Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 5801 passed in Special Session to allocate $218 million to the Department of Forestry (ODF) and the Oregon State Fire Marshal (OSFM) for costs associated with the 2024 wildfire season. ODF will receive $191.5 million and OSFM will receive $26.6 million. But not without opposition.

Jennifer Hamaker, President of Oregon Natural Resources Industries, grew up in the family business of logging. She informed legislators on how ODF went broke, what it is that broke ODF, and the mismanagement and disinformation plaguing ODF:

"From the outside looking in it's hard to tell whether something is incompetence or fraud. Incompetence is accidental fraud. Fraud is intentional incompetence.

Regardless, the effects are often the same: a waste of resources and of taxpayer dollars. And, likewise the outcomes should also be the same: be it incompetence or fraudulent the people doing it should be removed from office.

The Oregon Department of Forestry was established in 1911 and, until now, to operate they generated their own revenue through timber harvest revenue. They have now literally defunded themselves.

Which is why they are here today asking for $218 million when net fire costs are $122 million.

Before I get to the mismanagement and incompetence that has led to the ODF begging for the money that it should be generating on its own, let's look at what has led to this disaster.

ODF recently adopted a Habitat Conservation Plan (or HCP) that closes down 57% of our state forests to timber harvest, for 70 years. You don't have to be a math wizard to know that if you owned a farm, shutting down 57% of your land for 70 years is more likely to result in bankruptcy rather than profitability. Your mortgage hasn't decreased. The payments on your tractors and other equipment and cars and trucks haven't decreased. Those are all the same. but taking 57% of your land offline means that you will very quickly need the government to come in and bail you out after you made the reckless decision to shut down the majority of your land where your revenue comes from.

ODF is operating as a rogue entity, no longer following our constitution or the laws of our state.

By implementing the Habitat Conservation Plan over a year before it was approved by the Board of Forestry, ODF staff bypassed their governing body’s authority and obligated future legislatures. Now we have staff writing state policy and for seven decades of legislatures will have to deal with this reckless and irresponsible decision that stripped the state, counties and ODF of future revenue long after all of us are gone. ODF staff wrote and implemented state policy with no vote from the people, no authority from the legislature, and against the Forest Trust Land County’s opposition. It's one thing to encumber the next generation with piles of debt, this strips them of the means to pay for the forest they are obligated to protect.

What is the message we are sending by giving ODF, this rogue bureaucracy, $100 million more than the fire costs?

I should also point out that ODF’s failure to include Greatest Permanent Value in their HCP, ODF’s failure to include the Forest Trust Land Advisory Council in their planning, scoping, and steering committees, ODF’s failure by side stepping Board approval, and ODF’s failure by obligating future legislatures all goes against Oregon statutes and Oregon law.

As a governing body, entrusted by the people of Oregon, do we support lawlessness and incompetence and hand them $100 million to continue doing whatever they want?

ODF is now insolvent, in large part because of the HCP that shuts down 57% of our state forests for 70 years and drastically reduces timber harvest volumes by at least 34%. Which is why they are here today asking for more money. They will be here again in future bienniums or special sessions asking for more when if they had just followed the law, included Forest Trust Land Counties and set their bias aside to economic impacts when creating the HCP, they would be bringing us money rather than demanding it from us.

Coming here today is an admission of complete failure. I sincerely hope it’s only incompetence.

And despite those failures, ODF is here asking for $218 million when what they ought to be asking for is forgiveness.

We know forests under ODF's watch have gone up in smoke. It turns out so does the money under their watch. According to submitted documents, net emergency fire costs are $122 million but ODF wants $218 million, and they’ve already received $47.5 million from the E-Board. The combined total is $265.5 million. When ODF receives reimbursement from the federal government, they will have received well over half a billion dollars. ($265.5M+47.5M+$152M+$186M=$651M)

To put this into perspective, according to an E-Board analysis, the 10-year annual average for gross fire cost is $69 million – meaning that the 2024 fire season cost almost 5 times more than the 10 year average.

That seems a tad excessive don't you think? As I say I hope it's only incompetence.

At the very least, a complaint should be filed with the Inspector General (IG) immediately against ODF’s leadership, State Forester Cal Mukumoto, Board of Forestry Chair Jim Kelly, and State Forest Division Chief Mike Wilson for all of the above. And do so before any additional money is given to them.

If you do not think there is already plenty to investigate before handing them more money, brace yourself. There’s more. Because before we even think about handing them any money let's look at the record.

Unmanaged forests allow fuels to accumulate, adding fire risk which is a lot of what we experienced during the Labor Day fires. Unmanaged forests have unintended consequences and indirect costs.

Since the Labor Day Fires are still fresh for most of us, let’s look at the impacts.

• Labor Day fires killed 9 Oregonians while burning through our rural communities of Gates, Detroit, Phoenix, Talent, Blue River, Vida, Mckenzie, and others.
• 1 million acres burned destroying 5,000+ homes and businesses.
• The Labor Day fires burned over 15 billionboard feet of lumber worth more than $30 billion of end-product value that could have built 1 million family homes.
• That staggering loss of timber will be felt for decades. The loss of timber will reduce future harvests by 115 to 265 million board feet per year over the next 40 years, and economic impact of $5.9 billion.
• The estimated $5.9 billion total net economic impact of the Labor Day fires is even more significant when compared to the $12.7 billion annual output of the Oregon forest sector – meaning the total negative impact is equal to 46% of the forest sector’s annual output.
• And that's just the cost of the timber. It will also cost Oregon’s forest industry sector 1,200 to 3,000 jobs over the next 40 years. Not including wage growth or inflation and assuming an average forest-sector wage of $68,200 for each one of those jobs, that is a net economic loss of $82million to $204.6 million per year. For a grand total loss between $3.3 billion to $68.2 billion over 40 years.
• And those are just some of the timber and economic impacts.. The governor and the ODF claim they are concerned about carbon emissions. The carbon released in just the first few weeks from the 1 million acres of burned timber was more than Oregon’s entire annual transportation and energy sectors combined, normally, Oregon’s largest sources of carbon emissions. Given that, Oregon doesn't need to drive fewer cars, we need to burn fewer trees.
• A single large-fire year can emit up to 15 million metric tons of carbon, which is equivalent to a quarter of Oregon’s annual human-caused emissions and twice as much carbon as all the vehicles in Portland emit each year.
• Out of the 1 million acres burned, only about half will be replanted. We need salvage harvesting to clean up our forests and trigger the law for reforestation. Salvage harvest can help offset firefighting costs.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

ODF should do the work it was created to do not write state policy with bias and blinders toward economic impacts. ODF should not be here asking for money to operate when its statute gives it the means to create their own revenue.

Under ODF's management the forests are costing us money rather than generating money. Through well-known forest-management practices, developed right here in Oregon and practiced for generations, Oregon experienced only 1 forest fire in excess of 10,000 acres between 1952-1987. Even as recently as 2011, we had only 11,000 acres burned instead of what has become the new norm of an average of 650,000 burned acres annually, lost to incompetence.

Heat, fuel and oxygen are the elements needed to make fire. We cannot control the oxygen or the heat, but we can absolutely control the fuel. And we should absolutely control ODF and deny any additional funding for operations until they are investigated. Otherwise it won't just be the forest going up in flames it will be the money we hand them.

ODF, the Board of Forestry and our State Forester has turned a $6 billion asset into a liability that is bankrupting ODF until the Legislature becomes their accomplice."


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2024-12-18 15:08:17

Last Update: 2024-12-19 18:09:43