Charge It's Illegal
Feds to Privatize Some Firefighting

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

During a summer of blazing heat and record forest fires, the Federal agency that helps coordinate national fire response is considering outsourcing more then 2,000 paid firefighting positions in the U.S. Forest Service to contract workers, despite two pieces of legislation in Congress that would prohibit such a move.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Ignoring Congress?

The outsourcing study is part of a 2003 Bush Administration mandate that Federal agencies over the course of three years assess anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of job titles to see which can be performed at a lower cost by outside groups.

Making Staff Compete

Internal documents detailing the changes were obtained by the National Federation of Federal Employees' Forest Service Council and the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association and made public Aug. 3.

The Forest Service memos said the agency was going to forge ahead with an outsourcing study that would pit Federal employees in 21,350 jobs - more than two-thirds of the agency work force - against contract workers bidding for the same positions. Many of the workers are classified as land managers who work under the guidelines of NEPA - the National Environmental Protection Agency.

But most of those workers - hydrologists and biologists by day - are also skilled in fire-suppression techniques, like emergency dispatching or frontline firefighting.

According to a study done by Mark Davis, who works for the Forest Service but spoke to THE CHIEF-LEADER in his capacity as a union representative for the NFFE's Forest Service Council, in one small department of NEPA workers, eight of 10 were fire-suppression specialists who, when called, respond to the nation's worst fire disasters.

'Congress Must Step In'

"In carving up the Forest Service to serve up to government contractors, this program is also carving up the backbone of our nation's rapid emergency response capabilities, not only for wildfires but for any emergency incident," Mr. Davis charged. "The Bush Administration seems unequivocally committed to this privatization agenda, even to the point where they are willing to ignore the law to carry it out. Very real homeland security needs cry out for Congress to intervene and shut this outsourcing program down. We hope Congress is up to this challenge."

According to the National Interagency Fire Center run by the Federal Government, the nation currently faces a Preparedness Level 5 threat from burgeoning wildfires.

NIFC defined Level 5 as "Several Geographic Areas are experiencing major incidents which have the potential to exhaust all agency fire resources, [or] when 500 crews are committed nationally. Canadian liaison and a coordinator for military mobilization are asked to participate in national planning." It's the highest emergency designation for wildfires.

The White House didn't return calls for comment as of press time.

Left Alone in Past

The Bush Administration is not the first to push for increased outsourcing of Federal jobs. Many agencies over the past decade were told to conduct more outsourcing studies - known as an A76 - among Federal employee titles in an effort to see if money could be saved by hiring private firms or contract workers.

Fire-suppression jobs, however, have always been exempted by Congress.

After the Bush Administration ordered Federal agencies to follow its mandated schedule for outsourcing studies in 2003, Congress fought back. It held an investigation into the first round of competitive sourcing in the Forest Service, and found the study so badly flawed that it passed a bill repealing the contract awards, even though A76 decisions are considered binding once issued.

Ignoring the Law?

Lawmakers also said no future NEPA jobs could be outsourced unless due diligence was done to make sure replacements had equal or better fire suppression capability. The NFFE said it's preparing a report to Congress detailing the ways in which the Forest Service - run by Dale Bosworth, who was appointed in 2001 - has ignored that law.

The union, along with the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, has been angered by the aggressive approach to outsourcing taken by the Bush Administration.

That, coupled with the Forest Service's admission to the White House Office of Management and Budget that it would move forward with its studies even if Congress passed legislation prohibiting the outsourcing of fire suppression jobs, led to the release of the internal documents detailing the agency's plan.

Ties Fires to Funding

FWSFA spokesman Casey Judd said his organization, an employees' association whose members are Federal Wildland firefighters who work for the nation's five land management departments, had serious concerns about how decisions were being made within the Federal Government.

He noted that many of people whose jobs are being studied for outsourcing now in the Forest Service were "key players" at the wildfires raging across the country this summer.

What has contributed to this year's fire disasters, he said, is the Forest Service's ongoing diversion of funds that were initially granted for fire preparedness to nonfire related projects.

'Idiotic Management'

"That's one of the main reasons we are at Level 5, because a lot of Forest Service managers have raked off millions from preparedness money to other things, and so we have small fires that could be stamped out but they grow, because they don't have the resources ready," he said.

Recently the Forest Service had a fire in Nevada that required bulldozers. The agency's nearest available equipment was in Florida. Eighty thousand acres burned while the equipment was moved, Mr. Judd said.

"Whether it's outsourcing or diversion of funds, this is the gobbledygook of what we consider to be absolutely idiotic management," he stated. Several unions battling the Bush Administration over outsourcing and other plans to alter long-standing collectively-bargained personnel rules have also challenged White House assertions that competitive bidding results in budgetary savings.

As an example, they cite the Bush Administration's decision to outsource the maintenance of its fleet of fire engines and snowmobiles to an outside company - it saved $1.7 million in fiscal year 2005, the White House said on its Web site.

On the Other Hand ...

Less than a year later, the Government canceled the contract because the private company was so far behind in servicing and maintaining the vehicles that it was deemed a safety risk. At one point, 14 of 25 fire engines were out of service.

"I'll summarize it like this: Enron may have cooked the books, but at least they had books to cook - this program has no accounting whatsoever," said Mr. Davis. "You go to the White House Web site and they'll make claims how much they are saving, but it's all based on projections and estimates. They never go back and update how much they actually saved."