WASHINGTON — Accounting information at the Forest Service is so deficient that congressional investigators were unable to determine how much the federal timber-sales program cost in 1998 and 1999, according to a report to be released tomorrow. The General Accounting Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm, was trying to answer questions from Reps. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., and George Miller, D-Calif. GAO said the agency's serious accounting and financial-reporting problems "rendered the Forest Service's cost information totally unreliable."

"Clearly, the Bush administration should thoroughly review this program to determine whether it can be justified," Miller said through a spokesman.

The Forest Service historically has sold trees off federal lands. However, starting in the mid-1980s, Congress asked the agency to provide reports on the costs of the timber-sales program because it was losing money.

According to a 1997 Forest Service report, the timber program cost the federal government $88.6 million.

Meanwhile, the agency has decided to discontinue preparing the report at issue. Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch said the accounting information is provided in other reports.

"Realizing that a lot of people ... don't have access to that information, we are going to publish some kind of replacement for (the report), but we don't know what kind of document that will be," Valetkevitch said.

Environmentalists cited the GAO investigation as more evidence that the Forest Service shouldn't sell timber from national-forest lands.

"They seem to want to continue the timber program ... at the cost of recreation, at the cost of habitat," said Sean Cosgrove, the Sierra Club's national-forest policy specialist.

"The Forest Service, after decades of being accused of bad accounting and bad record keeping, is still up to the same old tricks," said Jonathan Oppenheimer, senior forest analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Seattle Times

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2001