Senate omnibus falls, taking Tester’s forest bill with it

This is old news already, but last night Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, faced with having to read the text of the entire 1924-page measure on the Senate floor, pulled the $1.1 trillion omnibus appropriations bill.

For all intents and purposes that means Sen. Jon Tester’s Montana Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative, which was tacked on to the measure earlier this week, is most likely dead.

Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy told the Missoula Independent:

“Partisan politics shot down this measure last night, but it won't keep Jon from creating Montana jobs—through middle-class tax relief, strengthening family agriculture and small businesses, and working together with Montanans on bipartisan plans like his forest jobs bill.”

Tester: “widespread bi-partisan support” for forest bill

I received an e-mail this morning from Sen. Jon Tester’s office regarding the “widespread, bipartisan support for Sen. Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.”

Click on the image below or here to see the full “Who supports the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act?” file included in the e-mail. 
 
UPDATE (12-14-10, 4:40 p.m.): I just received a modified version of the chart above from Mike Garrity at the Alliance for the Wild Rockies [the source of the document is Denny Rehberg’s office] listing quite a few more opponents. Clink on the image below to see higher-resolution image:

UPDATE (12-15-10, 2:30 p.m.): just received another update to this chart:

First off, it’s worth pointing out that the bill that was attached to the Senate Omnibus Appropriations Act, now titled the “Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative,” is not the same bill as the one Tester introduced in July 2009, then called the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.” As I posted yesterday, the final version included in the omnibus bill contains a number of significant changes from the original bill introduced in 2009. You can read about those changes in this post. 

You can view the entire Senate omnibus bill with links to Tester FJRI in an easy-to-use DocumentCloud viewer here.

The e-mail also referenced a an Aug. 2009 poll by Harstad Research  that found “73% of surveyed Montanans support FJRA based on bill’s description.”

Here’s the poll question Harstad Research asked participants of that poll:

Q 7. Let me briefly describe the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which would do the following:

• Create jobs in Montana by directing the Forest Service to use light-on-the-land logging and forest restoration projects aimed at improving forest health and reducing forest fire risk;
• Employ forest stewardship contractors to restore Montana’s damaged streams, forest roads, campgrounds and trails;
• Guarantee that motorized vehicles will have access to designated recreation areas;
• Protect Montana’s wildlife habitats and watersheds by designating certain places as Wilderness areas in the Beaverhead Deer Lodge, Lolo and Kootenai National Forests.

Do you FAVOR or OPPOSE the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act that I just described?
Results: Favor--73 percent; Oppose--15 percent; no answer--12 percent.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign is not a single organization, but a campaign that 16 conservation organization from Montana and 39 conservation organizations from around the nation signed-on to. You can see the complete list of groups associated with the LBPWC here.

Here' are the Montana-based groups that signed the official Senate  testimony opposing Tester’s FJRA:


Alliance for the Wild Rockies (MT)
Big Wild Advocates (MT)
Buffalo Field Campaign (MT)
Central Montana Wildlands Association (MT)
Conservation Congress (MT)
Deerlodge Forest Defense Fund (MT)
Friends of the Bitterroot (MT)
Friends of the Rattlesnake (MT)
Friends of the Wild Swan (MT)
Montana Rivers (MT)
Swan View Coalition (MT)
Western Montana Mycological Association (MT)
Western Watersheds Project (MT)
Wilderness Watch (MT)
WildWest Institute (MT)
Yellowstone Buffalo Foundation (MT)

Also notably absent from the list of opponents Tester sent out this morning is former Democratic Senatorial candidate Paul Richards, who accused Tester of breaking key campaign promise by introducing the FJRA. Richards dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary race in 2006 and threw his support behind Tester, who polls showed was deadlocked with state auditor John Morrison. According to Richards, Tester earned his endorsement by agreeing to certain terms, which Richards posted on his campaign website on May 31, 2006.

According to Richards, the top two terms of that agreement were:

1. Help stop the Iraq War, withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq, and work for peace.
2. Work to protect all of Montana’s remaining roadless wildlands.

As one Lowdown reader pointed out in an e-mail to me this morning, the Senate omnibus bill containing the Forest Jobs and Restoration Initiative “also contains another $158 BILLION for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…the wars Jon Tester vowed to not fund when he ran for office.”

On another note, I’ve received an e-mail from Wayne Hirst, a staunch supporter of the bill who appeared at the unveiling of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act at RY Timber in in Townsend last summer.  Hirst takes issue with criticisms leveled by Matthew Koehler of the LBPWC and Mike Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies:

   As the person on the "timber" portion of Testor's bill here on the Kootenai, I must point out some facts that Matt Koehler and Mike Garrity seem to avoid, or outright tell falsehoods about:

   1.  There in NO mandated logging in the bill.  The word "logging" is not there.  The bill mandates "treatment" of these acres, and I have personally discussed this with local USFS people as to just what kind of treatments they will do, or envision.  Logging is one "treatment" for sure. But there are many other "treatments" as well, (now, 1" brush, as well as needles even are considered "merchantable" and fit in the bill) and the bill defines "treatment" as just using a "tool".   Now, since that definition was simplified to using a "tool", there will be court arguments over just what is a "tool" I am sure.

   2. There is no "allowing" motorized use in IRA's in this bill.   I don't know about the Beaverhead, although we were just told Monday nite that there is none of this allowed on the Beaverhead, but here on the Kootenai, it has always been clear, due to Judge Molloy's rulings, that nothing can ever be done in IRA's, as they must be managed as wilderness. Any statement that motorized use in IRA's can be done on the Kootenai is just plain false.

  But, I never knew that Rehberg agrees with Mike Garrity and Matt Koehler.  Who would ever have thought that could occur?

UPDATE: Matthew Koehler responds at length to Hirst in the comments section of this post.

UPDATE: Congressman Denny Rehberg is holding an "Emergency Tele-Town Hall Meeting" to discuss Tester's bill tonight. Click this link for more information.

UPDATE: Another opponent not on Tester’s list: Ruby Valley Stock Association. Montana Standard guest column here.

Again, I urge anyone with thoughts on this bill to e-mail me or post your comments in the comment section below. You can reach me at mtlowdown(at)gmail.com. I’ll continue to post comments as I receive them.

The Lowdown : News and notes from the Montana capital. http://www.mtlowdown.com http://www.greatfallstribune.com

Tester unveils new draft of forest jobs bill

Today Sen. Jon Tester unveiled the latest draft version of his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.

You can download a copy of Tester's latest draft here.

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Tester said his new discussion draft is the next step in a “long and complicated process.”

(Click the play button on the player below to hear the entire conference call. Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy introduces the conference call.)

The bill comes in response to a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee discussion draft that surfaced earlier this month. You can read the text of the committee’s draft here and here.

As originally proposed, Tester’s forest measure would add 660,000 acres of new wilderness in Montana while mandating logging on 100,000 acres on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests.

The ENRC draft, which was circulated among members of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership collaborate group approximately three weeks ago, removed those mandates.

The committee draft also stripped controversial language from the original bill that allowed military helicopter landings and the use of motorized vehicles for livestock and wildlife management within wilderness boundaries.

Tester said his latest draft would result in the “same outcome” laid out in his original proposal while including some of the ideas contained in the committee’s draft.

“It, too, is a discussion draft,” Tester acknowledged Thursday in a telephone call with reporters. “It very likely will not be the final version that the committee votes on.”

Tester said his staff is in daily negotiations with the committee staff in an attempt to hammer out a bill that can reach a vote before Congress wraps up work later this year.

However, Tester warned that if the final committee bill does not contain mandated logging levels aimed at sustaining the state’s dwindling wood products industry then it will be “dead on arrival.”

“I have said from the beginning that I will only support a bill that contains the four carefully balanced provisions that have resulted from years of folks working together, those being timber, wilderness, recreation and restoration,” Tester said. “The committee’s bill stripped out the timber and restoration certainties in my bill. All four components are critically important to this bill.”

Tester acknowledged that the Forest Service was critical of the mandated logging quotas contained in the original proposal.

Harris Sherman, Under Secretary of Natural Resources and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified at a committee hearing in December that the mandated logging levels outlined in Tester’s bill “are likely unachievable and perhaps unsustainable.”

Tester said Thursday that the agency now supports the bill.

“We were able to work with the Forest Service and get them on board,” Tester said. “They support this bill.” (Tester quote begins at 11:37 in the recording above).

However, Joe Walsh, a spokesman in the Forest Service’s Washington, D.C. office declined to comment on the agency’s position on Tester’s latest proposal.

“We have not received a copy of the senator’s latest draft, but we will review it when we get a copy,” Walsh said. “Right now this is a work in progress between the senator and the committee.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy said the agency is “fine with” the “sustainability of the mechanical treatment levels prescribed by the bill.”

“It’s our understanding that the Forest Service believes the work Jon is trying to achieve is ecologically sustainable (through mechanical treatment),” Murphy wrote.

Tester said members of the collaborative group that helped draft the original bill—which includes a handful of wilderness, conservation and timber groups—support his proposed changes to the measure.

“They’re enthusiastic,” Tester said. “They have the same information that you have in front of you and they’re fired up about it. They like it.”

But some environmental and conservation groups, many of whom have been critical of Tester’s bill from the start, remained miffed by his latest proposal.

“If the goal is protecting some wilderness in Montana and getting some restoration and fuel reduction work accomplished, then the Energy and Natural Resource Committee's draft, while not perfect, is a step in the right direction and superior to both Senator Tester's original bill and his new proposal,” said Matthew Koehler of the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign.

Koehler also testified at the energy and committee’s December 17 hearing.

“As we move forward, let's hope Senator Tester and the collaborators give the committee's draft significantly more consideration than just proclaiming it dead on arrival,” Koehler added.

George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch, said Tester’s latest proposal attempts to re-write longstanding forest management policy, including the Wilderness Act, by allowing previously banned activities in federally designated wilderness areas.

“I would hope that the senator would honor the Wilderness Act and not even try to put that language back in that bill,” Nickas said.

Like Koehler, Nickas said if the bill is to have a chance of passing, then the committee draft would be better starting point for negotiations.

“I think it’s too bad if Sen. Tester is drawing a line in the sand by saying, ‘mandated logging or nothing.’ I think by doing that he’s saying ‘nothing.’” Nickas said. “Mandated logging is not where a lot of folks in the conservation community, nor do I think a lot of members of Congress, are willing to go.”

For his part, Tester said he’s committed to sticking to the goals of the partnership that helped create the forest jobs bill.

“I can tell you I’ve got plenty of fight left in me and so do thousands of Montanans who support this bill, but more importantly support the ideas and principles that this bill contains,” Tester said.

Tester's forest bill, transparency, and the legislative process

In Friday’s Tribune I reported that the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has written a “discussion draft” of Sen. Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.” This particular draft contains significant changes to Tester’s original bill, but so far only a select few have seen it.

I’ve obtained a copy of the discussion draft. It’s in two parts. You can download it here and here.

I think it’s worth talking a bit about the process of reporting this story in order to shed some light on one of the issues at the heart of the debate over Sen. Tester’s forest bill: transparency in the legislative process.

When I learned about this latest discussion draft I called Sen. Tester’s office and asked his staff for a copy of it. Upon my initial inquiry I was lead to believe that Sen. Tester’s office wasn’t aware of the draft. After subsequent phone calls and e-mails I was told that I would have to contact the energy committee staff to get a copy of it.

I’ve since confirmed that reporters for other Montana newspapers have also asked Sen. Tester’s office for the draft, and they too were referred to the energy committee staff.

In reporting the story yesterday, Tester’s staffer would not confirm whether or not the committee draft existed, or whether or not the senator had seen it. But I learned later Thursday afternoon that at least some members of the collaborative group who helped draft the original bill had received a copy of the discussion draft from Tester’s staff sometime within the last two weeks.

Tony Colter, of Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge, told me he had talked with Tester’s staff about the discussion draft. Colter said the committee draft was unsupportable by Montana’s timber industry because it dropped language that mandated 100,000 acres of logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests.

Asked where Tester stood on the committee's revisions, Colter said:

“They’re in agreement with us, but you probably ought to talk to them,” Colter said.

Ed Regan, of RY Timber in Townsend, has also seen the draft.

“Yeah, I have seen it,” Regan said when I asked him about discussion draft. “It’s been about a week ago.”

When I asked Regan where he got the committee draft, he said:

“I think it came through Tester’s staff.”

But when I asked Tester’s staff about the discussion draft, no one would even acknowledge that it existed. I was told Sen. Tester was traveling most of the day and was unavailable for comment. I did get this statement from Sen. Tester late in the afternoon when he was between flights:

“This bill started with Montanans working together to craft a made-in-Montana solution to improve our forest management that was built on a commitment to create jobs through logging, recreation, and wilderness. There are a number of changes folks would like to see made to S. 1470 – some will be implemented, all will be considered. Make no mistake, if the timber mandates are not part of the deal, I'll pull the plug on the whole thing."

Tester did not directly respond to my question of whether or not there was a committee discussion draft or what his position on the draft was. Instead I was told by his staff to call the Senate energy committee press office, which I did. I didn’t hear back until the following day.

I received a call Friday from Bill Wicker, a spokesman for the Senate energy committee. Wicker said discussion drafts aren’t typically shared with the public and he said he couldn’t provide me a copy of the draft of Tester’s bill. He said a discussion draft is a “committee work product” that is produced by staff as they attempt to craft a compromise bill that can pass the full committee. He said some discussion drafts go through a dozen or more iterations, and they’re shared along the way with other members of the committee and with experts, which in this case included Forest Service staff. He said Tester was given the draft and that he likely shared the draft with other partners working on the legislation.

Wicker told me that this current version of the discussion draft is likely to change, and he said it doesn’t serve the legislative process well to release it to the public every step of the way.

“My legislative staff will very quickly remind me that we don’t negotiate in the press,” Wicker said. “If we start negotiating in the press we’d never pass a single bill.”

One lesson Montanans might take from this story is that the legislative process at the federal level is much different from the legislative process here in Montana. In Montana, nearly any document produced by a state employee, including the legislative staffers who draft bills, are public documents and available to anyone who asks at any point in the process. If a state employee produces a document on a state computer on state time, that document is a matter of public record. Period. The only exception is in cases where individual privacy is concerned. When it comes to drafting legislation, individual privacy is not an issue. Therefore, Montanans are used to a level of transparency that doesn’t exist at the federal level.

Part of the controversy stems from the fact that Sen. Tester has, since his days on the campaign trail, been lauded as a champion of openness and transparency in government. The Sunlight Foundation has repeatedly applauded his efforts to increase transparency and openness government. Shortly after taking office he made statewide national headlines for being the first senator to post his daily schedule online. Just last month he introduced the “Public Online Information Act” a bill that supporters say would “revolutionize how the public accesses government information.” In a 2008 guest editorial in the Missoulian announcing that he would have former Montana Supreme Court Justice John Sheehy conduct an “ethics audit,” on his first year in office, Tester said:

“Montanans deserve honesty, openness and transparency.”

and that…

“Openness and transparency are critically important to me.”

When rumors began to circulate early last year that Tester was working on a forest bill, I officially requested a copy of the draft on May 27, 2009. I received no response. I asked again on July 14 of that year for a copy of the draft. I was told then that I would have to wait until July 17 when Tester planned to announce the bill at a press event at RY Timber in Townsend.

But throughout the bill’s drafting process selected members of a collaborative group that included Sun Mountain Lumber, Montana Wilderness Association, RY Timber Inc., Montana Trout Unlimited, Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Inc., Roseburg Forest Products, National Wildlife Federation and Smurfit Stone Container were circulating the draft and working with Tester’s staff. The rest of the public, including the press, were told we had to wait to see it.

This discussion draft, like the original proposal, is currently being circulated by those same handful of supporters, while everyone else, including members of the Montana press, are left to find out details of the drafting process on their own.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that groups who were not included in the collaborative effort to craft the forest jobs were crying foul over Tester’s lack of transparency from the beginning, and some are up in arms about the appearance of secrecy surrounding the discussion draft now.