[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 111 (Thursday, August 11, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: August 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
TIMBER JOBS VERSUS GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, last month the Daily Olympian, a newspaper
in Olympia, WA, published a stunning 4-day set of stories as a result
of a 3-month investigation by three journalists led by veteran
Washington State political reporter Bob Partlow. Their stories focus on
what has happened in Northwest timber communities since the Federal
Government decided to stop timber harvesting and replace timber jobs
with Government assistance.
For 5 years I have spoken about the Northwest timber-Spotted Owl
crisis. Everyone knows where I stand. I have argued that Federal
Spotted Owl protection has gone too far and that the administration has
not sought a proper balance between the jobs of working families and
rural communities and saving old forests.
You have heard me often, but now hear the results of the work of
these reporters.
First, here is their map of Federal land that once was primarily
timberland that is now set aside for owl habitat. How has this set
aside affected lives?
Listen to their story. It is a story of deliberate destruction of a
vital American industry and destruction of a treasured way of life for
honest working families. The U.S. Government, driven by sophisticated,
well financed national environmental organizations and supported by the
media and urban opinion leaders, has betrayed rural communities and
destroyed--yes--destroyed--the lives and careers of tens of thousands
of honest working families in the Pacific Northwest.
What was that betrayal? It started when the President and Vice
President at the Portland timber summit promised that people would not
suffer greatly. They said that the timber harvest allocation would be
reduced, causing the loss of a few thousand jobs, but that the people
losing their jobs would not suffer greatly because of the Federal aid
and job retraining dollars that would eliminate the pain. Just a little
pain that the Government would fix.
Listen to what has happened since this promise was made. Federal
timber harvesting has been stopped--not slowed or reduced--but
essentially stopped. The administration has chosen not to ask Congress
for relief from Federal court injunctions, thus--choosing--choosing to
continue the devastation of the Northwest Federal timber harvest. Not a
few, but tens of thousands of jobs have been lost.
So how successful has that retraining been?
Listen, not to my words but to the words of Jim Coates of Hoquiam as
I read from the Olympian article:
Perhaps the best measure of the government's timber relief
effort is provided by people such as Jim Coates of Hoquiam, a
burly former sawmill worker. Coates regularly tosses 40-pound
boxes of government surplus cheese, tuna fish and juice from
a truck trailer to workers at 28 food banks in the
economically depressed logging country of Grays Harbor and
Pacific counties. ``When I started this job 5 years ago, we
served 3,000 people a month,'' he said. ``Now we're up to
18,123 in 28 food banks and two soup kitchens. Does that
sound like retraining in working to you?''
Dan Goldy, former director of Oregon's Economic Development
Department is quoted as follows:
They're stricking a lollipop in the months of rural
communities so they won't scream as loudly about shutting
down their forests.
There is only one answer to this crisis that will matter to these
families that are suffering and that is for the President to propose
and Congress to pass legislation allowing a reasonable and immediate
timber harvest from Northwest forests.
But let nobody be fooled. This Congress has shown no willingness to
help, really help, these families, nor has this administration.
TIME magazine, which 3 years ago featured on owl on its cover, will
never revisit these devastated timber towns to see the consequences of
its advocacy journalism in support of stopping logging. The major
Northwest metropolitan papers, which advocated so long and so
forcefully for more habitat protection, have not followed the Olympian
journalists to see what their agenda has caused. They have won their
battle, accomplished their goal of stopping logging, but the messy
details of the ruined lives left in the wake have not yet darkened the
pages of these journals.
The lives of the urban opinion leaders who were so anxious to stop
logging 2 or 3 years ago do not intersect with the lives of any of the
18,123 families who are now waiting in Jim Coates food lines. Those
18,000 families are out of sight and out of mind. These urban opinion
leaders do not wish to be confronted with the consequences of their
choice. It is awkward and uncomfortable. Their response is not to
concern themselves with the cold human reality of those food bank
families, but instead to rail against me or anyone who would dare
suggest that their choice has crushed those real lives. I believe, I
want to believe, that the lack of concern on the part of the opinion
leaders who pushed so hard to stop timber harvesting is due to an
ignorance of the rural plight rather than a lack of compassion.
This issue, in the minds of the people who dominate Washington, DC,
today, has been settled. They will not be troubled by the uncomfortable
truth. That uncomfortable truth is that the Clinton administration's
30-second sound bites, delivered 2 years ago when they promised both a
reduced timber harvest and relief for the workers--was a fraud. What
the workers got was unemployment and no real help. What those
communities have is jobless families, desperation and no hope.
The have been betrayed. They will listen to no more slick promises
from politicians.
One of the bitter ironies of this real drama is that these are
families who did not begin despising their Government. These were the
working families who, at least since FDR, believed that the Federal
Government was generally on their side. These were families who paid
their taxes and sent their sons to fight and sometimes die in America's
wars. And they sent those sons proudly. But do not trouble yourself to
ask them today whether they have faith in their Government still.
I have searched my heart deeply asking whether my own anger stems
from the fact that my point of view has not prevailed on this issue. I
truly believe that it is not the root of my anger. I have been in
public life for more than three decades and I have won and lost more
public policy battles than I can remember, but those losses do not
stick with me and leave me angry. But this one sticks with me because
so much has been taken from so many people--their families and
communities, Taken needlessly and under such false and glib pretenses.
And the glib answers do not reach the truth. The glib answer is that
many people lose their jobs every day and life goes on. The truth is
that timber communities exist because the Federal Government made a
promise decades ago that if these workers would move there they could
harvest a sustainable amount of Federal timber forever. These are towns
with practically no other economic options. Timber workers laid off in
a timber town whose houses have lost virtually all of their values, are
not like most laid-off workers. They have no other realistic options,
and the Federal promise of job retraining is a national scandal that
does not work.
The glib answer says what Tom Tuchman, White House timber czar, is
quoted in the Olympian as saying: ``You can't repeal the laws of
change,'' as if the deliberate federal decision to stop timber
harvesting was inevitable--like a law of nature. The truth is that Tom
Tuchman, like so many who dominate Washington, DC, is an advocate for
stopping logging. He supports the position espoused by the national
environmental organizations who demonize timber workers and seek the
cessation of virtually all logging in the Northwest and it is that
choice--not the inevitable fact of change--and their power to enforce
that choice is the reason that these families are suffering.
The glib answer says that the Northwest is just about to run out of
timber, or at least old growth timber, so that the end of the harvest
was inevitable. The truth is that more than 70 percent of Northwest old
growth forests were already set aside forever in parks, wilderness
areas and designated reserves and that even in the 1980's we were not
harvesting our Federal forests faster than the rate of regeneration.
The glib answer says that we should stop log exports to invent more
mill jobs. The truth is that not a stick--not one stick of public
timber is exported raw from the Northwest. We have ended all State and
Federal log exports. All that remains is private property. And no
honest person can, with a straight face, argue that banning private log
exports will help any displaced workers in the rural communities that
depend on Federal timber harvests. Nobody on this planet could survive
in business by harvesting timber on the lowland private timberlands and
then shipping those logs up to the more remote communities hurting
today--it will not happen and the glib answer of banning private log
exports is another fraud, as well as confiscation of private property
values.
The truth is that we do not have to destroy these communities, 18,000
people do not have to wait in the Grays Harbor food lines in order to
save old growth forests. The truth is that a fair balance can be found.
Someday, the truth will come out. But that someday has not come. The
Olympian reporters have my respect. I fervently hope that their
reporting prompts a reexamination of this issue that sheds light on the
cold truth, the truth that the Grays Harbor food banks today serve
18,123 people in a county with a population of less than 60,000.
Can we imagine, possibly imagine, the response--properly--of decision
makers in Washington, DC, the metropolitan Northwest media and opinion
leaders in Washington State, if a deliberate federal policy put one-
third of Portland or King County residents in food bank lines? None of
us would tolerate such a result. So why do so many tolerate such a
result in rural Northwest communities?
I fear that the truth affecting these rural communities is not likely
soon to permeate past the tens of millions of dollars and sophisticated
mass communications techniques of the national environmental
organizations.
The truth is not likely to be heard or acted upon by the majority of
members of this Congress who have cast their safe green vote, assuring
the reelection support of the national environmental organizations and
their troops.
But, still, someday the truth will out. God will not long ignore this
preventable human suffering in our midst. Honest people will continue
to seek the truth and question a public policy that causes so much
pain.
But what do we do in the meantime? I pray to God that somebody else
will listen now. I pray that wisdom, compassion and understanding will
come to those who dominate Washington, D.C. now. I pray that, soon,
those who have chosen this course understand that they must change to
prevent even more pain from being visited on honest families who have
lost so much in the Northwest.
My opponents on this question will hasten to say ``we can't return to
the old timber harvest levels of 5 billion board feet a year.'' I say
``fine, but let us split the difference and immediately let these
communities harvest half of what they had grown to expect. That will
leave plenty of owl habitat, but it will also restore hopes and mend
the broken lives of many Northwest families.''
I am frustrated with this administration; I do not believe for a
minute that the President wishes so much pain for so many families. I
know that he does not. But the suffering is happening now because of
decisions made by his administration. Through his action or inaction
his administration will be judged. Thus far it has responded with
indifference.
After the November elections I will make a formal request of the
Senate Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations hold a field hearing in
Washington State to answer some of the disturbing questions raised by
the series in the Olympian. I will ask that the hearing be held before
the start of the next session of Congress, so that it will be divorced
from partisan politics, as this issue deserves more than partisan
politics. I want these hearings to ensure that the money the Federal
Government is spending is spent well and effectively. The people of
these communities deserve, at the very least, to be assured that the
little money that we are spending actually helps them.
So I close with a request that the President immediately propose
legislation that will get timber flowing into our starving Northwest
communities. If this legislation only provides for a short-term timber
harvest, fine; that is not my preference, but I will be its advocate,
and I will praise the President, because we need whatever we can get
now.
I cannot assure that Congress will pass such legislation, though I
believe that if the President pushes and the Northwest delegation
supports him, we can succeed. But I can promise the only thing that an
individual legislator can promise in the end. My promise is, Mr.
President, that if the administration sends to Congress legislation
that will cut through all of the roadblocks immediately and get timber
flowing to help these desperate families and communities now, this
Senator will vote, and speak and fight for it with all that is within
me.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to place the entire series of
articles in the Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in
the Record as follows:
Loggers Left With Crumbs
taxpayer money: government agencies cannot produce an accounting of
where timber dollars have been spent
(By Bob Partlow and Trask Tapperson)
Five years and more than $100 million later, government
programs to help Northwest loggers and their communities have
failed.
Massive logging cutbacks on federal forests have stripped
the region of thousands of jobs.
State and federal agencies have poured money into studies,
plans, consultants, unemployment benefits, seed money and
retraining programs to rescue the people and their towns.
But a three-month investigation by The Olympian and The
Bellingham Herald reveals:
Government agencies haven't tracked overall spending or
handling of programs to train timber workers for other jobs.
They can't give an accounting of how much money they spent,
where it went and whether it did any good.
Many loggers and their communities aren't finding new lives
after the devastation caused by government- and court-ordered
shutdowns of forests primarily to protect the northern
spotted owl.
Though some retraining ideas have met success; they don't
offset the widespread problems in many of the government
timber programs.
``As a long-term effort, it's been a complete failure,''
said Roger Reidel, a former millworker who oversees forest-
related issues for the Washington State Labor Council.
His assessment is shared throughout logging communities in
Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
Perhaps the best measure of the government's timber relief
effort is provided by people such as Jim Coates of Hoquiam, a
burly former sawmill worker.
Coates regularly tosses 40-pound boxes of government
surplus cheese, tuna fish and juice from a truck trailer to
workers at 28 food banks in the economically depressed
logging country of Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.
``When I started this job five years ago, we served 3,000
people a month,'' he said.
``Now we're up to 18,123 in 28 food banks and two soup
kitchens.
``Does that sound like retraining is working to you?''
On the other hand, government officials point to the
Clinton administration's plans to spend $1.2 billion to help
loggers during the next five years.
``It's a good plan,'' said Tom Tuchmann, the White House
timber czar in the Northwest.
``I believe in it. It recognizes people are hurting.
``You can't repeal that laws of change. You can only manage
them. We're trying to manage,'' he said. ``Some things are
going to work. Some things aren't going to work.''
But U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said most of that $1.2
billion isn't a new infusion of cash.
Instead, it's money from other government programs
repackaged as timber aid, he said.
``They're sticking a lollipop in the mouths of rural
communities so they won't scream as loudly about shutting
down their forests,'' said Dan Goldy, former director of
Oregon's Economic Development Department.
Where is the money? The government can't say--it doesn't
keep track.
White House response: Clinton officials say the
administration's timber recovery plan takes time.
The Brewers: The Darrington logging family has tried to get
government aid, but they face roadblocks.
Monday: A web of government bureaucracy captures people in
its net.
Tuesday: Much of the timber money has paid for consultants,
studies and administrative costs.
Wednesday: Some people have found solutions through
retraining programs or community efforts.
____
Nobody Can Explain Where the Money Has Gone
timber retraining: government agencies cannot account for the millions
of dollars earmarked for community and worker recovery programs
(By Trask Tapperson and Bob Partlow)
``Where has the money gone?''
Patti Hicklin, a part-time instructor at a job retraining
center in the timber town of Forks, isn't alone in asking
that question.
From union offices to university halls, people want to know
how much the government has spent to help workers and
communities rebound from sweeping logging cutbacks ordered
mostly to protect the threatened northern spotted owl.
And they want to know if the money has done any good.
They aren't getting many answers because government
officials at every level cannot or will not release bottom-
line figures.
After a three-month investigation, The Olympian and The
Bellingham Herald estimate that governments have channeled
more than $100 million since 1989 to the recovery programs.
But that's only a guess because no clearinghouse exists to
track the spending or results of training programs--either in
the federal government or in Washington, Oregon and Northern
California.
The newspapers filed 53 Freedom of Information requests
with state and federal agencies in the three states to pursue
the money trail.
``It's going to be tough for them to get the information
you want because some of them don't know where their records
are,'' said Lauri Hennessey, spokeswoman for President
Clinton's forest plan. ``They were never tracking it or
keeping it in one place.''
The newspapers followed up with repeated calls to officials
at the top agencies to renew the request for numbers.
A sample of the newspapers' questions:
How much money did the agency receive, and how much did it
spend?
How much did the agency use for administrative costs and
how much for timber worker retraining programs?
How many people got jobs after retraining, and how long did
they last?
The newspapers also tried to trace the money through dozens
of people in and out of government, including officials at
private industry councils and economic development
associations.
In all, 42 of the agencies eventually responded to the
written requests--from the giant U.S. Department of Labor to
the tiny town of Naches north of Yakima.
They sent information in a variety of governmnt forms or no
forms at all, producing a three-inch stack of reports on
taxpayer dollars spent.
The information included actual contracts with consultants
to spreadsheets (one handwritten), newsletters and newspaper
clippings. They often trickled in weeks after the initial
request--and even more than two months in some cases.
Some agencies put a price tag on their response.
``We estimate that gathering this information will take two
full-time people five full days,'' wrote Jennifer Kang,
spokeswoman for the Oregon Economic Development Department.
``I'm guessing, but this could run you up to $1,000.''
Ray Daffner, executive director of the Oregon--based WPPC,
and association of businesses that make finished wood
products, said Oregon officials want to keep the door closed.
``They don't want any scrutiny,' he said. ``If they wanted to
they could tell you.''
Other agencies replied, only to flatly refuse to provide
any information short of a court fight.
``We must decline because your request is not focused on a
specific issue or problem,'' wrote the Resources Agency of
California, a leader for regionwide effort to help displaced
timber workers.
Many agencies said they simply didn't keep track of the
numbers.
``In response to your request for a head count of all
persons who obtained new employment as a result of money
spent, a head count of all types of new employment obtained
and the length the jobs were held, please be advised that we
do not have any records responsive to that request,'' wrote
the Economic Development Administration of the U.S.
Department of Commerce.
Even Robert Rheiner couldn't supply numbers. He is co-
chairman of the Regional Economic Revitalization Team in
Portland, Ore., created by the Clinton administration to
route federal money to timber workers looking for help.
In the end, only fragmentary figures emerged, but they show
a startling lack of accountability.
In many cases, government agencies didn't follow up to see
if their programs helped timber workers find jobs in new
professions, ranging from nurses to small-business owners.
In other cases, they knew people found jobs, but didn't
know if the workers received a living wage or how long they
were employed.
That's true even for programs cited by the government as
models in the retraining effort, such as Lane County
Community College in Eugene, Ore.
Program Director Patty Lake cited statistics to show how
well former timber and millworkers are doing after attending
her school's programs:
Since 1989, about three-fourths of the 2,200 laid-off wood
products workers who took classes have new jobs; three-
fourths of them are in their retraining field and most make
at least 90 percent of their previous wage--averaging $9 to
$9.50 per hour. But the program surveys students in the first
three months of leaving school. After that, nobody knows.
The federal government won't begin until this fall to track
the results of worker retraining and community renewal
programs, said Laura McFarland, a Rheiner aide.
A long-term look at how workers are faring isn't expected
for almost five years, she said.
U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., questioned how wisely the
Clinton administration can spend a planned $1.2 billion on
timber relief during the next five years when the current
spending records are so incomplete.
``That's a whole other story,'' Hatfield said. ``If you
find out the answer, let me know.''
____
Family Willing To Try Anything to Survive
Learning to cope: ``If you want help, you've got to look at the end of
your sleeves,'' Ron Brewer says
(By Trask Tapperson)
Darrington.--After more than two decades immersed in
Washington's timber culture, Ron and Shari Brewer consider
logging as much a lifestyle as a livelihood.
The Brewers enjoyed both from the woods as they logged in
the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest under contracts
with the U.S. Forest Service.
They didn't get rich working in the 1.7-million-acre
stretch along the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains.
But they could afford ballet lessons for daughter Rhonda,
now 14; flights on rented light planes with Ron at the
controls; a family vacation to the Southwest desert so Shari
could see wildflowers in bloom.
No more.
The Brewers may join tens of thousands of people in the
Northwest's coastal woodbelt who must find another line of
work.
That's because the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest is now
reserved mostly for recreation, said U.S. Rep. Al Swift, D-
Bellingham. Logging has all but ended as legal protection of
forestland increases.
The protections range from scenic river corridors and
wilderness areas to habitat preserves for northern spotted
owls--goals of predominantly urban residents and groups,
Swift said.
``You live on Queen Anne Hill (in Seattle) and it's really
great to save all the trees around the people in
Darrington,'' Swift said sarcastically.
Tight times
The Brewers, Whatcom County natives, just sold some land
they have owned for years near Acme. The money may help pay
for a small farm they are looking at east of the mountains.
Shari, 43, envisions running the farmhouse as a bed-and-
breakfast for tourists while her husband works the farm.
Ballet lessons, recreational flying and desert vacations
got squeezed out of the family's tight budget more than a
year ago.
Those luxuries flowed in the mid-1980s when their R.L.
Logging and Land Clearing business has 12 full-time employees
and six log-truck drivers under contract, grossed an average
$500,000 and netted about $50,000 a year. Like virtually all
small-time operators reliant on timber-harvest contracts, the
Brewers experienced tough times even before the logging bans.
A bankrupt logging company owed them $180,000. They were
involved in an unrelated lawsuit that temporarily tied up
collateral to refinance their house, which they then lost.
By the start of the '90s, they lived in a rented home and
worked for others. Their savings dwindled.
By February, Ron's unemployment benefits ran out. By
spring, Shari's part-time job at an Arlington nursing home
dropped to a few days a month, barely making it worth the 28-
mile round-trip drive.
Today, they put food on the table with pickup work.
Last month, Shari did occasional jobs for the U.S. Navy,
conducting guided nature tours at a naval reservation in the
forest. Ron does odd jobs with his bulldozer--clearing land,
building ponds, fixing roads and excavating building sites.
``What it boils down to is, if you want help, you've got to
look at the end of your sleeves,'' he said.
Ron's job hunting
The two have hit dead ends in more than a half-dozen
attempts in the past several years to get government aid--
despite millions of dollars poured into the Northwest for
timber worker retraining and community renewal.
Ron's job hunting as well as his self-employment efforts
have been rebuffed, the Brewers believe, in some cases
because Ron is 46. Examples include.
Helicopter logging pilot: Ron has a private pilot's license
and said he needs about $4,000 to $6,000 to get rated for
choppers. The role of helicopters in logging may grow with
the new emphasis on selective harvests in roadless areas.
Ron said he asked for help form the Snohomish County
Private Industry Council, which has received several hundred
thousand dollars in grants to help timber workers.
Council Executive Director Emily Duncan said she didn't
recall Brewer or his request.
Applications of that sort go to the state Employment
Security Department, but Duncan said she doubted the training
would receive approval because of its ``higher-than-average
training costs.''
Another deterrent is that the helicopter job would leave
Brewer in the same precarious job field, said Kathy
Kerkvliet, an Employment Security Department official in
Mount Vernon.
Environmental engineer: Every Sunday, Ron sees several
openings for environmental engineers listed in Seattle
newspaper ads. He asked the Employment Security Department
for retraining help to qualify for such work but was told it
would take too long and cost too much.
``The intent of the program is more vocational in nature,''
Kerkvliet said. ``There isn't the funding to fund a person
for a four-year degree. There's thousands more people than
there are funds.''
____
A Look at Your Tax Dollars at Work
The incomplete numbers tell only part of the timber story.
They don't disclose questionable spending practices or the
human cost of the decision to ban logging on at least 7
million of acres in Washington, Oregon and Northern
California.
The three-month investigation by The Olympian and The
Bellingham Herald found these examples of how governments
spent tax dollars to help dislocated timber workers and their
communities:
Three loggers learned how to become scuba divers in 1992
through a state of Washington program. Price tag: $30,000,
including a week of warm-water diving in the Mexican resort
town of Cozumel and another week in Houston to attend a scuba
equipment convention. ``It was a waste of money, but I had a
good time,'' said Carl Gockerell, one of the loggers.
Gockerell now has a job marking trees for sale in forests.
Of the other two loggers, one is unemployed and the other
works as a crab fisher.
Thousands of dollars went to economic development seminars.
In addition to the usual speakers, a three-day Timber
Communities Conference in Ellensburg last April included a
series of games with plastic mice, paper airplanes and water
pistols.
Price tag: $12,114.76.
Economic development activists in Grays Harbor bought self-
esteem tapes to boost the confidence of unemployed timber
workers and others. Price tag: $43,200 in public and private
money.
A six-week government-sponsored ``career assessment''
program offered by Grays Harbor College included a one-day
physical obstacle course on the Wynochee River. During the
Outward Bound-type exercises, loggers go scurrying up ropes
in a class to build their self-confidence. Price tag: $500
for each student. The college also uses state money to defray
costs.
____
Clinton Administration on Timber Crisis: Just Wait for Results
government response: white house officials say they are rebuilding the
timber program, but it takes time
(By Trask Tapperson and Bob Partlow)
The White House is trying to reinvent the government's
response to the timber crisis to avoid past failures, Clinton
administration officials say.
But with more than one-third of the president's term
already over, they can't provide numbers that show
improvements since Clinton took office.
Yet they insist their project to retrain timber workers is
turning around and blame the Bush administration for leaving
them with a program in disarray.
``The alternative is to do nothing. That's unacceptable,''
said Tom Tuchmann, the Poland, Ore.-based White House
official in charge of Clinton's forest plan.
``If we started doing this five or six years ago, we
wouldn't have a crisis. We inherited a train wreck,''
Tuchmann said. ``You can't change that overnight. It took us
a year to put this plan together. In forest planning, that's
fast.''
U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich said the administration
is ``rebuilding the track, lining up the trains and putting
on a new locomotive.''
But for those already hit by the train, it's too late. ``A
lot of people are hurting,'' Reich said.
Tuchmann and other federal forestry officials said they
should be judged only on what the federal government has done
since November 1993, when their Economic Adjustment
Initiative began.
That's the name of the people side of Clinton's two-sided
approach to solving the Northwest's forest crisis. It deals
with worker retraining and community renewal.
The program's other half deals primarily with the
environment and other forest management concerns.
The initiative grew out of the administration's so-called
Option 9 plan for Northwest forests that put more than 7
million acres of public land into reserves.
``Give us until the end of the year, when we've been at
this a year, and we will be a lot more accountable,''
Tuchmann said.
Yet a top administration official already has touted the
success of the initiative. White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Roy Neel trumpeted it to 13 other top Clinton appointees in a
Nov. 29, 1993, memo.
He called for a ``full-court press' strategy to ensure the
effective implementation of the plan. The administration has
already made some significant progress on this front.''
He also noted that ``the plan is complex and there is
little margin for error.''
Away from government offices in Portland's glass
skyscrapers, the common view is that the Clinton
administration's revamping isn't an improvement over what
came before.
``Tuchmann doesn't see it,'' said Portland forest economist
Dan Goldy, former director of the Oregon Economic Development
Department. ``He's got Option 9 blinders on. Over 50 percent
of Oregon lands are publicly owned. We're looking at an
economic catastrophe in this state.''
Said U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., ``There is no
accountability, I haven't seen it (in the government
programs).''
Chris Chandler, state coordinator of the Salem, Ore.-based
Oregon Lands Coalition, said she has no evidence that the
Clinton forest plan is any better.
The coalition's 65 member groups include union locals and
timber, ranching and mining interests that are promoting a
larger timber harvest than allowed under the Clinton plan.
``Retraining is the hardest thing in the world to get
information about,'' Chandler said.
But Shari said her husband got another reason,
unofficially.
``A gentleman at Employment Security told him that even if
he did take classes and finished at the top, he would more
than likely be passed over for a younger person with the same
qualifications,'' she said.
Equipment operator: Ron has spent 25 years running
everything from giant bulldozers to yarders that pull downed
trees to collection points.
``I have experience in climbing trees and operating chain
saws. I have worked in all kinds of inclement weather. I am a
nondrinker/nonsmoker,'' said his letter two years ago to the
Snohomish County Public Utility District.
He didn't get the equipment operator job.
The same utility soon offered job-training classes for
workers at an Everett pulp mill that Weyerhaeuser Co. was
about to close. Ron would have welcomed a chance to attend
those sessions, but he wasn't eligible.
Road worker: The state Department of Natural Resources is
tearing up 72 miles of old logging roads in northwest
Washington and leasing new equipment to do the job. ``Why
don't they give a logger that job so they can make payments
on their own equipment?'' Ron asked.
The agency has no prohibition against that, said Northwest-
area spokesman Mark Morrow. ``But we can't think of anyone
who's met the criteria of being a displaced timber worker and
had their own equipment.''
Shari's job hunting
Shari's efforts to get the family on its feet have hit
other government snags.
Like Ron, she looked at returning to school. She applied in
1990 to Skagit Valley Community College and the county
Private Industry Council for assistance to get a two-year
degree in parks and recreation administration.
``There was only $400 in support money for the entire two
years,'' she said. ``Round-trip mileage to the college was
120 miles a day. I didn't even begin.
She cited a string of roadblocks to a three-year effort get
her ``Off the Beaten Track'' forest guide service up and
running.
The Private Industry Council promised to help her with
marketing for one year if she completed a 100-hour business
course, she said.
She did, but ``six weeks after the classes ended, I got a
letter that said, `We're sorry, we're out of funding, and the
marketing help is not available,'''she said.
She spent $500 of the family's savings for brochures.
They're gathering dust as permits and other requirements to
start operations remain enmeshed in a thicket of government
restrictions.
One she cites is a state constitutional ban on investing
public money in private businesses such as her fledgling
enterprise.
``I could be up and running for about $15,000'' she said.
That includes $12,000 for a used tour van, $3,000 for
marketing, $600 for liability insurance and $85 for Forest
Service permits. Without the insurance, the Forest Service
balks at giving her permission to take people into the woods.
``All the timber dollars that have come in here have paid
people to tell us how to do it,'' Shari said. ``There's
nothing for individual persons in start-up loans.
``I think it would be better spent than hiring people to
come up here and tell me how to do it,'' she said. ``They've
sunk maybe $50,000 into counselors, who don't know the needs
of the community. That would have started up three
businesses.''
Shari said she earned about $1,500 for her family last year
picking wild berries. In April, she said the Natural
Resources Department denied her a permit to enter Ash and
Squire Creek roads to her prime berry area because they are
managing it more restrictively for wildlife.
``The bottom line is you're on your own,'' she said.
____
Where Did $100 Million Come From?
accountability: the overall estimate of timber aid is an educated guess
based on figures supplied by a state agency
(By Bob Partlow and Trask Tapperson)
The Olympian and Bellingham Herald have estimated that
government agencies in Washington, Oregon and Northern
California spent more than $100 million from mid-1989 to mid-
1994 to aid workers and towns.
But that's only an educated guess because no state or
federal agency in the region has any precise, reliable
figures.
The Washington Department of Community Trade and Economic
Development supplied the best numbers, saying about $34
million had been spent on the timber problem in the state
during the past five years.
Estimates for Oregon and California are a guess because
agencies there would not respond to requests for information
or would do so only at a high cost.
Government officials and industry leaders say Washington
loggers and communities feel about one-quarter of the impact
of logging cutbacks. About 60 percent of the impact falls on
Oregon and the rest on California, they say.
If Washington's numbers are correct, a figure of more than
$100 million is a conservative estimate for the three-state
region. A congressional source who asked not to be named said
that estimate is probably accurate, although he indicated no
overall figures exist.
The newspapers received a wide variety of responses to
requests made under the Freedom of Information Act and state
public records laws.
Some agencies gave clear, concise information about their
small corners of the multi-million-dollar effort:
The Eastern Washington Partnership, for example, provided
information about its $107,405 grant to retrain workers:
length of the grant, actual expenditures, administrative
costs, number of people who participated, what happened to
them after they received training and the cost per
participant.
They spent only $102,773 of the money allocated.
The U.S. Department of Labor also provided data that mapped
how much money was spent in Washington and Oregon the past
half decade under the Worker Adjustment Program. Its charts
detailed the number of participants, how many weeks the
average participant was trained, average hourly wage before
the program and hourly wage at the program's end, total
program costs and a follow-up employment rate, among other
things.
``People have a right to know how their dollars are being
spent,'' said Tom Tuchmann, President Clinton's forest plan
czar.
But even the Department of Labor didn't keep track of
workers after 13 weeks--and department money is only part of
the government pie divided up in the states.
The lack of detailed numbers comes despite Gov. Booth
Gardner's creation of a ``timber team'' in Washington in 1989
to bring together public agencies and private groups to
coordinate a response to help timber communities.
The team produced one detailed report in December 1992 but
didn't follow up after that.
____
State Timber Workers Last to Get Federal Aid
Slices of the pie: At least 156 agencies vie for federal timber dollars
(By Bob Partlow and Trask Tapperson)
Veteran U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon doesn't know how
much money is being gobbled up by bureaucrats that is
supposed to help timber workers and their towns.
Because he can't get answers, he just says it's quite a
bit.
Laurence Larsen, the owner of a Darrington hardware store,
also doesn't know but said money thrown at the problem gets
whittled down like a ``silver dollar to a dime.''
With at least 156 agencies with a finger or two in the
governmental pie cooked to help loggers and their towns,
every bureaucraft and consultant seems to get a piece before
the last few crumbs are sent to help timber workers.
Kristi Reece, a U.S. Forest Service employee in Darrington,
said her agency is typical.
``Money comes from Congress,'' she said. ``The Washington
office takes its share. Then the regional office gets its
share. Then the supervisor's office gets a percentage. Then
the district office gets a percentage. By the time it gets to
the workers, it's not the full amount Congress allocated.
People may not like it, but that's the way it is. That's the
way it's always been.''
Congressional reports studying retraining programs such as
those for timber workers have called them wasteful,
duplicative, overlapping, late in providing help, mismanaged
and inefficient.
The Clinton administration says it is trying to sort out
the competing bureaucratic interests and get everybody
pulling together.
Whether it can or will work remains an open question.
``This may look like a piecemeal approach to you,'' Reece
said. ``You should have seen the way it was before.''
Bob Partlow, 47 has been the state government reporter for
The Olympian for the past 10\1/2\ years.
He covers the Legislature, state government and politics,
and has done extensive investigative reporting.
Before moving to Olympia, he held a similar job for six
years with the Herald. He also was a radio reporter in Blaine
and Anacortes for four years and attended Western Washington
University from 1965-69.
Trask Tapperson, 55, began his newspaper career 33 years
ago as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Among his
jobs: political, legislative and government correspondent. He
also was a member of the newspapers' Editorial Board.
Tapperson joined The Bellingham Herald in 1982 as environment
and energy reporter and was city editor for five years before
becoming business editor and special projects reporter.
Dick Milligan, 56, has been a photographer at The Olympian
for the past 18 years and is now the chief photographer.
Before being hired by The Olympian, Milligan spent 20 years
in the Marine Corps as a photographer. In his career, he has
photographed everything from politicians to posies, and he
shows a strong preference for the posies.
____
Clinton Administration Adds to Bureaucratic Jungle
more government: the president's solution for the timber crisis has
added layers of government
(By Bob Partlow and Trask Tapperson)
No less than 156 bureaucracies help carry out President
Clinton's Northwest forest plan, 98 alone to help timber
workers and towns.
Some agencies are public, such as government departments;
others are private, such as industry councils; still others
are a blend of both, such as economic development councils.
The public players are at all levels of government--
federal, state and local. Some are in separate governments,
such as Indian tribes.
Together they have spent more than $100 million during the
past five years on dozens of programs in a mostly
unsuccessful effort to steer loggers, millworkers and their
communities to new lives.
Their old lives are falling prey to logging cutbacks in
Northwest forests that stem mostly from a move to protect the
northern spotted owl.
bureaucratic maze
The maze of agencies is one of the top reasons why
government officials can't say where the money has gone and
whether it has done any good.
``You put a silver dollar in the end of the pipe and
somehow a dime comes out the other end,'' said Laurence L.
Larsen. He owns Darrington's only hardware store and has
served on state economic development committees.
Streamlining the bureaucracy was one of the Clinton
administration's early claims of success. From the president
down, federal officials talked about how they were
reinventing government systems.
What the administration invented for the timber crisis was
at least five more layers of bureaucracy on top of the 156
departments, bureaus, administrations, boards, councils,
consortia and tribes.
At the behest of the White House, the federal government
and three Northwest states created ``economic revitalization
teams'' to coordinate about 1,200 applications for money and
other help for distressed communities and worker groups.
The state teams feed the applications to the regional team
based in a Portland, Ore., skyscraper. The regional team, in
turn, feeds them to various components of the federal
bureaucracy.
``We feel we're not creating bureaucracy, we feel we're
making bureaucracy run much more efficiently,'' said Robert
Rheiner, cochairman of the regional team.
Yet a few blocks away in another Portland skyscraper is
another White House creation: the Inter-Agency Office of
Forestry and Economic Development. Its director, former U.S.
Senate staffer Tom Tuchmann, oversees the president's timber
plan to manage Northwest forests and renew timber economies.
The Clinton administration has identified 47 barriers to
effective retraining and community development. They range
from muddled chains of command to different criteria for
approval of the same kinds of requests.
Not the answer
Adding more bureaucratic tentacles isn't the answer, said
Linda Morra, director of education and employment issues for
the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of
Congress.
``Coordinators frequently carry costs,'' Morra said. ``It's
not quite clear that the most efficient way out of this maze
is to have people coordinated. You're dealing with a system
that's fragmented and inefficient.''
Then why perpetuate it? Larsen is among those who thing
they know.
``They spread all this money around, a mile wide and in
inch deep,'' he said. ``It doesn't do any good, but it does
have political benefit.''
That's borne out by the types of officials chosen to serve
on the various revitalization teams, said David Ford,
president of the Western Forest Industries Association. The
group represents 100 small mill owners in 12 Western states.
``Look at their makeup,'' Ford said. ``They're all
government people looking for ribbon-cutting projects--a new
sewer, lighting, paving, infrastructure things--without
looking at maintaining the tax base that they have.''
A big reason for that, Ford said, is that Clinton's forest
plan ``was cobbled together. They threw money at a
problem, hoping it would go away. They start from the
premise the industry will die.''
In fact, Ford said, by its approach to relief ``the
administration is saying the industry already is dead.''
Meanwhile, no one is monitoring the bottom line for cash
flowing through the government programs and what the money is
buying. For example:
When the U.S. Department of Labor puts federal tax dollars
into state programs, the states are left to track how those
dollars are spent and what they buy, said Armando Quiroz, the
department's top employment and training official for
Washington and Oregon.
Of 135 timber-related studies and plans performed in
Washington since 1989, the state tracked the results of only
12. Local officials were left to figure out what taxpayers
got for their money in the other 123.
Tuchmann said the Labor Department is a ``money
distributor, not a money monitor.''
Government waste may be a great deal more costly than the
$100 million-plus spent on the timber crisis. Several reports
from the General Accounting Office criticize government job
retraining programs in general.
They cite:
Complexity.
Failure to tailor programs to match worker needs.
Administrative inefficiencies.
Lack of accountability.
Particularly worrisome is the high administrative costs
that agencies spend solving the same problem, according to
the General Accounting Office.
Washington state numbers show costs of administering
assistance programs for timber workers and towns range from
little or nothing to about 12 percent. Neither Tuchmann nor
officials in the three Northwest states could or would say
what they are.
General Accounting Office officials said administrative
costs of some other federal retraining programs are in the
same range, while others are in the range of 15 percent to 20
percent.
The problem isn't just costs. There are serious problems
with the way the governments set up some programs.
For example, governments typically require displaced
workers to go through retraining to receive extended
unemployment benefits. So they enroll in school, often
community colleges. But the benefits frequently run out
before their retraining programs are completed.
``Then we have to choose between survival and education,''
said Kevin Browning, a former logger from Roseburg, Ore. He
wanted to get a business degree but now is caught in such a
bind.
Many involved in the retraining programs--from timber
workers to those in local businesses that depend on them--
feel the bureaucrats who administer them ignore the human
element.
When workers do get training for new jobs, it's often for
positions that don't exist. Examples include the glutted
fields of truck driver and diesel mechanic. To rectify that,
Washington state was supposed to do a market study of jobs
available. It hasn't been done, state officials said.
Scott Haugen, a former logger in Forks, said the only
reason he successfully trained to become a diesel mechanic is
because ``I had every break in the world.''
He overcame several bureaucratic obstacles--including
having to pay for most of his tools after the government said
it would provide them.
Not all the problems arise with the bureaucrats.
Another obstacle to successful retraining is the ingrained
reluctance to change or relocate among those working in rural
timber towns.
Often their roots sink deeper than an old-growth Douglas
fir's. Already hostile toward a government they say has
denied them a living, many are in no mood to leave--no matter
what the cost.
``I have four or five generations of my relatives buried
here,'' said Coin King of Forks, a onetime firebrand timber
activist.
He still carries the torch but is busy nowadays trying to
scrape together a living in the woods. ``Why should I have to
go move to become a VCR repairman in Seattle?'' he asked.
George Bernard Shaw Jr. spent a quarter century falling
timber in Oregon and Washington. He lost his last job in
December and now is struggling to get a two-year degree at
Peninsula Community College in Port Angeles.
It's part of his effort to find a new way to make a
living--and a desperate attempt to avert a move to more
populous places with more job opportunities.
``I don't want to live in the city,'' he sad. ``I just
can't do it. I'd live out here and starve first.''
____
Retraining Program Turned Out Useless
Surviving: The Lynches of Hoquiam have found a way to survive--without
the governments's help
(By Bob Partlow)
Hoquiam.--If ever a man looked like a logger, it was Larry
Lynch.
A 1989 photo shows him with a bushy beard, suspenders,
plaid shirt, standing in a forest.
``He was the American logger,'' said his wife, Renee Lynch.
But he lost his job in February 1990. The couple and their
three children almost went bankrupt and had to cash in their
insurance policies. The winter of 1980-90 was ``an absolute
nightmare,'' Renee said.
An advocate for devastated timber families, she recalls
sorting out rotten potatoes from good ones at the local food
bank. Her family also was getting help from the food bank.
``People lived on cleaned-up pig food--that's how most of us
made it,'' she said.
Lary, 40, decided to retrain as a nurse, thinking it was a
job with stability.
He started at Grays Harbor College in spring 1991. But a
year later just as he was making progress, the rules changed
for awarding school grants and his money ran out. He finally
gave up.
On his own, he found a job building and maintaining
guardrails on state highways in 1992. It paid the mortgage,
but kept him away from home for long periods. That job ended
this year, and he finally found a similar job in Alaska.
The state lists him as successfully retrained, said Renee,
31.
But the Lynches are selling their home and moving near
Anchorage, Alaska, to start over.
Renee has little use for retraining programs or the
government that sponsored them.
``It's an absolute joke,'' she said, ``Try retraining a
Sioux Indian not to be a Sioux Indian. It can't be done.''
____
Small-Time Logging Outfits Will Be Shut Out of Sales
logging sales: operators say government ties their hands with bond
requirements
(By Trask Tapperson)
A federal judge last month lifted a three-year court ban on
U.S. Forest Service timber sales along the Northwest coast,
but that won't set chain saws screeching anytime soon.
That's because legal challenges and sale preparations must
come first.
When the trees do go on the block, perhaps next year, few
of the small, often family-run logging businesses are likely
to benefit much, their operators say.
The reason: The federal government thwarts its goal of
helping timber businesses by the scale of its timber
contracts and bond requirements.
The federal government puts no ceiling on the size of its
timber sales but is trying to structure smaller contracts,
said Robert Rheiner, a Clinton administration forest
official.
The government also is advertising logging sales of more
than $25,000 in local areas so smaller logging companies have
a chance at them, Rheiner said.
But loggers claim that won't help them because they can't
come up with the 10 percent performance bond required by the
government to protect against improper job performance.
``When it's a big contract--$250,000 to $500,000--that's a
$25,000 to $50,000 bond,'' said Shari Brewer, a former
contract logger in Darrington. ``Small operators just don't
have it.''
The government could do some simple things to open more
doors, loggers said.
For example, they said, the government could:
Set aside a percentage of contracts for small logging
operators, just as it does for businesses selling to the
government and for women- and minority-owned businesses.
Put into escrow some of the money it plans to pay a
contractor (say, 15 percent of the contract's value), then
pay it out only as the work is approved.
Raise the minimum amount of a contract at which operators
must pay prevailing union-level wages in the area in cases
involving a dislocated logger.
Some of those changes would require action by Congress,
Rheiner said.
Other steps within the power of the administration must
await its ``learning process,'' he said.
Meanwhile, Rheiner said, ``It's just not going to be
possible to save everybody.''
____
It Seemed Like They Promised You Everything at the Start
(By Bob Partlow)
Forks--Scott Haugen, 35, successfully started a second
career as a diesel mechanic after working as a logger all his
life.
But he wouldn't have made it through a government
retraining program without the help of family and friends.
In 1990, he signed up for a two-year diesel mechanic course
at Peninsula Community College.
A state-funded training program promised him $2,000 for
tools, but he got closer to $500. He borrowed the rest of the
money from his dad to buy them.
His unemployment benefits ran out during his program. His
family kicked in to keep him going.
He needed a space to start the business. His best friend,
Dave Westerlund, provided it.
And his wife has a good job as an administrative secretary
will the Quillayute Valley School District.
``It seemed like they promised you everything at the
start,'' Haugen said. ``As time went by, you because more of
a case number. I quit listening to them after awhile.''
The best way to help out-of-work loggers is to put them
back in the woods where they belong, he said.
``How many people my age in Seattle stopped a well-paying
job they enjoyed, took two years out of their life and
started working another job--just to satisfy somebody else's
idea of what is right and wrong?'' he asked, referring to
those who want to protect the northern spotted owl.
``I miss logging, I really do. There was something about
it. What has happened is something like an excerpt form the
`Geraldo Rivera' show.''
____
I Have No Desire To Work And Be Poor
a living wage: the college student will run out of unemployment
insurance before he completes his degree
(By Trask Tapperson)
Sequim--George Bernard Shaw Jr. points out where the big
trees used to stand as he strolls across the Peninsula
Community College campus. He knows because he cut down many
of them in his logging days.
Shaw, 41, now lugs a book bag instead of a chain saw as he
seeks to replace his shattered, 25-year career as a timber
feller. It ended when he lost his last job in December, began
collecting $290 a week in unemployment benefits and enrolled
in school to seek a four-year environmental policy and
assessment degree offered through Peninsula by Western
Washington University's Huxley College.
Shaw proved he knew how to study 19 years ago when he
earned a two-year associate degree in applied sciences at
Clatsop Community College. He still knows. Shaw's earned
almost straight A's at Peninsula.
No matter. His re-education is becoming a tangled mess
because the government-organized retraining system is out of
sync.
``It's difficult to have an objective, and then they'll
take you only part way,'' he said.
His first degree left him 30 credit hours shy of the
requirements to begin working toward the Huxley degree, which
he sees as a certain key to a steady living.
But limited course offerings and enrollment pressures have
stretched out Shaw's preparation for the Huxley program. And
come September, when he'd like to begin it, only senior-level
courses will be offered, he said. That means waiting until
September 1995 for the junior-year courses to roll around.
In the meantime, Shaw said, the government allows him only
18 months of unemployment benefits, which run out this
summer. Without that money, Shaw said, he can't pay his bills
without leaving school and building up some on-the-job hours
to qualify for more unemployment benefits.
As the prospect of his environmental degree stretches out,
Shaw may help his wife, Dorothy, 43, make earrings and
Christmas ornaments. That $2,000-a-year enterprise ``is
something we can fall back on.'' He also can pick up about
$1,500 a year trimming trees and is looking for some work
with his back hoe.
``It's difficult to see what we're going to have to do to
generate a living wage,'' Shaw said. ``I have no desire to
work and be poor. I'm not that noble.''
____
Broken Promise: Family Still Waits
Coping: The president vowed to put Walter Bailey of Hayfork back to
work. That hasn't happened. And a plan to put hundreds of townspeople
to work is stymied by a federal holdup
(By Bob Partlow)
Hayfork, Calif.--More than a year ago on national
television, President Clinton promised to put logger Walter
Bailey back to work.
The family still is waiting for Clinton to make good on
that pledge.
Bailey, 46, no longer has a steady job in the industry
where he worked since he was 24. The timber-falling business
he and his wife, Nadine, started in 1985 is gone.
It once employed 15 people with an annual payroll of
$360,000.
The Baileys may lose property that has been in the family
for three generations.
``This is our government, and I just can't believe our
government is going to do this to us,'' Nadine Bailey said.
But in February 1993, the couple had hope.
Their 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, had written a letter
to a logging magazine and was invited to an ABC show,
``President Clinton Answering Children's Questions,''
televised live from the White House.
Elizabeth stood up and faced Clinton. Using her school
yearbook, she underlined the number of kids affected by
government and court actions to curb logging--140 students--
about 70 percent of the school.
``She told him of all her friends' fathers who were going
to lose their jobs, mothers who weren't at home for them any
more, fathers who had to work miles and miles away,'' Nadine
Bailey said. ``That was how she saw it. It was pretty stark.
It's not numbers. It's people.''
Clinton told Elizabeth he agreed some places could be
logged, but said some places also needed protection.
The promise he made then was to keep ``a significant number
of people working in the woods,'' a ``stable logging
industry,'' and ``large numbers of people working and still
save the owls.''
The next month, Nadine Bailey was invited to take a spot on
a panel at Clinton and Vice President Al Gore's timber summit
in Portland, Ore.
The administration called the national meeting to discuss
possible solutions to the timber industry shutdown caused by
court injunctions to halt logging to protect the northern
spotted owl.
Bailey, 37, returned home with a mission.
``We were ready to do anything we could to make this plan
work,'' she said.
Hayfork, a 3,500-resident dot in the Sierra Nevada between
Redding and Eureka, has been a logging community since the
1920s. It started out as an agricultural community, then
slowly switched. But controversy over the spotted owl and the
resulting logging slowdown in Northern California's Trinity
National Forest had rocked the town.
Bailey decided to find a way to preserve both the town's
livelihood and the surrounding forest land. That meant
joining forces with the other side--Hayfork environmentalist
Joseph Bower.
They and a handful of others in the community met daily for
almost two months. Their plain; fireproof the forests and
replant trees.
They would cut small trees on 40,000 acres in Tinity
National Forest. The trees posed a potential fire danger if
not thinned.
They plan also would put people to work maintaining the
3,500 miles of logging roads in the national forest. Dirt
from the roads was washing into rivers and streams, spoiling
fish habitat.
``Our plan would put 500 people to work for the next 20
years,'' Bower said.
It also would eliminate the need for new logger retraining
programs, he and Bailey said.
But their idea remains in limbo. They tried to sell it to
the Clinton administration, but U.S. Forest Service officials
said they don't have the money.
The problem is that the plan requires moving money from one
bureaucracy to another, and that's disallowed by federal law,
said John Veevaert, assistant district ranger for the Forest
Service in Hayfork.
Money intended to help fish, for example, can't go to fix
logging roads. ``Congress has to catch up,'' he said.
He believes a version of Bailey and Bower's proposal can
work and urged them to keep working despite the ponderous
bureaucracy.
``What they are striving for is exactly what we want,''
Veevaert said.
The experience has outraged Baily nonetheless.
``I think the population of Hayfork has increased 10
percent since people learned that all this federal grant
money was available,'' she said. ``We've got consultants
writing grants for almost everything, mostly studies. If I
read one more grant proposal for a feasibility study, I think
I'll throw up.
``My personal favorite was a proposal for $20 million to
build a major movie studio in Hayfork--$10 million for the
property and $10 million for the studio. For $20 million, you
could have the whole town of Hayfork and get me thrown in for
the bargain.''
Now, Bailey calls the Clinton plan a ``smoke-and-mirrors-
type solution that has everybody fooled.''
She no longer trusts Clinton, Gore or Tom Tuchmann, the
administration's timber czar who came to Ukiah in Northern
California last spring and tried to convince residents that
the president's plan is working.
At the meeting, Bailey disputed his contention.
Tuchmann has said the administration is doing all it can to
work out solutions so people in timber communities can find
work again. It's beginning to work, he said, though much
remains to be done.
But Bailey wants Clinton to follow through on his promise.
Her husband is doing a logging job on the ranch of a friend,
but it runs out in a couple of months.
``Elizabeth said the other day, It will be a while before I
trust again,''' she said.
____
Ex-Millworker Must Choose Between School or Survival
(By Bob Partlow)
Portland, OR.--Kevin Browning, 28, lost more than his job
at the Roseburg, Ore., mill in 1992.
The upheaval that followed included a split with his wife,
a plunge in self-esteem and a lost sense of direction.
He thought he was back on track, getting retrained to open
a business that could hire other displaced timber workers.
He began attending Umpqua Community College, earning a 3.85
grade-point average in business administration.
But in May, he testified at a congressional hearing on
retraining that his future was in jeopardy.
``Unfortunately, all my dreams and hard work may come to
naught,'' he told U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore.
``The funds that have kept a roof over my head and food on
my table are running out. I have only about six weeks of
unemployment insurance and still another year of my education
to go.
``This places me in an extremely awkward situation--whether
to keep a roof over my head and food on my table or complete
my education.
``While my situation is dramatic, I do not feel it is
unique.
``In recent weeks, I have seen many of my fellow students
lament over having to make the same decision. Unfortunately,
most are forced to pick survival over their education. And
some will be forced to return to the industry which spawned
their unemployment in the first place.
``This prospect truly saddens me.
``I feel that the sociological repercussions of this
emotional roller coaster will be devastating, encompassing
everything from a rise in domestic violence to drug abuse and
education.''
____
Loggers Say New Timber Plans Have No Magic Formula
common sense? studies and consultants seem all the craze, but many
logging families feel it's all bureaucratic bluster
(By Bob Partlow and Trask Tapperson)
When government officials want to help timber workers and
their communities, they go to study hall.
And they usually take a consultant with them.
Consultant Eric Hovee, who did five community studies in
Washington and two dozen or more in Oregon said ``there's not
a lot of magic'' in the studies. But Washington did 135 the
past half decade.
Consultants typically take the pulse of the community, hold
a meeting or two, then issue a report. Much of what they
recommend is ``common sense,'' Hovee said, but the report
helps focus the community.
``Yuppie bonding,'' Forks logger Colin King said of a
community meeting he attended in Port Angeles.
He and others find little value in the studies, consultants
or timber conferences done by those in government or private
business who want to redirect loggers into other occupations.
``They want to make them eco-slaves,'' said Sarah Smyth of
Olympia, whose family owns a sawmill between Olympia and
Shelton. She was referring to temporary jobs in the woods the
government is offering some workers.
In addition to studies and consultants, timber workers and
their towns also get a healthy dose of self-esteem tapes and
motivational programs such as New Chance at Grays Harbor
College.
Supporters say workers need such a psychological boost. But
others, such as Forks logger-turned-diesel-mechanic Scott
Haugen, think the only boost timber workers need is to get
back in the woods.
____
Is Timber Money Being Wasted on Silly Games at Conferences
Accountability question: Some participants of a government-sponsored
meeting were insulted by the children's games; others liked the seminar
(By Bob Partlow)
Ellensburg.--Porridge in the pot! Porridge in the pot!
Jelly in the jar! Jelly in the jar!
About 60 men and women lined the walls of a conference room
at Central Washington University and intoned the childhood
chant--first loudly, then softly.
It was the second day of a three-day Timber Communities
Conference in April. Nine state employees staffed it.
The seminar was billed as a way to help timber communities
cope with financial hardship, but not a calk boot or hickory
shirt was in sight.
The public employees and consultants who dominated the
conference played games with plastic mice, flew paper
airplanes and made luggage tags out of business cards--all in
the name of revitalizing economically depressed timber towns.
They also listened to speeches from people familiar with
economic development, held a mock townhall meeting in the
format of the ``Phil Donahue'' show and tried to revitalize a
fictional town called Stump Hollow.
THE PURPOSE
The conference was the brain-child of the state Department
of Community, Trade and Economic Development and the U.S.
Forest Service.
Apart from the games was a ``core curriculum'' to show
people how to redirect their economies, said Maury Forman,
the department's training coordinator.
That include tips on starting and expanding business and
how to attract new enterprises.
``We teach all elements of economic and community
development, and we try to teach through interactive learning
and exercises,'' Forman said.
Grace Hathaway, Darrington's city planner, sat in the
middle of the room while most of the others sung the porridge
chant.
``I think it was an insult,'' Hathaway said. ``This group
thought they were dealing with a bunch of provincial,
unsophisticated ignoramuses.''
Joby Winans, a department trainer, called the chanting ``an
energizer'' to wake people from their midafternoon doldrums,
but Hathaway call the activity ``ridiculous. We'd just had a
break.''
Hathaway got fed up with the porridge and jam and with so-
called ``ice breakers'' the night before at the conference.
The group was divided by the different colors of plastic
mice they received at the start, as well as by hair color,
shoe color and shoe style, she said.
They flew planes and went on a scavenger hunt--looking for
an oak leaf, foreign coin and feather, among other items.
The next day, conference leaders passed out water pistols
to members of the audience to shoot at speakers if they went
overtime.
Winans said her colleagues asked her to come up with ways
to bring people together.
``The conference was built around sharing information from
experts...and from communities because they've tried to
develop some ways and found things that worked and didn't
work,'' she said.
The $12,114.76 spend on the conference should have gone
somewhere else, Hathaway said.
``Take all the salaries these people are making to put
these things on and you could pay for several timber workers
for a year instead of making paper airplanes or putting
porridge in the pot,'' she said. ``I have a lot of problem
seeing where the money is going. We've gone way past the
realm of reality.''
Out of context?
Michele Brown, unit manager for local development
assistance with the department, said the games should be put
in context.
But measuring the success of economic development work such
as the Ellensburg gathering is difficult to do.
Forman runs similar conferences in which he uses
educational games based on ``Wheel of Fortune,'' ``
Jeopardy!'' and ``The Dating Game.''
``I know how this is going to look in the paper,'' he said
of using ``The Dating Game'' format. ``But it really works.''
He has letters from people who say such conference training
helped their communities keep or attract business.
Micki Colwell, executive director of the Hoquiam
Development Association, attended the Ellensburg meeting to
make contacts.
``It's a good way to meet people in other towns,'' she
said, ``and, of course, you get to know state people, which
is important when you submit grants.''
The success of economic development studies also is tough
to gauge.
In the past five years, 135 such studies have been done in
Washington, but the state has done little follow-up.
Although the state pays for many of the studies, ``the
accountability really rests with the counties,'' Brown said.
``They are asking for them.''
Neither she nor Forman could estimate how many jobs are
created by economic development activities.
``It's messy, it's long-term and it doesn't get you from
Point A to Point B very quickly,'' Brown said.
conference costs
The State Department of Community, Trade and Economic
Development provided this accounting of costs for the Timber
Communities Conference:
what money came in
$5,110.76 from timber funds. Department officials didn't
elaborate.
$2,000 from the U.S. Forest Service.
$5,004 from registration fees. The fees ranged from $75 for
community participants such as consultants and economic
development officials to $150 for state and federal
employees.
where the money went
$8,461--room and board.
$800--speaker fees.
$1,200--conference handouts.
$264--conference brochures and notebooks.
____
Timber Workers Offered New Change Program
education: a program official cites success stories but has no numbers
to back up the claim
(By Bob Partlow)
Aberdeen--What kind of chance do timber workers have to
rebuild their lives?
A ``New Chance,'' if a motivational program by that name
works as touted.
During the past two years, the program at Grays Harbor
College has put 504 students through a six-week course to
help prepare them for further career training and education,
said co-coach Cleo Norris.
``We have some really good success stories,'' Norris said.
But Roger Reidel calls it the ``Last Chance'' program.
``It makes people feel better while they're standing in the
unemployment line,'' scoffed Reidel, a laid-off millworker
who now helps other displaced timber workers for the
Washington State Labor Council, the umbrella association for
the state's labor unions.
The project isn't a retraining program, but a ``career
assessment'' designed to help timber workers take their first
steps into a new future.
It helps them with basic reading, writing and math skills,
gives them some computer training and runs them through a
rigorous one-day obstacle course on the Wynoochee River.
The course includes the ``pamper pole''--a 21-foot rope
that participants climb. Once they reach the top, they jump
onto a net.
``It teaches teamwork and builds trust,'' Norris said. ``We
spend all day up there bonding. They become family. They meld
together.''
Norris said the program is a success but project officials
don't have any statistics yet to back up the claim. They hope
to get some during a survey of all graduates.
Norris believes a majority of their graduates are attending
school. The ones she knows about--she didn't have any
specific numbers--have a grade-point average of 3.23.
Some public officials point to New Chance graduation
ceremonies as inspirational, a sign that retraining has its
bright spots.
A good attitude is important, said Dan Wood of The Umbrella
Group, a coalition of organizations focusing on land-use and
property-rights issues. It also advocates opening forests to
more logging.
But people need jobs, Wood said.
``Hope without income isn't going to last,'' he said. ``You
raise people's hopes, and they are going to crash down again.
And it's going to be worse than the first time. They get
self-esteem and positive thinking. They have a good time in
class. Students tell people they are great. They got a B for
the first time in their life or spoke in front of a class.
``I've attended those graduations. I'm sitting in the
audience saying, `Great, but where are the jobs?' When the
excitement is gone, how will it feed your family?''
The Hoquiam Development Association, a private agency that
gets some public money to develop Hoquiam's economy, also has
a self-esteem program.
The association paid the final $3,200 on a $40,000 set of
motivational tapes from the Seattle-based Pacific Institute.
Private money paid the rest of the cost.
The tapes give people a sense of worth and help lift their
spirits so they can move forward, said association Executive
Director Micki Colwell.
Jim Coates, who distributes food to 28 food banks in Grays
Harbor and Pacific counties, remembers when the ITT Rayonier
Inc. mill closed in November 1992, putting more than 600
people out of work. The mill has partially reopened and
employs about 230 people.
After the mill shutdown, ``my phone was ringing off the
hook with consultants and other people wanting to sell me
computer programs, motivational tapes, one thing or
another,'' Coates said.
``That kind of thing is sickening. Everybody was looking to
make a fast buck. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.''
``Everybody talks about bringing up esteem. (But you) put
them through school and they can't find a job. Is their
esteem lower than it would have been'' Coates asked. ``You
bet it is.''
____
Retrained Timber Worker Once Again Without Work
(By Bob Partlow)
Deming.--A state report listed only one man successfully
retrained in Whatcom County under its ``Dislocated Timber
Worker and Employment Training Program'' from mid-1991 to
mid-1993.
Cost: $12,144.
The state Employment Security Department--which ran the
program--took 3\1/2\ weeks to track the worker down when
asked to supply his name: Philip King, 27, of Deming.
But today, King is out of work.
He first lost his job with Baker Bay Logging in Whatcom
County in late 1989 because of logging cutbacks to protect
spotted-owl habitat, he said. He spent a few months looking
for another logging job but couldn't find one.
The state offered him a year of education, but he turned it
down because he thought he needed more time to learn a new
trade. So, the state offered retraining through the
Department of Natural Resources, promising him some work in
the woods marking trees for sale while teaching him some
computer skills.
King marked trees for six months, received almost no
computer training and talked his way into three more months
of work fighting fires for the state.
His salary dropped from $13.75 an hour as a logger to $5.50
an hour working for the state. Then it dropped to zero when
the job ran out in 1990.
He went back to the state for help but was denied further
training, he said.
```We don't have to think about you any more--we're through
with you,' that's my impression of the program,'' King said.
He has gotten a couple of other jobs since then but injured
himself on the last one and is out of work and fighting for
unemployment benefits.
____
State Takes the Credit for Carver
Dennis Chastain: The wood carver says the help on a loan was a fluke
and not the only reason he's in business
(By Bob Partlow)
Forks--After Dennis Chastain, 52, began carving out a new
life for himself, the state began taking credit for it.
A 1992 issue of Timber Towns, a now-defunct newspaper put
out by the state, touted Dennis and his wife, Margaret, as a
success story of timber retraining.
The couple received a loan through a private revolving
fund. The fund's administrators work closely with the state
to help small businesses.
Chastain worked in the woods for 24 years before his last
logging job on the Olympic Peninsula dried up six years ago.
Margaret Chastain saw some chain-saw wood carvings she liked,
and Dennis thought, ``I can do that.''
He was right.
He began chain-saw carving regularly and now has produced
thousands of pieces, including a 12-foot-tall carving for a
logger's memorial next to the visitor center in Forks.``I
found I had some talent and ability,'' he said.
Along the way, Chastain was looking for about $12,000 to
help expand the business. The revolving fund provided it, but
Chastain said it wasn't an essential ingredient to making a
success of Den's Wood Den on state Highway 101 south of
Forks.
``If it hadn't been them, it would have been somebody
else,'' he said. ``They popped up exactly when I needed them.
It was a fluke.''
He got a 12 percent loan, a figure that surprised him when
he went to sign the papers.
``They strongly implied it would be a low-interest loan,''
he said.
But the state took credit for it in its newspaper article.
Chastain, now making about $30,000 a year, said it's not
quite what they say.
``I'm not going to come in on them, but I'm not going to
brag on them, either.''
Conferences Held for Timber Towns: It Was A Joke
small-business help: workshops were held in washington cities with few
timber connections
(By Trask Tapperson)
Darrington--The state paid Washington newcomer M. Kathleen
Duttro to arrange 10 small-business workshops, though she had
no training or experience to perform the work.
Duttro said she received $2,500 ``because that was the
maximum they could pay for a non-bid program'' awarded by the
state without competition.
Her payment came out of general state training money, but
Duttro viewed her work as part of the state's effort to help
timber families and their communities get or stay on their
feet.
Duttro acknowledged she had no background dealing with
either.
She did her first workshops in Darrington about a year ago;
within six months after moving from York County, Penn., to
settle on a 24-acre spread near the foot of Whitehorse
Mountain outside Darrington.
She called the sessions ``Bootstrap Businesses and
Tourism'' and a ``Home-based Business Workshop.'' She charged
residents of the struggling timber-based community a ``cut-
rate price'' of $10 to $15 for the two sessions--below the
$25 admission charged others for the one-day sessions, Duttro
said.
At state's behest, Duttro took her workshops on the road
from September through April, but at least four of the areas
and their residents had little or nothing to do with timber.
They included Pullman and Walla Walla in Washington's wheat
belt; Olympia; and Island County, home to a U.S. Navy air
station, bedroom communities and farms.
She said she had no follow-up system to check how trainees
benefited from her teaching--except for surveys at the end of
the workshops that indicated people wanted more conferences.
Richard Anderson, who runs Sauk River Sporting Goods in
Darrington, paid $20 last year to attend a Duttro course.
It led him to offer a fly-fishing clinic in June. It netted
him $60, he said.
Grace Hathaway, Darrington's city planner, said Duttro's
workshop on creating home-based businesses apparently had few
results.
``I know there were none created in Darrington,'' said
Hathaway, who prepares and helps administer the city's grant
requests for timber community assistance. ``It was a joke.''
Maury Forman, the state official who hired Duttro,
acknowledged the absence of accountability. He said it's up
to the people to make connections with economic development
promoters to get help after the workshops.
Duttor's arrangement with the state for workshops ended
last year, but now she's applying for more grant-financed
work this fall with the formation of a nonprofit organization
called Threshhold.
``I decided to invent myself a job,'' Duttro said.
``If I get my nonprofit running, I will have invested
myself a job. We've written a proposal for a program. We're
looking for money to start it.''
She said she wants a dependable source of cash because the
financially shaky people of timber towns are an unreliable
source of income.
``It's almost impossible to do it on the backs of the
people who need it and make a living out of it,'' Duttro
said.
____
Course Funded by State Angers Displaced Worker
College course: The class was designed to give displaced workers self-
esteem
(By Trask Tapperson)
Elvira, Ore.--Danele Welsh has worked in four wood mills
for more the 13 years.
She graduated through the ranks from hydraulic log loader
in a sawmill to plant forewoman of a specialty products plant
to inventory controller at a Eugene, Ore., mill of forest
products giant Weyerhaeuser Co.
That ended in 1991, when the mill closed and Welsh sought
help to regain employment through a course at Lane Community
College. She attended the decade-old Choices and Options
program for displaced timber workers, financed with state
lottery money.
Welsh, 42, wanted practical job-search guidance. But
mostly, she and about 25 men got a steady dose of self-esteem
promotions--daily inspirational readings from the writings of
humorist Robert Fulghum, getting-to-know-you games.
Her tolerance waned on the first day of the two-week course
when the instructor said, ``we needed to evolve beyond the
timber industry. Evolve.''
``He thought we were stupid millworkers, primate material.
Like we needed to evolve,'' she said.
Welsh rose to her feet. ``I was going to scratch my sides,
like an ape.'' Instead all she could muster were the words;
``How dare you!''
College officials defended the program. ``When they lose
their jobs, they're angry,'' said staff member John Huberd.
``It helps get their head back on straight . . . boost self-
esteem. The members start bonding and become a support
group.''
Welch has had only one paying job since, and that business
folded. But she said she won't become ``a system sucker,''
her term for people who continue in government-run displaced
worker programs.
``Why don't they just bundle up their assets, go out there
and take their best shot?'' she asked.
____
Nonprofit Corporation's Aim is to Help Create Jobs
port angeles: the director says the corporation will transform the
economy
(By Trask Tapperson)
Port Angeles--Dominating the walls of Gus Kostopulos's
office at WoodNet headquarters are three photos and two
signed letters from President Clinton.
That's in sharp contrast with the contempt that often
greets the mention of Clinton's name in logging towns on the
Olympic Peninsula.
The president spoke enthusiastically to Kostopulos at his
timber summit in Portland, Ore., last year. The executive
director of the 3-year-old nonprofit corporation had just
explained to Clinton how WoodNet would help transform the
peninsula's floundering timber-based economy.
WoodNet's goal: linking its 350 members to wholesalers and
others who might buy their products, ranging from custom
doorknobs and other specialty wood products to jewelry and
other non-wood adornments.
His means: primarily a slick catalog. The first one, sent
last year to 8,500 wholesale buyers, cost $62,500 in cash and
another $30,000 in staff time to produce. Of that, $22,500
came from the product ads placed by craftspeople and
companies.
That's almost $11 per recipient, plus postage.
Since 1991, the state has sunk $206,000 into the operations
of WoodNet, a frequent object of glowing publicity for its
innovative manufacturing network. Much of that money came
from the two departments most responsible for helping timber
workers and their towns recover.
Yet Kostopulos says he doesn't know--or care--how many of
the 92 sellers in the catalog are displaced loggers.
``They weren't asked,'' he said. ``I personally don't care
how many displaced loggers work at Posey Manufacturing.
WoodNet was never set up to help displaced loggers. We want
to help a company that creates jobs.''
____
Timber Money traced to Several Studies Done for Washington Cities
Accountability issue: The state tracked only 12 of 135 studies done
during the past five years
(By Bob Partlow)
A close look at the government response to the region's
timber woes appears to show more about consultants and
studies than loggers and jobs.
Taxpayers paid for 135 timber-related studies or plans in
Washington alone from 1989 to mid-1994, according to figures
from the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic
Development.
The Olympian and The Bellingham Herald asked state
governments in Washington, Oregon and Northern California for
a detailed accounting of the studies and their success.
Washington sent incomplete information, and Oregon and
California didn't respond to the request.
Among the Washington studies were 12 surveys to assess the
so-called ``SWOT'' of rural timber communities: strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Those studies cost $96,306, an average of $8,025,50 apiece.
The state didn't say how much good they did or exactly how
the communities spent the money.
Consultants interviewed people, held meetings in
communities affected by timber cutbacks and then did reports.
Darrington had a $12,000 SWOT study done.
It duplicated a separate study done by the city and was a
waste of money, said Darrington hardware store owner Laurence
Larsen, who is active on state boards involved in helping
timber communities and workers.
``We could go out and get money for studies, but we won't
finance a business or get somebody started,'' Larsen said.
The city of Sultan had a different experience. Its SWOT
study pointed out a good direction and was widely
distributed, said City Clerk Laura Koenig. ``We had a lot of
interest in it,'' she said.
Eric Hovee, principal of the Vancouver, Wash.-based E.D.
Hovee & Associates, did five SWOT studies in Washington for
$40,300. He estimates he has done up to 30 similar studies in
Oregon.
``A lot of it is often common sense,'' he said. ``There's
not a lot of magic to it.''
The surveys are only as good as the people in the
communities make them, he said.
``The study doesn't produce any jobs, but the follow-up is
where there is going to be job creation,'' he said. ``That's
where the value comes in. The extent to which these studies
are used or sit on a shelf . . . depends on the people in the
community.''
Hovee said he does no follow-up.
In Washington's other 123 studies, money went to local
agencies and the state doesn't monitor what happens after
that, said Liz Mendizabal, spokeswoman for the Department of
Community, Trade and Economic Development.
Forks had two studies done--one for $12,500 in 1991 to look
at the city's future and another for $20,000 in 1992 to look
at timber supply.
At the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsular, Forks has
been the self-styled ``Timber Capital of the World'' until
the virtual shutdown of the woods in the 1990s.
In the first study, ``almost all of it was stuff we already
knew and many of the statistics were way out of line,'' said
Sandra Kint, Forks economic development director. ``I don't
think anybody was happy with the results.''
In the second study, ``it gave us a lot of information in
writing signed by a consultant that told us what we already
knew,'' said Dan Lienan, Forks city clerk and treasurer.
In addition to the studies, the state had handed out 138
grants to timber communities since 1989, according to the
Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development. It
didn't provide a dollar figure.
One $20,000 grant went to the Hoquiam Development
Association, which receives some public money to help boost
the local economy.
But Executive Director Micki Colwell said the money
``didn't create any jobs, except for mine.'' The
communications graduate and former reporter moved from part
time to full time.
the forks study at a glance
The first Forks community study, done by Gilmore Research
Group of Seattle, said: ``Forks is encouraged to create both
short- and long-term economic strategies as part of its work
program.''
It recommended ``short-term priorities'' such as:
``The implementation of strategies which respond to the
nature of the existing market, both from internal and
competitive standpoints.''
``The implementation of strategies which better position
Forks for future growth.''
``The implementation of strategies which create a series of
small business successes, for example, the expansion of an
existing business or the opening of a new business with five
or 10 jobs.''
The 107-page study also spent considerable space talking
about building Forks' image and promoting tourism.
____
Communities See Hope as They Turn Away From Timber
Rays of light; Many in timber towns are moving on, finding security
outside of the forest
(By Trask Tapperson and Bob Partlow)
In the darkness of the Northwest's timber towns, some rays
of light can be found:
In the persistence of Richard Anderson, who has moved into
his Darrington sporting-goods store and is selling tourists
everything from vibrating monkeys to fly-fishing lessons in a
last-ditch effort to keep the struggling business open.
In the doggedness of people such as Jack Shipley of Grants
Pass, Ore., Mike Jackson of Quincy, Calif., and Nadine Bailey
of Hayfork, Calif.
They are putting aside deep differences with opponents to
force agreements that will provide loggers with jobs and the
forest with a chance to grow in a new and different way.
In the new chances being given to people in Prineville,
Ore. They are taking advantage of an opportunity to start
again in plants making wood products through a retraining
program started by businesses.
They all agree the problems are daunting and the future
uncertain at best, but they are trying to create a new life
out of a new economy.
``We're going to get through this thing,'' said Shipley, a
founder of The Applegate Partnership in Oregon, which hopes
to create jobs and a new kind of forest. ``It's going to be a
major, uphill battle.''
____
A Town Tied to Timber Industry is Forced into a new Way of Life
Community
``Darrington's got a wonderful future. It's just how soon
it's going to get here,'' says Richard Anderson, a small-
business owner.
(By Trask Tapperson and Bob Partlow)
Darrington--Travelers will find the drive easier between
Interstate 5 and this timber town after September when crews
finish $2.5 million in improvements to Highway 530 East.
People here wonder what the traffic will bring.
Until recently, it was predictable: Scores of log trucks
hauling out the bounty of the federal forest, a smattering of
tourists bound for the mountains and residents with business
``down below'' in Everett, the lowland Snohomish County seat.
But in Darrington today almost nothing is predictable as
the town undergoes wrenching change wrought by the virtual
end to logging in the midsection of the Mount Baker-
Snoqualmie National Forest.
In the future, many expect commuters to make up most of the
new traffic; locals heading to Everett for new jobs and
urbanites who find the trip to Everett and Seattle preferable
to the hassles of big-city life.
signs of decline
Some telling signs of Darrington's decline:
Worried timber wives sharring family crises at the
``Kitchen Talk'' program at the Darrington Community Support
and Resource Center.
``A lot of it is fear,'' said center director Wyonne
Perrault. ``If you're born and raised here, there's a fear of
losing this closeknit, family-oriented community and thinking
of trying to make it somewhere else.''
She cited one longtime Darrington family who lost their
house to the bank by foreclosure last spring. Mom, Dad and
the kids left town in the dead of night because they couldn't
face their friends and neighbors, she said.
A 300 percent increase in visits at the Darrington Food
Bank since 1986.
But even the threefold jump doesn't reflect the extent of
hardship today, food bank managers said. ``In an area like
this, people won't ask for help unless they're really
desperate,'' Geraldine Inman said as she handed out
commodities behind a counter. Above it, a sign reminds
volunteers: ``We are serving people at this food bank, many
of whom are hurting, angry or frustrated. This is often
through no fault of their own.''
A building that doubles as Richard Anderson's home and his
Sauk River Sporting Goods store. He lives at the store now
after selling his house and spending the proceeds to keep his
business going.
``Darrington's got a wonderful future,'' Anderson said.
``It's just how soon it's going to get here.''
In the meantime, he has started hawking trinkets such as
vibrating monkey and T-shirts for tourists.
But they aren't coming. And when they do, they don't bite.
``We had 79 (river) rafters in the store,'' Anderson said.
``They drank free coffee, messed up the septic tank with
Styrofoam popcorn and spent $6.''
He's now thinking of renting out hot tubs.
Andy Thompson, who manages the Highway 530 construction
from an Everett office, sums up the town's dilemma with the
succinctness of a knowledgeable outsider.
``If they don't figure out a way to adapt, they're going to
get pushed right out of there,'' he said.
darrington at a glance
Location: Eastern Snohomish County
Population: About 1,000
Rank in county: Third smallest (ahead of Woodway and Index)
Projected growth rate: 45 percent through 2020 (compared
with county rate of 77 percent)
Predominant Industry: Timber
Larget employer: Summit Timber Co. (350 employees)
Median household income, 1979: $17,226 (compared with
$20,760 countywide)
Median household income, 10 years later: $24,294 (compared
with $29,369 countywide)
Housing construction, 1980-88: 101, including 37 mobile
homes (of 46,335 homes built countywide)
Average price of house (1988): $56,422 (compared with
$93,864 countywide)
Almost everyone in Darrington knows that. But the
uncertainty over how to change generates sometimes intense
second-guessing and bickering.
The closest thing to consensus is criticism of the
government's response to their eroding lifestyle. Many
residents say state and federal governments have spent too
much on the wrong things, such as:
Planning sewers, industrial parks, and other expensive
infrastructure without any clear hope for a return on the
investment.
Touting tourism for visitors who may never come or bring
enough money to even begin replacing lost timber dollars that
yielded family-level wages.
Government officials push this alternative the hardest,
seeing a potential in scenic forest and mountain settings of
many timber towns. Few have more spectacular vistas than the
Darrington area--with its views of Whitehorse, Gold Hill,
Prairie, Higgins and North mountains and the stunning Glacier
Peak.
Though Darrington did receive a small share of the federal
government's $20 million ``Jobs in the Woods'' program,
assessments by key local leaders are harsh.
``They spread all this money around a mile wide and an inch
deep. It doesn't do any good, but it does have political
benefit,'' said hardware store owner Laurence Larsen,
Darrington's top civic leader for economic revitalization.
``It's just a great big wheel, and we're getting caught in
the spokes,'' said Mayor Charlie White.
The state and federal timber relief program is ``a support
system for the state and federal agencies, not for the timber
communities which it was intended to help,'' said city
planner Grace Hathaway. ``There's no accountability about
who's giving money to whom.''
effort criticized
A frequent target of townfolks' frustrations is the three-
year economic development effort led by Kathy Kerkvliet, a
state Employment Security Department worker.
She became Darrington's grant-funded economic development
official in 1990, several months after a Larsen-led citizens
committee completed a 20-year vision for the town.
``There was a fair amount of criticism'' of that nine-month
effort, Larsen said. ``They were concerned we were spending
money on tourism and not enough on displaced workers.
Unfortunately, a lot of the programs from the state were for
studies, but we couldn't finance a business.''
By the time Kerkvliet left a year ago, $105,400 had been
spent on salaries and overhead for her effort--part of about
$405,000 in government grants she said the community
received.
``I went in there as a novice,'' Kerkvliet said. ``I knew
how to work with dislocated workers, but I had never done
economic development.''
Although the problems of the timber workers are worsening,
Kerkvliet said she left because ``I was an outsider. I
understood my role to get resources and bring people in, but
after awhile you can only have outside help for so long.''
What did the taxpayers get for their money?
Already in hand: Lots of grants, studies, workshops and
publications.
Yet to come: The new sewers, hopes for new industry at a
possible industrial park, more tourists and possible new
restrooms to accommodate them--which the government is
willing to build if the community can pay to maintain them.
Kerkvliet is long on enthusiasm but short on specifics of
how the town has repositioned for life after timber. She
can't cite any jobs resulting from her economic development
efforts.
Her prediction: ``In five years, it will stay a nice, lazy,
laid-back little town--more of a bedroom community. People
are willing to travel to have that environment to live in.''
White's vision for the resident logging families isn't so
rosy.
White, 80, recalled his life in the woods that began at age
14 with a job as a signal-whistle blower and lasted through
the Great Depression when ``there were stump farms and no
jobs.''
``I got a fear that it might happen again,'' he said. ``And
you've got a different class of people today. In those days,
people looked after one another.''
To City Clerk and Treasurer Lyla Boyd, they may not be
around to do so.
``My worse-case scenario is the timber people won't get
jobs and move away,'' she said. ``We'll become a bedroom
community for Everett and the Navy base. If people can't get
jobs, they'll go away. Or they'll commute.''
what's ahead: some people have found solutions through retraining
programs or community efforts
What's next: It's been 7\1/2\ years since the environmental
group GreenWorld first petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to list the northern spotted owl as an endangered
species.
Since then, loggling has virtually stopped in the owl
habitat of federal forests.
The Clinton administration now plans a long term logging
ban on 7 million acres in Western Washington, Western Oregon
and Northern California.
But the debate over how to use public lands in the
Northwest is far from over. Key actions are coming on the
judicial, legislative and administrative fronts. They
include:
The Clinton plan: Logging interests say it goes too far;
some environmentalists say it doesn't go far enough. Both
sides filed lawsuits challenging the plan. U.S. District
Judge William Dwyer of Seattle is scheduled to hear their
arguments Sept. 12. Both sides expect an appeal--a process
that could delay a decision on the future of the forests well
into next year.
East of the mountains: Dozens of government experts are
drafting a land-use plan for millions of acres of federal
forests east of the Cascade Mountains. Their plan, still
months away, could rival the timber setasides west of the
mountains--if they follow the recommendations of some
environmentalists.
Logging road bans: Environmentalists continue to push hard
for congressional action to ban future road construction in
any 5,000-acre area of federal forest now free of roads. Such
legislation hasn't fared well so far in committee but still
could win approval this session, congressional sources said.
Worker relief legislation: No new initiatives to help
displaced timber workers and their towns are expected in the
foreseeable future in Congress, sources said.
``We start from the position that the administration's plan
is the plan that will be in place,'' said Jim Hoff, chief of
staff for U.S. Rep. Jolene Unsoeld, D-Olympia. ``The
challenge is to get that plan up and running.''
State economic development: In the state of Washington,
``our tack will continue to be to try to get businesses into
the (timber) impacted areas,'' said Jordan Dey, deputy press
secretary to Gov. Mike Lowry.
But so far, the state has no specific action plan.
____
I Made a Vow to Myself I Wouldn't Log
New business: Debra and Larry Hagen hope to save enough to get the loan
needed to buy a pizza parlor
(By Trask Tapperson)
Darrington.--As logging here dries up, Debra and Larry
Hagen are watering a home-grown future for themselves.
They don't want to move away, so they turned to a new
commodity: pizza.
Even by their own worst-case scenario for Darrington--a
shutdown of top employer Summit Timber Co.--the Hagens are
convinced their pizza parlor could survive--and perhaps even
prosper.
``If the mill went down, the town would really be in a
hole,'' said Larry, 21. ``But the growth is moving up I-5,
and it will hit all the crannies.''
Debra has spent only one of her 22 years away from
Darrington, at a Kirkland business school.
``It was an experience, but we want to spend the rest of
our lives here, raise our kids here,'' she said, as Larry
nodded in agreement.
Her family has logged in Darrington for four generations.
His father, Les, leads the Glad Tidings Assembly of God
flock. The couple rooted for the Darrington Loggers sports
teams before graduating from high school.
Both had jobs at Pizza Plus before they got married last
year. When the owners put the place on the block, the Hagens
tried to buy it.
The restaurant was netting almost $30,000 a year and
``making more and more every year, and we didn't plan on
changing anything,'' Larry said. But they had no equity, so
the bank turned down the $125,000 loan to buy it.
Unfazed, they got a $3,000, two-year personal loan from the
bank, cut a deal with the owners last October to lease the
business and will get first crack at buying it.
With the ``for sale'' sign still outside, the Hagens work
11-hour days, five days a week. Helping out when they can are
Larry's parents, his brother and Debra's two sisters.
``It's hard, but it's worth it,'' Debra said.
In their first quarter of business, they made the $900-a-
month payments to the owners, the $150-a-month payments to
the bank for the loan and still took home $8,500.
``I think we'll be all right,'' Debra said.
The childless couple is trying to save as much money as
they can to help cut the loan needed to buy the place, which
they plan to rename ``Pizza Hagen.''
That beats by far the routes traditionally taken by so many
of Darrington's young people.
``When you live here what you do is marry a logger,'' Debra
said.
``I made a vow to myself I wouldn't log,'' Larry said.
``They don't have a life. Daybreak to darkness they're
working. And when your whole income is based on something you
could lose over an animal, an owl, it's frightening.''
Both still want to get college degrees some day--Larry in
law enforcement; Debra perhaps in business.
But with only a year of college under each of their belts,
the pizza parlor ``is the best thing we could hope for,''
Debra said.
We had confidence, it was here for the taking it's nice to
work for yourself and we can stay in town,'' she said.
____
Business Training Program Deemed Successful
jobs: four students praise the oregon program for its practical
training and promise of employment
(By Bob Partlow)
Prineville, OR.--Timber retraining programs sometimes work.
They do in the semi-arid scrub land of eastern Oregon, home
to two large companies that make doors, window sills and many
other products out of wood.
``We need good employees.'' said Gevin Brown, a board
member of WPCC, an Oregon association of about 80 such
businesses.
With training identified as a priority, the association
began recruiting workers this year. They screened 56
applicants down to 26 students.
Eighteen people eventually completed a 54-hour, seven-week
course and graduated last month. All are guaranteed jobs at a
living wage at a variety of plants in central Oregon. The
second class begins in September.
WPCC worked with a community college to produce the first
graduating class. But the training was done on site at the
American Molding Co. plant in Prineville.
Employees worked with the students and focused on jobs at
the plant.
``The people that come through this program will know more
than 80 percent of the employees who are working here,'' said
plant manager John Lang.
Among those who successfully completed the program:
Lizabeth Brown, a 32-year-old single mother with three
children, ages 3, 5 and 7.
``I wanted to support the family without having to rely on
anybody else,'' she said.
She had been running a day-care center but found it was too
much to handle while raising her own kids. ``I wanted
something for me,'' said Brown, who has a bachelor of arts
degree in general studies.
The training program focused on survival skills needed in
the plant--right down to learning the basics of how to use a
tape measure, she said.
``I was impressed with how much energy they were putting
into the program and how much time,'' Brown said.
She has been offered two wood-products jobs but wants to
wait until she gets one that will put her on the day shift.
Ray Atkinson, 55, also is a single parent, raising an 8-
year-old boy. The mill in Bend where he worked for nearly
three decades shut down, putting him on the streets and into
shock.
``I hadn't been laid off in 28\1/2\ years,'' he said.
He probably could have found another sawmill job, he said,
but that would have meant relocating.
``I didn't want to go back to school, and I would have had
to move to get back into the sawmills,'' he said.
He is now working for Bend Wood Products.
George Thompson, 56, ``worked in the woods nearly all my
life,'' primarily as a ``gyppo'' logger moving from one place
to another.
The most money he ever made was about $38,000, but he loved
``the individual, freewheeling life.''
Then the downturn in the industry and a desire for more
stability led him to look elsewhere.
He found the WPCC retraining program and discovered ``a
free ride to take a new chance in life.''
With a bachelor of arts degree in education, he could have
gone back to the classroom to teach, but he liked working in
wood products.
He was expected to begin a job in mid-July.
Dawn Helmholtz, 18, was on a fast track to nowhere in the
fast-food industry, where she worked the past four years at
Burger King.
With her active 1-year-old bouncing on and off her lap, she
talked about her father's work at American Molding and how
much she wanted to follow him
She also liked the idea of being part of a group that is
making something tangible.
And she gets benefits and steady hours, making it easier to
get a baby sitter than in the past.
She is working at American Molding now.
All four of the students agreed with Helmholtz's assessment
of the program: ``I'm very, very impressed.''
why does it work
``We offer a guaranteed job in central Oregon at a choice
of companies with flexible hours paying a family wage with a
career path,'' reads a WPCC advertisement.
That means people in the program:
Have an immediate job upon successful completion of the
seven-week course. The students must pass a written test. The
average score was 92 percent for the first class.
Earn a living wage--about $10.50 an hour on average, or
about $22,000 a year.
Got hands-on training from people working in the industry.
Students and instructors said their rapport is high.
``Where it is down to our level, it makes a big
difference,'' student George Thompson said of the teaching.
The fees are reasonable. Each student pays $100. The cost
of the program is about $1,200 for each person, but WPCC
absorbs most of the cost. The rest is covered by public
money.
The $1,200 figure included start-up costs. That total
should fall to $400 for the next group of students.
Program developers hold students accountable. Students must
attend every hour of every class. But the instructors don't
talk down to students. ``They make you feel right at home,''
said student Ray Atkinson.
____
Opposite Views on One Issue
(By Trask Tapperson and Bob Partlow)
Though adversaries over timber-cutting policies often
clash, both sides can recognize the suffering spreading
through towns on forest fringes.
Here are two views--from Colin King, a self-employed
logger, and Elliott A. Norse, former chief ecologist of The
Wilderness Society, one of the leading national environmental
organizations. He is now chief scientist of the Redmond-based
Center for Marine Conservation.
King's home is in Forks, the heart of the Olympic Peninsula
forest. Norse's home is in Redmond, the heart of the high-
tech belt east of Seattle.
the ecologist
``We need to make sure timber communities don't become
welfare havens of alcoholism and despair. These things
torture me. I don't see easy answers.''
His concern doesn't mean he and other key environmental
leaders are ready to sacrifice their forest-protection goals
to ease the economic and emotional pain woods workers and
their communities feel.
``How much are they victims and how much did they create
their own fate?'' asked Norse, author of the book, ``Ancient
Forests of the Northwest.''
He comes down on the side against bailing them out.
``Was it really the business of the American people to bail
out Chrysler? We did it. And it worked. But I ask myself,
`Should we allow institutions and people to fail?' I think
they should be allowed to fail.
``There used to be towns that made their living whaling.
People went to sea.''
Like their counterparts in logging, ``it was dangerous. A
lot didn't come back. They made good money, and they put
their lives on the line. Whales disappeared, and people had
to find another way,'' Norse said.
One answer ``is to take the people who unwittingly
destroyed the forest and put them to work restoring it. Don't
teach them to be hamburger flippers or poets.
``It's a partial answer. If we add up all the partial
answers, we're still going to have people hurt by these
changes and we'll have to bite the bullet, let them sink or
swim. That may sound heartless, but I can't think of anything
else they can do.
``We see the anti-tax hysteria. The country's
infrastructure is falling apart because people won't pay more
taxes. you can't support people indefinitely.''
The logger
King is bitter about what the government has done to shut
down the forests and hasn't done with programs invented by
bureaucrats to alleviate the suffering it has caused.
``Those programs won't do the job because those running
then are so out of touch.
``They've got to talk to someone who's suicidal,'' he said
mentioning a 22-year-old logger who hanged himself in the
Forks jail. ``They've got to talk to some women who's been
beat up at home. You've got to talk to people who've just
been evicted and they've got three kids.''
He asked urban people with their jobs to consider what
could happen to them ``What if (the government) took your job
away and it became politically incorrect to be a reporter,
and for five or six years they said you were the most
worthless sadistic SOB that ever lived? And they took away
your living? then they said, `Well, that's OK, we'll make a
VCR repairman out of you,'''
Like many others in the industry, King believes in the
words of a song sometimes heard around timber communities:
``It's not just what we do, it's who we are.''
That's why he thinks the only real solution is to allow
loggers back into the woods to cut timber in acceptable
amounts.
``You're taking those people's lives--their souls--these
people are loggers.''
____
Environmentalists, Loggers Decide To Work Together on Crisis
Coping: Two sides lay down arms to work out a solution to timber
troubles
(By Bob Partlow)
Fuel for fires has become fuel for cooperation to resolve
the timber crisis in some West Coast communities.
The Applegate Partnership in southern Oregon and the Quincy
Library Group in Northern California traded acrimony for
accord.
Environmentalists and loggers agreed that some trees must
be cut down to reduce the danger of devastating forest fires.
That, in turn, will create jobs and keep the forests healthy
for generations to come.
``Whining is not going to get it done,'' said Mike Jackson,
a water-rights attorney in Quincy, Calif., who describes
himself as a ``flaming, left-wing environmental wacko.''
Working in the same town with loggers and timber-dependent
families, he decided a strategy of talking, not fighting,
would lead to results.
``This is a small town,'' Jackson said. ``You walk down the
streets and see these people, and you see them at the kids'
baseball games. I just decided after awhile that flipping
people off three times a day gets old.''
Jack Shipley, a retired public official in Grants Pass,
Ore., and member of several environmental groups, came to the
same conclusion as he thought about the 500,000-acre
Applegate River watershed.
``The (federal) agencies had their own vision. The
environmentalists had their own vision. The timber industry
had its own vision,'' Shipley said. ``Everybody had part of
the truth, but nobody had the truth singly. If we were going
to solve the problem, we were going to have to solve it
together.''
Shipley and Jackson believed that the best solution was to
get people involved at the grass roots. The two also followed
an initial strategy: Keep politicians and reporters away from
the discussions.
The Oregon partnership's nine-member group, including three
federal officials, put in 8,000 hours the first year alone.
In California, ``We met until we quit arguing. We had (the
plan) outlined before we let them into the meeting,'' Jackson
said of two government officials.
A crucial element of both plans was addressing a U.S.
Forest Service policy that calls for crews to immediately
douse forest fires--even those caused by lightning or other
natural events.
The two groups devised a response: Remove the kindling for
the fires--mostly small trees--that leaves the forests
tinder-dry and ripe for catastrophe.
A key to the discussions: defining what part of the forest
should be logged.
Both groups advocated cutting down smaller trees and
clearing out areas near streams and rivers. That provides
good management and good jobs, they said.
``It's not a question of taking a person who's been a
timber faller all his life, training him to be a computer
operator and shipping him to Phoenix, Ariz.,'' Shipley said.
Neither plan has come easily.
The Oregon group has worked for months to get one sale of
500,000 board feet in the 500,000-acre Applegate River
watershed. Another sale of 1.5 million board feet is pending.
Shipley said the area probably produced 500 million board
feet annually at its peak.
The California group fashioned a classic compromise--the
industry agreed not to log areas near sensitive watersheds or
places without logging roads. In return, environmentalists
agreed to support a level of cutting in other areas that
would sustain the forests and hundreds of jobs for years to
come. The government must buy off on it.
Shipley also said he and others in the local environmental
movement had to overcome an attitude from national
environmentalists who didn't trust their ideas.
``They started to get heartburn because the local people
were taking control,'' he said.
Echoing a complaint made often by loggers in small towns.
Shipley said, ``Too often, folks in rural America are viewed
like we fell off the turnip truck yesterday. It's a rural-
urban perspective.''
But he and Jackson believe the results will be worth the
work and can become models for other towns.
``Every place is different,'' Jackson said. ``So the
substances of any solution might be different in Bellingham,
Wash., than it is in Quincy. But what we have is an
exportable commodity.''
____
Clinton Officials Pull Out of Talks
The Clinton administration recently pulled all federal
officials from community groups that are trying to fashion
local solutions to timber cutbacks.
Those include the Applegate Partnership in southern Oregon
and the Quincy Library Group in Northern California.
The reason: The Clinton administration has been sued by
timber industry groups who argue that the government forest
plan was designed in secret--against the provisions of
federal law.
``Until we figure out a way to protect ourselves legally,
we have to play it safe,'' said Lauri Hennessey, a
spokeswoman for the Clinton administration's timber plan.
Jack Shipley, a founder of the Applegate Partnership, said
the move was disappointing.
``The very thing we've been trying to do is keep an open
public dialogue,'' Shipley said. ``Now they're saying it's
unlawful? Something is out of whack.''
Several groups that are trying to work out new forest plans
in their areas met earlier this month in Redding, Calif.
Shipley said he came away from the meeting with optimism.
``We're going to get through this thing,'' he predicted.
``All it did is give us more resolve. I expect (the federal
officials) will be reinvolved with us in some way within 60
days. But these things are never easy. It's an uphill
battle.''
____
Public Officials Sound Upbeat About Aid to Help Timber Workers
Some samples of news releases put out by members of
Congress and others to hail their roles in directing federal
money to help timber towns and worker retaining efforts:
``Unsoeld Proposes Jobs Program for Timber Communities;
Swift Joins As Original Co-Sponsor''--U.S. Reps. Jolene
Unsoeld and Al Swift, November 1991.
``Murray Gets Economic Development Funds for Timber
Towns''--U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, September 1993.
``Economic Recovery Board Charts Course for Timber
Communities''--Office of Gov. Booth Gardner, December 1991.
``Timber Retraining Benefits Expanded, Washington State
Employment Security Department Says''--PR News Wire, May
1993.
``Unique Center Responds to Closures''--Grays Harbor Career
Transition Center, May 1993.
``Work Force Training will Benefit Area''--Centralia
College, August 1993.
``Good News for 21 Timber Distressed Counties: Jobs-In-
Environment Grants Offered''--Washington Department of
Natural Resources, January 1994.
``Jobs for the '90s Task Force Gathers Valuable Information
on Timber and Local Economy''--Washington State House
Republican Media Services, August 1991.
____
Timber Series Sprang From Logger Anger
(By Jack Keith)
The memo was dated Nov. 29, 1991.
Bellingham Herald writer Trask Tapperson, fresh from
several conversations with timber workers, had been struck by
the frustration they faced.
About fewer trees to cut? Definitely. About job layoffs or
cuts? Certainly.
But what irked the workers most was that the loudly
professed political ``solutions'' to the timber issue were
failures, by and large, Tapperson's memo to editors said.
The ``answers'' of retraining grants and special seminars
and VCR repair training were not solving the problem.
Worse, the failure was expensive, wasting taxpayer dollars
left and right, the angry people said.
``Lots is getting spent with little to show for it,''
Tapperson wrote in his summary of the workers' comments.
We saw a story there, but we knew it was complex and
difficult to get a handle on.
Today on Page A1, we begin publication of a dramatic four-
day series uncovering a frightening lack of accountability in
the government's effort to retrain timber workers for new
jobs.
More than $100 million worth of government programs has
been poured into the Pacific Northwest. But no one in
government can tell us exactly who got what and how many
workers have been retrained and are now working in a new
field.
Tapperson and Bob Partlow, the Herald's Olympia bureau
reporter, spent three months pounding on agency doors to try
to find someone who was keeping track of the massive program.
Somebody thinks it's working just fine. The Clinton
Administration plans to spend $1.2 billion more to help
loggers over the next five years.
But when you ask--as Tapperson and Partlow did in 53
Freedom of Information requests--no one can provide the
numbers.
And out in the towns of the Northwest, there is bitterness,
Partlow says.
``It's very bleak out there. There's a real sense of anger
with the government, a lack of trust. The same government
that cost them the job was going to retrain them.''
Among the contacts that prompted the series was a letter
Tapperson received from a frustrated timer worker.
``One thing is very hard to understand is why 2-4 year
college degree programs are not available to the displaced
worker. Every week there are jobs in the paper for civil
engineering/environment degrees. The only thing being offered
(displaced timber workers) is less than one year schooling.
``The money being spent looks like job security for those
in the (state and federal programs).''
The series continues through Wednesday.
Farewell: This is Tapperson's final series for the Herald.
He turned 55 this spring and has decided to take early
retirement.
He has been a key figure in Whatcom County since his
arrival in Bellingham in 1982.
His early reporting included an in-depth look at the
decline of the Northwest timber industry, a series that won a
national Arbor Day Award. He was part of a Herald reporting
team that examined the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and told
Whatcom County readers of the incredible cleanup costs
involved.
Tapperson served as city editor for five years, helping
refocus the Herald's local coverage. In his final years with
the newspaper, he returned to reporting and covered
investigative and in-depth stories on a variety of topics.
Tapperson always followed the notion that a reporter's sole
allegiance was to readers. He worked tirelessly to that end.
Jack Keith, managing editor of The Bellingham Herald,
writes a Sunday column.
____________________