RAC becomes a mess

I am so mad I could spit. Several weeks ago, we heard that RAC grants had been appropriated for another two-year period. I am in favor of the Secure Schools funding and it has poured several million dollars into Flathead County. I had high hopes that this appropriation meant it was likely the North Fork Road dust abatement would likely continue.

Maybe nothing will be done. During the period when the act was not renewed, the Forest Service could not, would not, but for sure did not process applications for the RAC committee. This despite the fact that they terminated all members who had served two or more terms on the committee. Ron Buentemeier and I had each served four and were the only remaining members of the original Resource Advisory Committee and probably had served long enough, but several others who had served two or three terms were also told they could serve no longer.

Applications were sought and received, but the applicants never heard whether or not they were approved. That was because the Act had expired and some smart bureaucrat decided they could not process new applications. This despite the fact that the committee still had oversight duties on contracts let before the Act expired. I don’t know if that oversight was done since the committee was not even allowed to meet and did not communicate after the Act expired.

Now, applications, I presume, can be processed. I presume they can process the ones they have previously received, if of course the people have not died, moved away or are just no longer willing to serve. Hopefully, they can start processing applicants without going through a 30 or 45-day application period.

Even if they can start processing applications, now it will take months before anyone is approved. Apparently, it takes the Agriculture Department that long to do the required red tape.

By the time it is finished, this contracting season will likely be over and nothing will be done this year.

I am not sure who I am mad at. If local Forest folks misinterpreted the Act, they should be fired. If the problem is the process adopted by the Department of Agriculture, it should be changed. In any event, this is the kind of stupidity that causes people to mistrust government. If it can’t be fixed quickly, maybe Congress should take the process out of the hands of the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service and give it to someone better – like the inmates at Deer Lodge or Warm Springs. In the meantime, I’m still so mad I could spit.

Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.