Forest Service HQ Move

[Jason Snyder]

What about the dollars from Road Maintenance deposits? Those are retained by the Forest. They aren't insignificant figures either, often in the hundreds of thousands dollar range. KV funds and Brush Disposal money are also retained.

File a FOIA to see where they did or didn’t spend it?

 

[meta_gabbro]

USFS webpage on reorganization

Straight from the horse’s mouth.

Looks like the Auburn, Alabama “state” office will be responsible for the Ozarks and Ouachitas as well as all the gulf coast states.

While they say any offices not listed for closure here are currently under evaluation, and I think the impact varies state-by-state, it looks like my neck of the woods is getting shafted. Unless they’re keeping district offices open as well.

Read through the whole thread and wanted to come back to this. Until this reorg, the USFS was structured by region, based on the similarity of forests in each region and by forest continuity. So southern ID and western WY falling into the Great Basin with NV and UT because the landscapes were similar, while northern ID was in the Northern Rockies region and eastern WY in the Rocky Mountain region with the other central Rockies and plains states. AZ and NM together, and OR and WA together, because each pair of those states shares landscape characteristics.

This was the justification for moving DOI to regional administration during the first Trump presidency - it makes sense to have agencies managing landscapes adhere to landscape boundaries rather than often manmade state boundaries, and it makes sense to have all your land management agencies on the same system. I can see how this could lead to stupid management practices in adjacent states, places like CO adopting one strategy and WY adopting another, even though as far as the landscape impacts are concerned it's the same damn grassland. Insert any pair of states you want - AZ and UT, AL and GA, OH and IN. Why the change of heart?

I'm also counting 14 state zones in the new system - that's an increase of high level administrative offices, and you can bet that they'll be sticking GS13/14/15 state directors in each of those offices, along with comensurate amounts of GS11/12 staff too. And splitting former Regions 9 and 8 into 4 separate regions seems weird too. Those regions each only had like 12M acres of USFS lands, every other region was between 20M and 30M, did they really need to be split into 4 separate regions?

When the BLM headquarters was moved to Grand Junction, only 41 of >300 employees opted to relocate, and the rest left. I would be surprised if this doesn't have a similar effect, though with lower numbers to account for the people that have already left as a result of the incentives from last year. The BLM reorg also resulted in increased expenditures, since related programs were moved to different state offices and when in-person work was required the agency just had to fly the program leads to Denver or DC.

TLDR - Doesn't make sense to me. It's a step backwards in simplifying land management practices. Bunch of USFS staff will bail, people in individual states are going to get pissy about what people in the next state over are doing, and there's going to be a bunch of jurisdictional squabbling.

 

[HunterGatherer]

NEPA “reform”…

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/04/07/usda-finalizes-historic-regulatory-reform-national-environmental-policy-act-final-rule?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwRDNQZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe4gL93TGyzl_vlYaqu8qPk3nI1_9hVnaBrlIKhZHlCeUXycVQWQoGADNo8nk_aem_xipYeaiGGgH21F-PTeSXpA

Deregulation at the same time as major staff reduction and restructuring is going to mean logging, mining and grazing interests are going to have a heyday…







Rescinding the roadless rule and increasing commercial activity is going to cause more fires. Roads = Hman-caused fires.

People are asking “ how will we process all this wood now that the mills are shuttered. In the same way that the left subsidized “green energy”, the right will subsidize the infrastructure to extract and process whatever they can get out of the forests and rangeland.

 

[2531usmc]

NEPA “reform”…

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/04/07/usda-finalizes-historic-regulatory-reform-national-environmental-policy-act-final-rule?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwRDNQZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe4gL93TGyzl_vlYaqu8qPk3nI1_9hVnaBrlIKhZHlCeUXycVQWQoGADNo8nk_aem_xipYeaiGGgH21F-PTeSXpA

Deregulation at the same time as major staff reduction and restructuring is going to mean logging, mining and grazing interests are going to have a heyday…


View attachment 1049317


View attachment 1049316

Rescinding the roadless rule and increasing commercial activity is going to cause more fires. Roads = Hman-caused fires.

People are asking “ how will we process all this wood now that the mills are shuttered. In the same way that the left subsidized “green energy”, the right will subsidize the infrastructure to extract and process whatever they can get out of the forests and rangeland.

I’m reading through this and I’m kinda thinking this might create some decent paying jobs w/benefits for people in rural areas.

I also kinda think that we can do resources extraction in a way that coexists with wild places

 

[wowzers]

Road maintenance comes down as either annual or deferred maintenance. Annual maintenance has to be spent every year and generally goes towards in-house grading of roads by gov't personnel. Deferred maintenance is project based and now needs to be submitted. The state leads then decide which projects to fund. Deferred maintenance funds can be active for a couple years, 2-3, before the project is either complete or the remaining funds are swept into another project. As I said before, both Annual and Deferred maintenance are appropriated by Congress.

I don't know what the other funds are.

The money I speak of isn't appropriated. It is a deposit paid by Timber Sale Purchasers on a per ton basis. KV and BD funds are also collected through timber sale stumpage for Brush Disposal and Reforestation work.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/legacy-media/umatilla/WP%2017%20smd.pdf

Another funding source in recent years is GAO Legacy Restoration Fund which last I heard was fully funded for the five years it was authorized (21-25) for $9.5 Billion of which the USFS got 15% ($1.4 Billion).

 

[wowzers]

File a FOIA to see where they did or didn’t spend it?

I've asked several times but never took it that far. It has almost become a running joke with the guys on the ground I work with.

 

[HunterGatherer]

I saw this “hot take” by a wildland firefighter on FB and I think it does a great job of summarizing people’s concerns …

 

[S.Clancy]

The money I speak of isn't appropriated. It is a deposit paid by Timber Sale Purchasers on a per ton basis. KV and BD funds are also collected through timber sale stumpage for Brush Disposal and Reforestation work.

I don't work in forestry, so I'm not familiar with these. Any $$$ made by the Forest will go back into the treasury, not into Forest budget.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/legacy-media/umatilla/WP%2017%20smd.pdf

Another funding source in recent years is GAO Legacy Restoration Fund which last I heard was fully funded for the five years it was authorized (21-25) for $9.5 Billion of which the USFS got 15% ($1.4 Billion).

Great American Outdoor Act (GAOA) I am very familiar with. It was a funding arm to increase deferred maintenance funds. So, projects were submitted and awarded by State leadership. We are just finishing up the 2025 funded projects. Most projects where I am were updating big rec sites and campgrounds, some roads and high hazard dams. We don't keep any "leftover" money, it's all either swept up by the department or is parlayed into a project that is over budget, which was usually the high hazard class dams.

 

[S.Clancy]

I've asked several times but never took it that far. It has almost become a running joke with the guys on the ground I work with.

So instead of putting in a little work and filing a FOIA you decide to just bitch?

 

[wowzers]

I don't work in forestry, so I'm not familiar with these. Any $$$ made by the Forest will go back into the treasury, not into Forest budget.

Maybe read the first sentence of the link I provided instead of just talking about things you self admittedly don't know about.

"When national forest timber is sold, receipts generated by a sale can be retained by
the Forest Service to pay for:
• Reforestation of timber sale cutting units, and to finance sale-area improvements
within a timber sale boundary (Knutson-Vandenberg funds).
• To prepare and administer future salvage sales (Salvage Sale Fund).
• To treat or remediate slash (woody debris) created by the timber sale itself (Brush
Disposal funds).
• To complete road maintenance activities associated with a timber sale.
• To provide credits (in lieu of stumpage payments) for specified road developments
(generally new road construction) required of a timber-sale purchaser (Purchaser
Road Credits)."

 

[S.Clancy]

Maybe read the first sentence of the link I provided instead of just talking about things you self admittedly don't know about.

Ok. "Can be retained". Send a FOIA and see where it goes. Based on those laws it has to stay within the original sale boundary.

 

[Jason Snyder]

I've asked several times but never took it that far. It has almost become a running joke with the guys on the ground I work with.

What’s the joke?

A lot of agencies won’t release information without a FOIA because they want a paper trail documenting what was asked for and what was provided.

You could easily have all the information you want detailing what was sent to the treasury and what stayed in the district, and then how it was spent.

 

[CorbLand]

What’s the joke?

A lot of agencies won’t release information without a FOIA because they want a paper trail documenting what was asked for and what was provided.

You could easily have all the information you want detailing what was sent to the treasury and what stayed in the district, and then how it was spent.

To add to this.

As someone who deals with this. If you reach out to me directly, I am instructed by the agency I work for, to direct you to fill out a request and not provide anything until I am asked to by the department that manages those requests for the information.

Calling or emailing people directly is not the way to get those answers.

But who are we kidding here. Asking people to follow the correct procedures to get information so they could be informed and come to a rational conclusion? Nope, that requires effort.

 

[Jason Snyder]

To add to this.

As someone who deals with this. If you reach out to me directly, I am instructed by the agency I work for, to direct you to fill out a request and not provide anything until I am asked to by the department that manages those requests for the information.

Calling or emailing people directly is not the way to get those answers.

But who are we kidding here. Asking people to follow the correct procedures to get information so they could be informed and come to a rational conclusion? Nope, that requires effort.

For a data driven website, there sure are a fair number of folks who won’t make the efforts to get information and instead rely on what they think, feel, or heard.

 

[timbernomad]

Not sure how it helps any federal agency for its headquarters to be moved away from the place where all the decisions are made (DC). Seems to me that you want the higher ups easily accessible to legislators and big wigs in the executive branch.

 

[UPThunderbolt]

Not sure how it helps any federal agency for its headquarters to be moved away from the place where all the decisions are made (DC). Seems to me that you want the higher ups easily accessible to legislators and big wigs in the executive branch.

So maybe you’ve hit on the real reason for the move. Is it possible that the administration wants to reduce that access in an effort to diminish the agency’s ability to communicate with the legislators???

 

[CorbLand]

For a data driven website, there sure are a fair number of folks who won’t make the efforts to get information and instead rely on what they think, feel, or heard.

Many people only care about the data when the data backs up the “fact” they want to be true.

Now, I have worked for a government entity in various capacities for 14 years. It is absolutely incredible how pathetic most employees are. We are incredibly and needlessly inefficient. The wasteful spending is not reported on to levels it should be.
But.
People need to be informed to actually make change. By running off pure emotion with nothing to back it up, it only makes it easier to get away with it all. You are distracting from the real problems.

Also, as someone that puts information for those requests together at times. Please continue to ask the questions and submit the requests. I really want our department to be held accountable and answer questions.
But.
Don’t complain about us being inefficient while your asking us to prove to you that a roof access ladder couldn’t be put in a different location because you don’t like seeing it as you drive down the road. (Yes, we had to put together a statement on this.)

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Not sure how it helps any federal agency for its headquarters to be moved away from the place where all the decisions are made (DC). Seems to me that you want the higher ups easily accessible to legislators and big wigs in the executive branch.

The goal is to move the jobs and other direct expenditures to other parts of the country. That makes the bureaucracy slightly less powerful and spreads the graft to new places.

 

[wowzers]

What’s the joke?

A lot of agencies won’t release information without a FOIA because they want a paper trail documenting what was asked for and what was provided.

You could easily have all the information you want detailing what was sent to the treasury and what stayed in the district, and then how it was spent.

It was the USFS employees that found it irritating not just me.

The last time I brought it up it was with the former Forest Supervisor and current Deputy Supervisor not Joe Snuffie the campground host. If they thought it needed a FOIA they would have told me, but maybe I will go that route now. I'm just not sure who will process it with all this shuttering/gutting going on.

 

[wowzers]

To add to this.

As someone who deals with this. If you reach out to me directly, I am instructed by the agency I work for, to direct you to fill out a request and not provide anything until I am asked to by the department that manages those requests for the information.

Calling or emailing people directly is not the way to get those answers.

But who are we kidding here. Asking people to follow the correct procedures to get information so they could be informed and come to a rational conclusion? Nope, that requires effort.

Like i said to Jason above I wasn't asking the front desk person, it was in a meeting with a Forest Supervisor, who if that was what they needed from me could have said fill out a FOIA but they didn't.