How Effectively Did The Forest Service Spend Federal Stimulus Dollars?

Short-term jobs for local contractors. Long-term projects like the Route of the Olympian rail trail in Montana. A look at how the Forest Service is using $1.15 billion.

Short-term jobs for local contractors. Long-term projects like the Route of the Olympian rail trail in Montana. A look at how the Forest Service is using $1.15 billion.

The real effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have been, are being, and will continue to be scrutinized as the nation struggles to pull itself out of the recessional quicksand. At this week’s Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition’s annual policy gathering in Troutdale, Ore., Susan Charnley of the Pacific Northwest Research Station provided hope that the approximately $1.15 billion in stimulus dollars for the United States Forest Service provided some comfort to communities throughout the country.

Charnley, a research social scientist, looked at eight case studies to determine how the agency spent the money and who benefitted, especially in rural counties experiencing what she termed “high economic distress.”

The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southwest Oregon received one of the most generous helpings of ARRA funding – a $45 million blast for everything from hazardous fuels reduction to trail maintenance. The Forest Service used contracts – and lots of them – to get the money on the ground. Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy said giving districts the ability to break projects up into smaller jobs gave local contractors a chance to compete. Of the 53 contracts awarded to do jobs like wildfire reduction and forest health work, all but four went to local contractors.

Dr. Cassandra Moseley, Director of the University of Oregon’s Ecosystem Workforce Program, said existing partnerships with nonprofits and collaborative groups gave Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest managers a logical place to invest the recovery dollars, contributing to projects like the Ashland Forest Resiliency project.

Other national forests chose to hire extra seasonal workers, a tactic that Charnley said provided relatively well-paying jobs and training to the temporary workforce. Workers reported not just monetary benefits, but improvements in physical health and mental outlook from working in the woods.

Still, Charnley and her fellow researchers concluded that in terms of jobs, effects were meaningful but short-term. Longer term community benefits, like a new trail or an improved road, rarely get calculated into the equation. A 30-mile Rails-to-Trails project in western Montana, for instance, didn’t necessarily press the “jobs, jobs” button, but local communities highly dependent upon recreation tourism are excited about the new people the “Route of the Olympian” will bring to town.

Rural Voices participants had mixed reactions to Charnley’s presentation.

Tracy McIntyre is the executive director of the Eureka Rural Development Partners. Eureka, Montana is near the border with Canada, and McIntyre worked hard to help secure ARRA funding for Forest Service projects in her area. “I think it’s neat to see the Forest Service realize that seeking out partners helps them get their work done,” she said.

But concentrating only on the agency’s Recovery Act success stories might be a mistake, in McIntyre’s opinion. “I would have liked to see eight examples that worked, and eight that didn’t,” she offered.

Moseley knows that Congress and taxpayers want to talk about creating jobs, but she wondered aloud if the review of how the Forest Service responded to the urgent directives of the Recovery Act might reveal more than employment numbers. “I would say they rose to the challenge,” she said, noting that the Forest Service was able to get all of its allotted money on the ground, while plenty of federal agencies floundered at the task.

And that fast-paced, high-stakes exercise may have resulted in a shift in the agency that Moseley and her Rural Voices counterparts have spent a decade working for.  “With ARRA, the Forest Service finally got it – this is not about acres treated, it’s about jobs, and that’s not something this agency has always understood.”

Contributor Gina Knudson is filing daily updates from this week’s Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition annual policy gathering.