Democrats want to know how the Forest Service is funding its deferred resignation program

A group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday sent a letter to the head of the U.S. Forest Service asking why he has given seemingly contradictory answers about where funding is coming from to pay agency employees who took the deferred resignation offer. 

About 5,000 USFS employees have participated in the deferred resignation program, under which they agree to leave government service but generally are paid through Sept. 30, or taken voluntary early retirement. Such departures have led to fears about staffing during wildfire season, especially because roughly 1,400 of those workers, while not being firefighters, held certifications for firefighting duties and could be deployed as needed to wildfires. The agency has asked those individuals to consider returning for the current fire season. 

The senators  — which included Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.; Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. — wrote that they received documentation from the Agriculture Department, USFS’ parent department, showing the agency needs $48 million to pay out accrued sick leave and vacation time for employees who resigned or retired early. That amount doesn’t include regular pay that such individuals are receiving while they’re on leave. 

USFS Chief Tom Schultz testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 11 that the money to cover such costs would come out of annual funding that Congress approves for agencies, specifically state, private and tribal forestry grants. 

“I think what we recognize is that, in terms of the specific language in our appropriation, there is some flexibility in how we do this,” he said. “And we do know that we have a need to cover the cost of DRP payments. We can't go into a deficit spending model, so we thought that was the most prudent way to go about doing this.”

Merkley, the ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USFS, didn’t accept that rationale. 

“The idea of shifting from real work on the ground to paying personnel expenses and doing a lot less work on the ground is absolutely not in concert with the vision laid out by Congress,” he said. 

In their Tuesday letter, the Senate Democrats wrote that $64.65 million was shifted out of USFS accounts for state, private and tribal forestry and forest and rangeland research for salaries and expenses. The lawmakers noted that this is nearly 35% more than what agency documentation shows is needed to cover the accrued sick leave and vacation time. 

At a July 10 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, in response to questioning from ranking member Heinrich, Schultz testified that money for accrued leave for USFS DRP participants was “primarily” coming from funding in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, rather than annual appropriations. 

The Democratic senators wrote that funding in those laws mostly isn’t supposed to be used for salaries. 

They requested that Schultz, by Sept. 22, explain why he gave different answers, provide the total cost of DRP and early retirement and share what such funding was originally intended to be spent on. 

USFS did not respond to a request for comment.