The Trump administration has released their recommendations for the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2020 which begins October 1, 2019. The Constitution gives sole authority for appropriating taxpayer funds to Congress, and it is certain that the 535 elected members of the House and Senate will heavily modify the proposal. However, Mr. Trump has an unusual amount of influence on how the members of his party in Congress vote, so it may not be a complete waste of time to quickly review the Administration’s proposed budget for wildland fire to see along what lines the White House is thinking.
I looked at the President’s FY 2020 recommendations for the U.S. Forest Service and the four major land management agencies in the Department of the Interior — National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs — with the numbers for the DOI agencies lumped. I compared the proposed numbers with the FY 2018 budget. There was no approved budget for this year, FY 2019. Instead, the agencies had to make do with a series of continuing resolutions that basically maintained the same amounts as in FY 2018.
The charts below are from the information released by the Administration (at the links above).
Previous budget recommendations from the Administration broke it down in detail, listing the numbers of firefighters, engines, dozers, hot shot crews, and aircraft that would be funded. This latest document does not have that level of detail.
There is not much change in Preparedness, the category that covers existing firefighting capability and funds all base-8 salary costs for firefighters. It remains the same in the DOI, and the FS would see a 5 percent increase.
For the Suppression category, actually putting out or managing fires, the rules will change in FY 2020. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 kicks in and provides new budget authority to fight wildfires, known as the “fire fix.” Beginning in FY 2020 and through FY 2028, the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior will have new budget authority available when standard fire Suppression funding has been exhausted in a busy fire year. This starts with an additional $2.25 billion in FY 2020 and increases by $100 million each year through FY 2027. These additional funds are to be allocated to both the FS and the DOI as needed. This adds some budget stability and should help mitigate the “fire borrowing” problem, where unrelated programs see their funds moved over to fire Suppression.
Below: proposal for the DOI (millions of dollars):
Science and research would take a big hit under the President’s recommendation, with Forest Service Research being cut by 14 percent while the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) would be completely unfunded. Shuttering the JFSP has been talked about for a couple of years, with the administration saying the funds would be moved over to general Research — which is being reduced.
The Hazardous Fuels allocations in the DOI and FS would both see a modest 5 percent increase, which may seem surprisingly small since the President has ranted several times about “cleaning up the forests” in California. The combined rates of inflation in 2017 and 2018 were 4.5 percent.
Funds allocated for building or improving Fire Facilities in the DOI would be reduced from $18 million to zero.
Outside Magazine breaks down the total budget proposal for the National Park Service.
So we get a good idea of how sincere this administration is at using science-based solutions for the complex problems associated with wildland fire across the immensely varied landscapes of the federal ownership. After all the yelling and blame (and near constant display of lack of knowledge on the issues of fire), this is what we get to deal with it. I’m surprised there isn’t a line item for rakes in there.
It’s a good thing he doesn’t get to actually set the budget.
Agree wholeheartedly Cy. I too, wondered why there wasn’t a rake line item. Yes, tongue in cheek. Though he may not finalize the budget, he does wield the pen to sign or veto it, esp if the funding requested isn’t provided for the southern border wall.