Senator Marcia Blackburn
357 Dirksen Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Blackburn;
The above Organizations are reaching out to provide our thoughts and inputs on the bundle of 7 Legislative Proposals that have been released to create and facilitate operations of the new Division of Government Efficiency(“DOGE”). The Organizations welcome the DOGE effort and would like to provide input around our experiences with general issues and challenges addressed in these Proposals and that they are a major step towards returning the federal government financial challenges to a more stable position after the immense spending that has occurred over the last several years. The challenges we have experienced generally within the DOGE proposals would include:
- The budgeting process for land management agencies needs critical reform;
- Staffing levels for federal land managers are woefully inadequate; and
- Allocation of existing staff does not align with resolving problems on the ground.
The Organizations would also like to identify several general factors we have experienced in our partnerships with various federal agencies that have created systemic inefficiencies that are not addressed in the DOGE Proposals. These issues would include:
- Permitting process and its application;
- Federal hiring processes and restrictive management models;
- Management models that are simply out of date;
- Partner and Club liability is an immense barrier to expanded support; and
- Streamlining regulations around NEPA implementation.
The Organizations hope that this dialogue and effort will create a much more efficient and effective management process as generally the agencies we work with are facing unprecedented challenges. We believe the challenges that many of the land managers we work with appear to be very similar to the challenges facing firefighters responding to the LA Wildfires currently. The LA firefighters appear to be face responding to the fires with historically low staffing levels in absolute numbers, staffing levels that have failed to grow with the needs of the communities they defend and then a lack resources necessary to do their jobs when called upon. Why this situation exists is complex. It appears that there may have been desire that many of the federal stimulus efforts would avoid cutting into operational budgets to achieve the goals of the stimulus efforts, it is clear that operational budgets have continued to decline in some cases. These fires exemplify the concerns the Organizations would have about similar impacts to federal lands managers, who have many of the same challenges, if corrections were not being made with these issues being understood. While the LA fires are presenting complex issues for management response, this is a cautionary tale of a situation that should be avoided.
Some of the issues we are raising could be resolved legislatively and the resolution of other challenges is better suited for rulemaking and others may simply take time to resolve by rebuilding trust between partners. The Organizations are raising all these issues in the hope of building greater understanding of the challenges we are facing and obtaining resolutions of those challenges in an coordinated and systemic manner. While recent funding packages have resolved some issues facing public lands, these temporary funding streams have created new challenges as well.
1. Who we are.
Prior to addressing the specific input of the Organizations on the Proposal, we believe a brief summary of each Organization is needed as our partnerships with land managers are somewhat unique. The Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition (“COHVCO”) is a grassroots advocacy organization representing the OHV community seeking to represent, assist, educate, and empower all OHV recreationists in the protection and promotion of off-highway motorized recreation throughout Colorado. COHVCO is an environmental organization that advocates and promotes the responsible use and conservation of our public lands and natural resources to preserve their aesthetic and recreational qualities for future generations. The Trail Preservation Alliance (“TPA”) is an advocacy organization created to be a viable partner to public lands managers, working with the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to preserve the sport of motorized trail riding and multiple-use recreation. The TPA acts as an advocate for the sport and takes the necessary action to ensure that the USFS and BLM allocate a fair and equitable percentage of public lands access to diverse multiple-use trail recreational opportunities. Colorado Snowmobile Association (“CSA”) was founded in 1970 to unite winter motorized recreationists across the state to enjoy their passion. CSA has also become the voice of organized snowmobiling seeking to advance, promote and preserve the sport of snowmobiling through work with Federal and state land management agencies and local, state and federal legislators telling the truth about our sport. CORE is a motorized action group dedicated to keeping motorized trails open in Central Colorado and the region. Idaho Recreation Council (“IRC”) is comprised of Idahoans from all parts of the state with a wide spectrum of recreational interests and a love for the future of Idaho and a desire to preserve recreation for future generations. The Idaho State Snowmobile Association (“ISSA”)is an organization dedicated to preserving, protecting, and promoting snowmobiling in the great state of Idaho. Our members may come from every corner of the state, but they all share one thing in common: their love for snowmobiling. Nevada Off Road Association (NVORA) is a non-profit Corporation created for and by offroad riders. NVORA was formed to specifically fill the void between the government managers and the rest of us who actively recreate in the Silver State. NVORA does this by maintaining a consistent, durable, and respected relationship with all stakeholders while facilitating a cooperative environment amongst our community. Advocates for Multiple Use of Public Lands (“AMPL”) is an organization made up of passionate recreationists, which was formed in 2017. Our focus includes the organization of public support and the creation of a unified voice to maintain and protect broad access to our public lands for motorized and well as non-motorized recreational uses in a cooperative and cohabitant manner. We believe in the coexistence of recreation and conservation for all. Collectively, TPA, NVORA, CSA, CORE, IRC, ISSA, AMPL and COHVCO will be referred to as “The Organizations” for purposes of these comments.
The Organizations predominately partner with the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to provide sustainable outdoor recreational opportunities on public lands for more than 50 years in many areas. In most states, we work with a state level motorized group and then those groups partner with hundreds of local clubs that provide resources for sustainable recreational opportunities lands owned by public to private entities. In many States, our state level partners have voluntarily created OHV registration programs. These state partnerships provide grant funds supporting large numbers of agency staff that sustain recreation, maintenance and management on Federal public lands.[1] Thes funding opportunities through our state programs are predominately created and funded through our voluntary registration program for OHVs and Snowmobiles. These programs are now providing between $200-$300 million annually to support these programs which are supplemented further by hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. Often these programs are administered in partnership with State Parks, State Recreation or State Wildlife Divisions. Many federal lands management offices will vigorously assert that without these user funded programs, no projects or maintenance would get done in their Offices even with the stimulus funds in place. It should be noted that our Organizations are more apt to be partnering with the land management agencies to defend legal challenges to a land management decision rather than litigating a decision that was made. If we are forced to litigate a decision it is often the result of an overly politicized decision resulting from a monument designation or other political action.
If the Organizations were asked to summarize the status of our partner agencies, that summary would be “facing unprecedented challenges”. The Organizations have experienced some exceptional success with land managers over the last several years. These successes have been isolated, and many offices have struggled badly simply to sustain themselves and others have moved backwards away from success all together. Agency staffing levels have never been shorter and levels of conflicting goals for that limited staff have never been higher, which only compounds landscape level challenges. Often when new staff have been hired, they are in positions that do not resolve problems but rather create new barriers to management responses and barriers are being raised simply because the new hire does not understand the success of efforts in place or don’t like a particular usage. An example of the landscape challenges we have encountered with the various inventories that have been undertaken without any hope of resolving the underlying problem would be the BLM Solar Plan and BLM Sustainability Rule. Similar challenges have resulted from planning and staffing around protecting cultural resources and efforts that elevate possible impacts on limited portions of communities above clearly identified problems for all the community. Frustrations grow when these challenges result from dedicated funding in federal budgets to expand cultural or historic planning efforts, such as the large general budgetary funding directed towards the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. This efforts have resulted from employees that simply lack an understanding of federal planning as exemplified by efforts on several Ranger District where existing signs could not be replaced until a complete cultural inventory could be completed.
We are also aware of the compelling financial challenges facing the Country as a whole and are hoping this input will allow better understanding of how to address those financial challenges as well. The current level of disfunction results from many forces, some of which are addressed in the DOGE Proposals and others remain outside these Proposals. Some of these challenges have resulted from recent changes with the agencies and others are the result of longer-term pressure on the agency. While the Organizations are aware that there is significant overlap of some of these categories and often these categories lack clearly defined boundaries, we hope these classifications streamline discussions.
2(a) Challenges within scope of DOGE legislation – Budgeting process.
While there have been many stimulus-type funding supplements for the agencies we work with, over this time we are also aware that basic operating budgets for the agencies have declined significantly and the budgeting process has been cumbersome at best. This situation creates major concern for any budget adjustments or reductions being proposed, such as the DOGE bundle of proposes board recissions in funding.
In our experience, a primary long-term challenge for our federal partners has been budgeting process for the agencies. While many components of the Proposal address portions of the funding level challenges, the Organizations are raising this issue in the hope this information will lead to the most effective reforms possible. It has been our experience has been that often-simple changes to the budgeting process can yield major benefits. One of the most effective reforms we have experienced was the “fire borrowing fix” that Congress provided to the Agencies in 2018, which resulted in far greater consistency and predictability for managers with their existing funds. When managers were able to understand future funding at some level, our partnerships were able to identify shortfalls that can be addressed with grants to managers that leverage budget shortfalls for important projects. Some project driven challenges we can embrace and address and others are simply outside the scope of our programs or partnerships but are major barriers.
As an example of the impact of the lack of a consistent basic budget to effectively manage and create long-term responses based upon using partner resources would be the housing and compensation issues facing employees. Even with stimulus funding many federal staff we work with are unable to afford to live in the communities they are managing the lands around and this is an ongoing barrier to success on the ground. We are aware of several forests looking at proving housing on federal lands for their employees and that there are discussions around reducing or removing income taxes on salaries of federal employees in order to provide a more competitive salary package for the employees. These are responses that are outside the scope of the DOGE Proposal and outside the scope of our partnerships these are barriers that can only be resolved with a basic budget for the agency that supports consistent staff working with partners and fixing problems.
Any response must recognize that certain agencies were provided FAR more funding under stimulus Proposals while other agencies were largely ignored for funding support. While we understand that some agencies are perceived to provide opportunities that are more valuable to the public or span the entire country, this does not alter the fact that these agencies also manage a tiny percentage of the Federal land ownership. We would ask that basic equity be provided in the budgeting process for all land management agencies as all acres of federal lands are valuable to the public, regardless of the management agency. We would ask for the creation of a sustainable budget in the DOGE process without earmarks or other restrictions before addressing cuts. Understanding the shortfalls of existing budgeting and impacts of stimulus type spending will ensure that a more efficient and effective management process is developed from the DOGE efforts.
It has been our experience that legislative efforts that adopted a bottom-up effort to support the agencies budgets have worked better than legislative efforts that adopted a top-down model for their efforts. Trying to resolve challenges without an accurate understanding of the challenges rarely succeeds and many of the recent stimulus bills have adopted this top-down management model. As an example, we saw significant benefits from the Great American Outdoors Act funding that started in 2020 as this effort adopted a bottom-up model of proposal development. Other later efforts were far less effective despite providing exponentially larger amounts of funding as too often arbitrary goals were included with the subsequent funding that ignored on-the-ground challenges. While this distinction may seem small the impacts are significant. The Organizations would support development of a basic operational budget as this would be applying the same bottom-up model of management we have seen to be successful and avoids creating conflicts.
2(b) Challenge within scope of DOGE legislation – Overall staffing levels.
One of the most consistent problems the Organizations have experienced is the complete lack of permanent federal staff in most offices we work with, and this issue appears to be worse than positions available to fix issues on the ground. This concern is most directly addressed in the Federal Freeze Act provision of the DOGE bundle. Most offices have had skeleton crews for many years, and we commonly see 50% or more of positions open in offices or occupied by people in an acting role. Many of our state programs provide funding to hire agency staff to perform trail maintenance and other roles. It has become all too common that more than 50% of this funding is returned as agency staff is never hired. Even when we are hiring crews and funding agency employees, managers must participate in the process. This is an immense barrier to management and partnerships as we cannot collaborate with an empty desk. The Organizations have heard similar concerns from almost every partner we work with on this issue. We address possible responses to this issue outside mere funding in section 3(b) of these comments but are including these concerns here simply to ensure the true scope of the challenge is recognized.
The challenges that this situation present are immense. These challenges are compounded when offices are hiring staff to engage with a particular community or interest, while they are closing their offices to the general public due to a lack of staff for the public office. This is a situation that has not been resolved and may have been made worse with many of the top-down mandates of the stimulus bills. While there may be staff to create reports or engage with particular communities, the general public engagement has declined significantly and too often this is overlooked. Efforts such as the “community navigators” effort and efforts to “connect communities with trees” from the USFS and the connecting communities efforts from the BLM can only work if on the ground staffing issues are addressed. Closing offices to public access due to a lack of staff to support these other initiatives will not be successful. Rather than improving engagement, the result of this situation is all members of the public are simply equally underserved, and no problems are actually resolved.
2(c) Challenges within scope of DOGE legislation – Allocation of existing staff.
It has been the Organizations experience that generally federal land management agencies are horribly short on staff who are employed to actually fix problems, which compounds the critical shortage of staff generally. Generally, the availability of staff who primarily use a shovel to fix problems has declined, while the number of management staff that use a pen has greatly increased. Often staff generating reports and strategies entirely lacked on-the-ground experience with the agency, which only compounded the shortage of on-the-ground employees. In other situations, agency staff simply was not in the right place to resolve issues on the ground but were forced to address political goals of funding.
We are raising this concern as several portions of the DOGE bundle of legislative proposals seek to return employees to the Office or the SHOW UP act. While returning employees to the office maybe critically needed for many agencies, if agency staff for land management agencies increases in the office, we would be VERY concerned. Stimulus funding appeared to target more office-based staff and may have accelerated existing trends of more administrative staff than field or seasonal staff. Often seasonal type positions did not benefit from stimulus funding at the same levels of resources directed to political goals. Put another way, we need less GS10 plus positions working in the offices and actually hire more GS 5-10 positions working to fix problems and working with partners.
We would like to highlight a couple of our experiences to allow understanding of the cumulative impacts poor alignment of on the ground operations with landscape efforts as they extend far beyond closing offices to the public. We are aware of several Offices that have undergone extensive trail bridge inventories funded by stimulus money. These trail bridge inventories were rapidly performed as stimulus money was starting to expire and staff failed to engage partner groups or local community leaders who would be impacted by the decisions of the inventory. Many of these partners had bridges where repairs were shovel ready and then not addressed as the inventory was given priority. Engagement did not occur despite the fact these partners had safely maintained these trail bridges for decades with almost no federal support and often existing bridge maintenance schedules are further behind than ever before after the inventory.
This failure created immense and immediate problems as inventories applied highway bridge standards for trail bridges, despite objections of partners. Concerns from partners that highway standards for bridges were impossible to comply with and could functionally made the project impossible to complete were simply overlooked. When the partners who would be responsible for repairing these resources continued to press managers around concerns on this issue, these concerns exploded when partners learned these “inventories” may not have even been in writing and were performed by minimally trained staff. As a result of this inventory by poorly trained agency staff, agencies are now pushing for an emergency closure of any bridge found possibly insufficient to comply with highway standards. The impact of this situation on partners exploded when it was disclosed that while stimulus money may have funded the inventory, there is no funding to repair any of the trail bridges. Many of the small communities that are now being asked to support vast new bridge repairs to completely unrealistic standards are the same communities that would be hugely impacted by lost economic contributions to their communities. The failure of these efforts to be aligned with existing resources is highlighted as there is no mention of the numerous Legislative and Executive Orders in place requiring recreational access and economic benefits to be specifically analyzed and addressed has been provided in discussions.
A second example of these staffing challenges have far ranging impacts is the situations is provided by a situation our local partners have far too frequently encountered. Many have been the recipients of requirements for emergency response type training as part of trail volunteer efforts and often made without a basic understanding of costs, training requirements and insurance requirements. This situation is been exemplified by demands that trail maintenance volunteers must be first aid certified, carry emergency radio communication and AED devices along with medical response equipment for the use of efforts well beyond trail maintenance. Some volunteers have been maintaining routes for decades under special recreation permits, and often these new requirements have arisen 3 or 4 years into a 10-year permit. While a desire to provide emergency response is commendable, this is not an effort that should be targeted at a volunteer OHV club performing maintenance. These clubs, and the land managers, are not the proper agency to provide emergency response type services and lack basic training in these areas. These clubs also cannot get insurance for these types of efforts and the public is largely unwilling to volunteer for these types of efforts simply due to liability concerns. While a large commercial permit operator might be able to absorb these types of demands, a small volunteer club is simply unable to provide this level of support. When our clubs responded to these concerns, it was immediately clear these were issues that were not even thought of when the discussion was opened by the well intentioned manager. The conflict that resulted was immense.
Unfortunately, these situations have extended far beyond the project level into major planning efforts that can span decades. In our third situation, we engaged with a planning unit to undertake updating a travel plan for snowmobiles in an area identified for expansion of snowmobile opportunities in their new forest plan starting in 2016. By the time overly cautious planners had completed the plan, the snowmobile community had lost most of the opportunities in the planning area due to concerns around user conflicts, ESA issues and many other nonexistent challenges. This decision was vacated and ordered to be redone to align with the RMP after a decision was issued in 2021. After this court determination, the planning unit had moved to priorities other than the winter travel plan. This situation could only be resolved after letters from every state and federal elected official in the area received requesting the planning effort be restarted. Despite the passage of several years since the decision being withdrawn, public discussions on access to the area are scheduled to restart in the first quarter of 2025.
In some situations, we have been able to resolve issues like these with existing relationships, often these resolutions have been a VERY long and hugely frustrating process. In some instances, we had relationships that allowed us to contact supervisors who were willing to step in and address the issues. This has not been the norm, as far too frequently the supervisor was acting or lacked the background or political will to address the challenge. Often political pressures forced managers to engage with new efforts to protect resources that were never at risk of loss or from initiatives that were never aligned with planning requirements or other initiatives. The limited effectiveness of some initiatives resulted from additional funding created conflicts with ongoing efforts rather than resolving conflicts. Resolving these types of impacts will be a challenge as these failures stopped projects and often broke trust between managers and partners.
The Organizations believe full transparency on this issue is important as some projects have experienced challenges and stalled, others projects have resolved challenges raced forward with implementation and found huge success. The conflict created from these situations is compounded by the fact that many offices have been highly effective in using the same resources to reopen trails that had been ignored for decades or heavily impacted by fires and floods. While some Districts have completed very little on the ground, adjacent district worked with partners and effectively used similar resources for maintenance and reopened hundreds of miles of trails that had been fire impacted and not maintained for decades. The stark contrast between the effectiveness of these Offices did not resolve conflict or build trust with partners.
2(c) Challenge within scope of DOGE legislation – too many unproductive meetings.
The failure to align local and national efforts has also created challenges for partners simply due to the large number of repetitive meetings our representatives must attend. The portions of the DOGE bundle that most directly relates to this concern is the Relocating Federal Bureaucracy Act. The growth of office staff has resulted in new challenges for partners, which is mainly that there are too many meetings with overlapping jurisdictions and efforts. Often local and regional outreach efforts are poorly coordinated and we end up collaborating on the same issue multiple times or are engaged in issues that are not directly related to the challenges we are concerned about simply to avoid problems arising when efforts get off track.
This type of situation has been consistently exhibited by the newly Congressionally designated Foundation for public lands for the BLM. In our meetings with representatives, these presentations have lacked substance or even a basic understanding of who they are presenting too. This simply creates conflicts on the ground. We often hear from local partners that are looking for guidance on how to resolve the occurrence of multiple meetings on the same evenings. This has proven difficult as many assert to be solving the same issues. We would ask that rather than having more meetings, we have better meetings to address issues in a coordinated and thoughtful manner.
3(a) Unresolved challenges- permitting process and expanding scope of partners.
The Organizations are also aware of numerous existing programs that remain badly in need of reform and this reform has never occurred. The permitting process for events have almost stalled completely as a result of these types of issues and challenges. The Organizations have developed a detailed white paper on this issue which is available upon request. Some of these concerns were addressed in the recently passed Explore Act but many were not. Unfortunately, permitting challenges extend beyond events, as far too often partner maintenance efforts were managed as for profit permittees rather than partner efforts to support the Offices. The host of problems this has created are immense. This resulted in immense conflict with overly strict applications of general permitting requirements being applied to partner efforts. While it may be acceptable to require first aid training and medical equipment be provided by a for profit outfitter, these types of requirements are an immense burden on a volunteer or partner funded trail crew. May not be reimbursable under grants that are funding the project and often are not covered by insurance that is obtained. Many volunteers are more than willing to maintain trails but have little interest in volunteer emergency response efforts as they are simply not trained in this area and are unwilling to accept the liability from this type of response.
3(b) Unresolved challenges – inflexible Federal hiring processes and overly restrictive management models.
One of the largest barriers we have encountered with land managers has been their inability to hire lower level staff through the federal hiring process. We raise this issue as these challenges extend beyond funding and budgeting and seem to disproportionally impact staff at levels where their job is to fix problems on the ground which compounds budgeting and funding issues. Some of the most successful efforts in making land management efforts more efficient and effective have not involved cutting or expanding budgets but rather resolving barriers in the process of management exemplified by Fire Borrowing fix provided by Congress in 2018. The Organizations vigorously assert that the federal hiring process is another example of an issue that could be resolved without spending significant funding. It has been our experience that immense barriers to hiring have resulted from the centralized hiring process and USAJobs.com platform for USFS and BLM staff. While we are aware this process was implemented to create efficiency, the Organizations would submit the impact has been exactly the opposite, especially at lower-level positions.
The Organizations would submit that reforming and refining the usajobs.com website would be a major step forward as many positions simply do not warrant hiring solely from the federal database. The failure of the usajobs.com process is foundational. While a USFS Forest Supervisor or BLM Field Office Manager may be willing to relocate for that level of position, any assertion that the centralized hiring process benefits lower level positions would be misplaced. Lower-level employees often are unwilling or unable to relocate long distances for temporary positions, making any assertion of efficiency of this model for these positions problematic at best. The Usajobs.com hiring process is horribly slow and often jobs are only open to apply for at times of the year that are unrelated to the timing of the position. Seasonal hires and lower-level GS employees simply will not apply months in advance for a position that may only last a few months. The overly formalized nature of usajobs.com is further evidenced by the fact that often employees who comply with overly strict requirements for positions are not good fits for the position. Too often we have seen equipment operator positions advertised as needing a 4 year degree but no actual experience operating equipment. This is simply a process failure. Word of mouth and personal invitations to apply for positions has been highly effective in hiring lower level positions and the value of these relationships has been greatly reduced in the usajobs.com formalized process.
While USAjobs is a major barrier we have been able to partner and create improved hiring and retention processes for staff, such as the adaptation of the hiring process for seasonal employees from purely seasonal employees to permanent seasonal employees. This change has been the result of managers attempting to retain new hires after they have been trained as a seasonal employee moving them from a seasonal employee to a permanent seasonal employee. This allowed the exceptionally limited recruitment efforts for seasonal and lower level employees to become more effective as these employees now have a career path and this has proven to be a major retention tool for these employees. This minimal change has made a difference on the ground and gives us hope that even minimal reforms to the usajobs.com process could yield major benefits in recruiting and retaining high quality staff to resolve problems on the ground. Our request would be to undertake a LEAN review applying the six sigma planning process on the entire hiring process for the agencies. While we are unsure of if this is a regulatory requirement, legal requirements or something that could be just undertaken we have performed similar reviews on our grant programs at the State level and the success has been significant.
The Organizations experience with overly formalized and inflexible management processes extend far beyond hiring processes. Our partners have been far too consistently receiving request for our grant programs to begin paying fleet costs for equipment that the fleet program neither maintains or replaces. Rather this is equipment that our programs have purchased for land managers who lack the resources to purchase this type of equipment in their budget. In addition to obtaining this equipment, we also provide funding to hire employees to operate the equipment, train employees and maintain the equipment. When the equipment has reached the end of its service life, we also expect to provide grant funding to replace or rebuild the equipment. While the Organizations and our partners have accepted all costs of this equipment through our programs, we continue to hear demands for our grants to cover fleet service costs that are “required” for all equipment the agency uses. Given that we have never found fleet management type programs to have funding to replace or maintain specialized equipment, the frustration from this type of overly rigid process expands when offices have not used our funding to hire staff to operate equipment and then are demanding fleet costs for a piece of equipment that was not used that season as the staff was never hired.
3(c). Unresolved challenges- Many land management concepts are simply out of date.
The Organizations would vigorously support an overall efficiency review for the hiring process and we would vigorously support this type of review in the lands management process. Many concepts and ideas foundational to planning are simply out of date or resolved almost completely. The Executive Orders governing travel management need to be updated and presumptions around compliance with various requirements could be provided around efforts to date to streamline planning. As an example, EO 11644 includes provisions commonly identified as the “minimization criteria” for travel planning, which require motorized usage impacts on other uses, wildlife and resources to be minimized. The challenges around the horribly out of date nature of the travel management process is exhibited by the fact the Order has remained almost entirely unchanged since 1972. For comparison, cutting edge technology in the home was an electric toaster.
Not only are the concepts of the minimization criteria badly out of date in these Executive Orders, they are highly arbitrary and poorly defined, which has resulted in huge amounts of litigation and time spent in planning. In the 50 plus years that have passed since these requirements were put in place, almost every planning area we have engaged with has satisfied the minimization criteria in planning. Many areas have completed this effort multiple times. We have participated in many planning efforts where mapping of routes and roads can be completed quickly but addressing questions like minimization then takes years to resolve. With the inclusion of a presumption that when a unit is updating travel plans in that unit, that the minimization efforts have been completed already for the area would cut years out of the travel management and planning process. This would result in a far more efficient and effective planning process.
Another example of the efficiency that could be achieved with updating EO 11644 would be exemplified by the challenges that land managers have seen with the use of electric bicycles on public lands. Ebikes are becoming very common in many areas and are motorized vehicles by definition. If EO 11644 and other regulations was updated similar low power exceptions could be created for off road usage could be created as have been provided for decade for these vehicles on roads. This would be hugely effective and efficient in providing effective management responses to issues.
3d. Unresolved challenges – Partner/Club liability
The Organizations are in a highly unique position compared to many other recreational interests as a result of the large amount of management staff, equipment and other resources our programs currently provide for public lands. Despite the fact these programs are highly effective in supplementing land manager budgets, many of our local partners have been pushed towards more active partnerships and roles in public lands management. Many of our larger clubs have already become 501c3 non-profits and are working as general contractors on projects, buying equipment to lease to land managers and taking many other new roles. One of the largest barriers we have encountered has been the inability of our clubs to obtain cost-effective insurance for these types of projects and often simply insuring projects and efforts costs more than the effort itself. These clubs are becoming important components of the funding streams and need to be protected like the individual members. Many of our members have spent weeks engaging with insurance companies but have found these types of efforts are simply too small an economic sector for the insurer and the many layers of regulatory steps on public lands makes the process far too complex. As a result, these insurers simply walk away from a highly complex niche market for their product.
The Organizations are aware that there are many protections provided to federal land managers to reduce individual risks and liability from management efforts they donate on public lands. In many states we have succeeded in obtaining limited immunity, similar to that which is provided to the government for many actions, for nonprofit groups providing public benefit projects on public lands. Providing similar levels of protection to nonprofits performing public benefit projects federally would provide a large amount of protections to our organizations in a far more streamlined model than the current jumble of permits, cost share challenge agreements, volunteer agreements and possible leases now being explored. This would basically provide similar protections that governmental agencies have had for decades to the nonprofit partners that are now being asked to function as land managers in many areas.
3e. Unresolved challenge -Streamlining NEPA and similar regulations.
The Organizations are very concerned that many of the recent planning efforts that have been undertaken have not streamlined planning efforts but rather added significant new levels of complexity to planning. The newly released BLM Sustainability Rule will be a significant barrier to land management efforts for decades and not provide significant new funding for federal lands. The BLM Solar is structured to disproportionately impact multiple use recreational infrastructure. Generally, many of these national level plans have not been well received with state or local BLM offices. Our experiences with the newly Congressionally designated Foundation for America’s Public lands have been marginal at best as often presenters have demonstrated an exceptionally poor understanding of efforts in place. These will be major challenges to correct.
While we have experienced many challenges from new regulations, we are also pleased that US Forest Service efforts to streamline planning efforts have been successful. In 2019 the USFS finalized regulations under 36 CFR Part 220 for USFS to effectively use CE planning requirements to create benefits on the ground. Currently BLM does not have this ability and we would vigorously assert that these regulations should be clearly provided under BLM regulations as well. Many forests have been periodically meeting to streamline and facilitate CE efforts on small projects, which in isolation could be a major benefit that would be easily overlooked. Regulations are now being used to effectively and efficiently provide sustainable recreational opportunities on public lands.
4. Conclusion.
The Organizations vigorously support development of sustainable resources and have been actively involved in efforts to achieve these goals for decades. We welcome this effort and would like to provide input around our experiences with general issues and challenges addressed in these Proposals to date. We would also like to identify several factors we have experienced in our partnerships with various federal agencies that have created systemic inefficiencies that are not addressed in the Proposals. We would welcome further discussions and collaboration on how to make all phases of the federal government more efficient and effective. We are aware this undertaking is massive and will take many years to complete. The Organizations, and all the partners we represent, would like to express a strong desire is to look back at the completion of this groundbreaking effort and celebrate a successful effort.
The Organizations hope that this dialogue and effort will create a much more efficient and effective management process as generally the agencies we work with are broken. Some of the issues we are raising could be resolved legislatively and the resolution of other challenges is better suited for rulemaking and others may simply take time to resolve by rebuilding trust between partners. We are raising all these issues in the hope of building greater understanding of the challenges we are facing and obtaining resolution of those challenges in an coordinated and systemic manner. While recent funding packages have resolved some issues facing public lands, these temporary funding streams have created new challenges as well.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact Scott Jones, Esq. (518-281-5810 / scott.jones46@yahoo.com).
Scott Jones, Esq.
CSA Executive Director
COHVCO Authorized Representative
Chad Hixon
Executive Director
Trails Preservation Alliance
Marcus Trusty
President
CORE
Sandra Mitchell
Executive Director -IRC
Authorized Representative – ISSA
Will Mook
Executive Director
AMPL
Matthew Giltner
Executive Director
Nevada Off-Road Association
[1] As an example of the programs we partner through here is a link to the California State OHV program OHMVR Division and Colorado State OHV program Off-Highway Vehicle Grants | Colorado Parks and Wildlife and New Hampshire OHV/OSV programs NH State Parks – Grant-In-Aid.