17 NOVEMBER 2020 | ASHLAND, OR. — Over the years, the U.S. Forest Service got in a toxic cycle of robbing program coffers to pay for ballooning costs in firefighting. So in 2018, Congress passed legislation that gave the Forest Service access to billions of dollars in disaster relief funding, opening up over $500 million in program funds for fire prevention, recreation, and forest restoration.
But the current administration didn’t shift the money over to those programs, and Congress didn’t use the funding as intended.
“That $500 million everybody thought was going to rebuilding the Forest Service seems to have evaporated into thin air,” says University of Oregon professor Cassandra Moseley who studies fire management. Read the full story from the Los Angeles Times.
