As forestry policy assumes new and vital relevance amid Oregon’s massive wildfires, Gov. Kate Brown is struggling to get Senate confirmation for three nominees to the state Board of Forestry amid what her office says is insistence from timber companies that she nominate a more industry-friendly slate.
In an interview Friday, Brown said she was concerned that the nomination and confirmation process for filling positions on the highly time-consuming and contentious board is broken.
“The challenge is finding a slate that can be confirmed,” she said. “I’m concerned that we are at an impasse at this point. Unfortunately, there are too many special interests invested in the outcomes and that’s made it difficult when we bring forward qualified nominees.”
The seven-member board supervises state and private forestry policy in Oregon, appoints the state forester, adopts new rules regulating forestry practices and supervises the state forester’s administration of the forestry department.
For a number of years, the board and the department have been characterized by dysfunction and chaos. The board has been riven by conflict between conservation and industry voices, and unable to move decisively on critical policy questions or rein in agency managers who have ignored board members' direction and information requests.
The agency, meanwhile, is beset by structural financial and operational problems, including inadequate funding for its state forest program, outdated financial systems and delays in collecting outstanding firefighting costs – a critical issue given potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that will be added to its receivables from this fire season.
Last year the board placed State Forester Peter Daugherty – whose appointment and continued employment is a responsibility of the board - on a performance improvement plan because of his poor communication about the agency’s deep financial problems and a lack of responsiveness to board members.
Not long after, the forestry department and the state lost a lawsuit filed by 13 rural counties and 151 local taxing districts that claimed the agency had failed to maximize timber harvests on state forests and resulting payments to those counties for the last two decades. The $1 billion jury verdict is still under appeal, collecting interest at 9%, or $90 million a year.
In the background sit two related policy debates that may be the most contentious in the board’s history: the adoption of a new management plan governing harvest and conservation levels on state forests; and the possibility of adopting a federally-supervised program for state forests, the so-call “Habitat Conservation Plan” that would establish hard conservation commitments in exchange for more legal flexibility to log in other areas regardless of endangered species impacts.
The sitting board is slated to vote whether to move a preliminary version of the latter plan forward this week, but the new board would be charged with its adoption and implementation. It’s a plan that environmentalists support after watching the agency’s previous conservation commitments whittled down to generate more revenue; and industry groups oppose because they believe it will lead to lower timber harvests and lost sawmill jobs.
The governor’s office says industry players have pushed back on the governor’s slate. Kristina McNitt, president of the Oregon Forest Industries Council, the industry’s lobbying arm, did not agree Friday with that characterization of the group’s position on the nominees. A spokeswoman said that was “incorrect information.” But they did not elaborate.
But in the meantime, three Senate Democrats who represent timber dependent districts - Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose; Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, and Lee Beyer, D-Springfield – say they oppose the nominations.
Assuming all 12 Senate Republicans vote against the nominees and are joined by the three Democrats, that leaves the governor short of the 16 votes needed in the Senate to approve them. The nominees may not even make it out of a scheduled vote by the Senate Rules Committee on Monday, as Senate President Peter Courtney may not want to bring them to a floor vote only to see it fail. Likewise, it’s unclear if the governor’s office will pull the nominees or wants to force Senate Democrats into an uncomfortable vote.
Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said on Friday evening that her office had not pulled back the nominations. They are still on the committee agenda for Monday.
Brown says she’s looking for board members who think independently, have financial, management and climate expertise. She also said wants board members who “will bring new ideas and hopefully create an approach where we can meet in the middle and create better outcomes for all Oregonians…We really need to focus on what this board needs at this point.”
She nominated Karla Chambers, the co-owner of Stahlbush Family Farms, and a member of the wildfire preparedness council the Brown appointed in Jan. 2019; Chandra Ferrari, an environmental lawyer, most recently with Trout Unlimited; and Sidney Cooper, a financial services executive from Ashland and recent transplant from California.
State statute limits the number of board members who have a financial interest in forest products, and those nominees would ostensibly preserve the board’s current balance. Chambers, who is a member of the board of directors at Hampton Lumber, would replace one of the outgoing members in an “industry seat.” Ferrari would replace Cindy Williams, a fish biologist and conservation voice. Cooper, who governor selected after looking for people of color to diversify the board, is something of a cipher, as he has no public policy or forestry background. He would take the seat being vacated by outgoing board chair Tom Imeson, a Portland businessman seen as a centrist.
Beyer and Roblan said Friday that they’re not opposed to any of the nominees individually, but believe the board needs the perspective of a small woodland owner, which make up a significant part of the state’s forestry industry. One name that has circulated is Clinton Bentz, an accountant and second generation family forest owner from Scio in Lane county. He’s also the cousin of former Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, who is the current Republican nominee to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Greg Walden.
Beyer also said he believes the current board is unbalanced. He says he’s spoken to the governor four times about it, “but she hasn’t gotten there yet.”
He added that the governor has made the case that board member Jim Kelly, a former Portland businessman who has since moved to Eastern Oregon, brings the perspective of a small woodland owner. But Beyer said from a social perspective, “he’s an environmentalist.”
That may be another concern for industry groups, as Kelly could take over as board chair with Imeson’s departure. And they may not feel that Chambers fully represents their perspective.
The governor could replace Chambers with Bentz. She said Friday she’d discussed that option, but that Chambers brought key leadership skills, a knowledge of state government, service on the wildfire council and valuable perspective from her experience on the boards of Hampton Lumber and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Boyle, the governor’s spokesman, said that early in the appointment process, her office had a series of conversations with industry leaders in a good faith effort to determine the type of nominee they would want to see for one of the vacancies.
“Balance is critical on the Board of Forestry, to ensure that all voices are represented at the table,” Boyle said. “It seems clear now that their objections to the Governor’s slate of nominees are not about Karla Chambers' qualifications, but about the fact that they want to pick up two seats on the Board instead of one. That doesn’t match the Governor’s vision of a balanced board that works towards achieving the best outcomes for all Oregonians, not special interests.”
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are adamantly opposed to the appointment of both Chambers and Bentz. “Industry can count as well as I can,” said Bob Van Dyk, policy director for Oregon and Washington at the Wild Salmon Center. “Bottom line, they want four votes.”
Steve Zika, chief executive of Hampton Lumber, said he wasn’t spending any time on the Board of Forestry nominations.
“Most of our time is being spent on the (Habitat Conservation Plan) process the ODF is engaged in and trying to get them to work with the counties to negotiate a more balanced agreement with the federal government that doesn’t lock up 50% of the land,” he said. “You would think with the recent evidence of what locking up federal land has accomplished (no increase in spotted owls and excess fuel loads that add to the risk of catastrophic fires) that the ODF would be smarter.”
Sen. Betsy Johnson said Friday that she wholeheartedly supports “the brave men and women” on the front lines of Oregon’s fires and that they deserve an agency that can perform well on an administrative level.
“I would support a slate of nominees that has the capacity to turn around this troubled agency,” she said. “I am less interested in nominees that represent particular interests and more interested in a board capable of managing the agency. I don’t know if these new nominees and the remaining members of the board represent those agents of change.”
-- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-221—8505; @tedsickinger
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