Tester to post counter-proposal to forest bill draft that chopped logging

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has dismissed a proposed rewrite of his forest bill as "dead on arrival," and promised to publicly post his counteroffer that is expected next week. "We wanted to make sure they knew if this bill got released to the public, if it got through another channel, they need not be worried," Tester said. "This bill was not my idea. When it comes out of committee as screwed up as this bill was, why release a dead bill to anybody else?" A discussion draft of Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act started making rounds in Montana last week. The new version was written by staff of the Senate Energy Committee, and proposes significant changes to Tester's bill. Tester's staff and an Energy Committee spokesman declined to release the draft to the media. Tester defended that decision, saying he was not authorized to publicize legislation crafted by someone else, including committee staff working on a new version of his own bill. He did pledge to post all his own proposed changes to his bills on his Senate website in the future. The discussion draft isn't signed or attributed to any committee senator or staff member, and committee spokesman Bill Wicker said he works for committee chairman Jeff Bingaman, but would not say who developed the language in the May 24 draft. He did say the committee staff is a bipartisan group overseen by the Democratic and Republican chief legal counsels. "Normally this process happens every day at the staff level," Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy said. "They trade draft legislation back and forth, and none of that is technically public information in the Senate." Putting even Tester's own substitute amendments out to the public would be a significant break with Senate practice, Murphy said. Tester's next counter-proposal should be available in a few days or weeks, he said...more