Most of the Kansas Forest Service’s budget for this fiscal year might simply not show up.
That’s the fear — with just 2.5 months left in the federal fiscal year — as the Trump administration continues to withhold federal money that states and tribal governments use for forestry and for preventing and combatting wildfires.
“One of the main things we do with this funding is provide training, response resources, response assistance” for wildfires, State Forester Jason Hartman said.
Politico reports that President Trump’s budget director has repeatedly told Congress that Trump can use “pocket rescissions” to cut congressionally approved spending by pushing the matter back so late in the fiscal year that the funding expires and Congress can’t do anything about it.
The Government Accountability Office considers the move unlawful and some Republican leaders agree.
IN RECENT years, federal funding typically makes up 60% to 80% of the Kansas Forest Service’s budget. This money arrives from the U.S. Forest Service.
The federal agency sent the Kansas Forest Service about $2.4 million last year. Kansas expected to receive a similar slice this year of the hundreds of millions of dollars approved by Congress for state and tribal forestry and firefighting.
The U.S. Forest Service didn’t respond to a media inquiry about the status of this year’s funding.
However, a senator from Washington state publicly pressed the federal agency’s chief in a hearing last week, asking why the money hadn’t been released.
“We are evaluating that right now,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz replied, adding that his agency is communicating with White House budget staff. “We have not made a determination yet.”
Losing this year’s money would hurt rural fire departments. The federal dollars go in part to them, in the form of grants that pay for protective gear and other firefighting equipment.
Rural departments are the vital, frontline responders when it comes to the kind of fires that the Kansas Forest Service focuses on preventing and combatting — wildfires that sweep across the state’s prairies and woodlands.
This means the state forestry agency directs much of its support specifically to rural firefighters, and that losing federal funding will hit rural departments harder than their urban counterparts.
“Our mandate, our mission has always been the smaller, rural departments,” Hartman said.
Kansas sees about 4,000 wildfires each year.
Wildfires on the Great Plains are becoming more severe. This is partly because of human changes to the landscape and the atmosphere that are causing juniper trees and other woody plants to take over what was once a prairie region.
