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By Grants Pass Daily Courier October 11. 2014 12:01AM Another View: Congress must act on firefighting budget When mid-November arrives, the general election will be over and, presumably, so will the 2014 fire season. Maybe then, during the lame duck session before the end of the year, Congress can finally get around to dealing with the arcane and inadequate system for funding wildland firefighting. Currently, federal firefighting budgets are part of the annual budgets for the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The problem is that the size and intensity of each summer's fire season can vary greatly from year to year and from region to region. So both of these huge federal agencies take their best shot at an estimated firefighting budget, based on an average from the past 10 years. If a fire season is worse than average — in other words, a fire season like the one that is currently winding down — then the agencies must transfer money from other parts of their budgets to make up the difference. This can leave other important programs, such as forest health projects, short on money for the remainder of the budget cycle. Here's how wildly the firefighting budget can vary from year to year: This year's interagency budget for wildland firefighting in the Pacific Northwest has already topped $446 million, nearly twice the $235 million spent last year. Nationwide, the combined firefighting budget for the Forest Service and the BLM could top $1 billion. Ironically, fire season in and around Josephine County was actually worse last year than this summer, but nationwide this year was much worse. Also, two decades ago, the Forest Service spent about 15 percent of its budget on wildland firefighting. Now it can spend as much as half its budget on firefighting. The problem is that it never knows from year to year how bad the fire season will be, so budget planning is an educated guess, at best. Earlier this year, a reform bill was introduced in Congress that would treat wildfires as natural disasters, akin to hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. That way, funding for firefighting could be appropriated as it is needed — less money in mild years and more money in bad years. Congress walked away from this bill when it adjourned for its summer recess in August. Maybe after the Nov. 4 election, with the heat of both the campaign and the fire season behind us, members of Congress will do the right thing and reconsider this bill. It makes a lot more sense to treat wildfires as natural disasters, but just because it makes sense doesn't guarantee Congress will do anything about it. But they should. http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20141011/OPINION/141019995 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->