Posted on 08/23/2002 11:47:53 AM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON, Aug 23, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The U.S. Forest Service, now battling one of the worst fire seasons in history, "misplaced" about $215 million intended for wildfire management because of an accounting error, a watchdog group contends. The agency says the money is being recovered.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group, made public on Friday an internal memo from Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth that said the error nearly two years ago had been discovered as the agency tried to improve its accounting practices.
The Forest Service expects to spend a record $1.5 billion this year to fight wildfires that have consumed more than 6 million acres in the West and killed 20 firefighters.
The agency is working with the White House Office of Management and Budget to find a way to apply the money, which was supposed to have been spent for the fiscal 2000 budget that ended Sept. 30, 2000, to this year's budget. Then it can be used to help pay for current firefighting efforts, Bosworth said.
While the auditing error could make additional money available to fight fires this summer, Eric Lynch, a policy analyst for the taxpayer group, said "the misplaced millions could have been spent to reduce fire risk long before this year's fires ravaged the West."
"How in the world does an agency lose hundreds of million of dollars so desperately needed to help extinguish fires in the West?" asked Lynch. "In a record-spending fire season, it is vital that the Forest Service be held accountable as to how it spends taxpayer money."
In a memo to regional foresters and other supervisors this month, Bosworth said $215 million was mistakenly reduced from a wildfire management account during a year-end account reconciliation in late 2000. The error was recently discovered "as a result of our continuing intense efforts to address agency accountability issues," Bosworth wrote in the memo, released by the taxpayer advocacy group.
Over the past decade, the Forest Service has failed eight out of ten Inspector General audits - a record the taxpayers' group called among the worst in the federal bureaucracy.
Bosworth, in his memo, said the windfall from the accounting error would do little to reverse the financial strain the agency is experiencing because of the severe fire season.
In the absence of a dramatic increase from Congress, "It is apparent these additional funds will only mitigate the possibility of harsh actions that could affect the employment and morale of the work force," Bosworth wrote. The memo urged supervisors to significantly curtail all but the most essential spending and limit operations to those focused on protecting life and property.
By MATTHEW DALY Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved
$215,000,000.00 is such a small amount of your taxpayer dollars that it could easily be left in the corner for years without anyone even realizing it was there. This was certainly not intentional. We meant to spend but just forgot we had your money in the corner. So please just move along and don't raise a fuss. This is not a big deal, keep moving.
What the heck could they possibly be alluding to? Hold us accountable and we'll hold our breath til we turn blue?? There should be rolling heads, not threats, coming out of that office.
I'll take every penny please, for my two kids as well....
A couple hundred million here, a couple hundred million there, before long it starts adding up to real money.
I'd like to know how many Clinton holdovers are still in D.C. abusing credit cards and doing creative bookkeeping. It would be too much to ask that they be found out and held accountable.
And, regarding Hillary, the firefighters that were booing her just last year, they're all best of friends now. She has bamboozled the entire firefighters union in NYC is what I've heard. How'd she do that? FV
It IS a slippery slope isn't it? $1.30 here 215 million there...I wonder how the Forest Service would stand up to an Enron-style inquiry?
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