Panel to Forest Service: national park option still on table

The U.S. Forest Service has two years to make good on requests for more funding for Mount St. Helens or a local advisory committee will recommend making the volcano a national park, one of the committee co-chairman said Tuesday on the 30th anniversary of the famous eruption. Skamania County Commissioner Paul Pearce is going to deliver that message directly to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell when he meets with him next month in Washington, D.C. "I hope to impress upon him how important it is to make every effort to find ways to live up to the recommendations," Pearce said. Pearce was one of three co-chairmen of the Congressional Mount St. Helens Advisory Committee, which last month turned over to federal lawmakers its recommendations for the future of the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Among the committee's dozens of recommendations, it said the monument should remain under Forest Service management, but only if more money is allocated to the area and recreational access is improved. No official time line has been established before, but Pearce said Tuesday he believes two years is plenty of time for Forest Service officials to show they've dedicated more funds for the monument. The committee recommended the volcano get specific, line-item funding that can't be diverted to other Forest Service projects or forest fires. The committee also suggested a separate management area be created that includes the current monument and some adjacent Forest Service land. Committee members also would like to see the manager of that area elevated so he or she would have more pull within the agency...more

Classic bureaucratic moves.

1. Demand more appropriations, of course.
2. Line item funding. This means they don't think they should have to compete for money with other FS programs.
3. Raise the classification and therefor the pay of the manager.
4. Threaten FS headquarters with taking the monument away from the agency. Play our little game or we'll pick up our marbles and play elsewhere.

Nothing about which agency has the appropriate expertise. Nothing about which agency would be the most efficient manager. Nothing about which agency has the best record of listening to the public during the planning process. Not even anything about which agency works best with advisory committees. Just give us more money, cement the amount from any change and pay our guy more, or we'll run to the parkies.

All classic bureaucratic moves to get more dinero.

Now who do you think thought all this up: the members of the advisory committee or persons in the local FS office?

Looks to me like an advisory committee doing the bidding of an appropriation-hungry local office.