more money, but obviously that is not going to be in the cards for the foreseeable future."