Costly fire season left some serious marks

Last year, during the 2015 Legislature, all indicators pointed toward an intense fire season for the summer. Routine fires to remove noxious weeds or slash piles were getting out of hand. Area snow-pack stood at 22 percent of normal in April, and warm temperatures arrived early, prompting a warning from the U.S. Forest Service that the 2015 fire season was going to be extraordinary. That much seemed obvious.

In spite of this, when S1190, a bill that allocated $27 million to the Fire Suppression Deficiency Fund, came up for a vote, most North Idaho legislators voted against it. Their reasoning behind this lapse in judgment: Idaho should encourage more logging to prevent forest fires, not pay an agency to fight them.

Does this idea have merit? Yes and no. According to the U.S. Forest Service, logging can aid in the prevention and suppression of forest fires. Idahoans understand this principle well. Logging is good for Idaho, and we should fight for more of it because logging is one of our great economic assets, and it is an important tool in promoting forest health.

Unfortunately, the logic behind the “No” vote on S1190 ignores an important feature of our constitutional republic: the separation of powers. The North Idaho legislators voted not to fund fire suppression on lands owned by the state of Idaho because they were apparently upset about the lack of logging on federal lands. Many of us are upset about the way federal lands are managed, but that is not the way to go about addressing this problem.

The reduction of logging on Forest Service and BLM land is a federal issue, and state legislators voting against fire suppression funds for state land only endanger local firefighters who need those resources. Our state Legislature cannot coerce Congress into fixing federal forestry regulations. Write your Congressman about that issue and engage your local federal land agencies. Idaho’s congressional delegation has been fighting this battle for years, with occasional successes, but that is a matter for another day.

An important reality driving up fire suppression costs is that we have more expensive homes, on properties without sufficient green zones, very close to wildland. Firefighters now have to fight fires in a way that saves the most expensive land, not in a way that is most efficient. Our entire fire suppression budget could go toward logging Idaho forests, and it would not address this issue of the wildland-urban interface.

In Idaho last year, 740,000 acres burned. In North Idaho, this struck close to home, especially in Bayview. The fires of last year show that where idealism meets reality, it is reality that often wins. The legislators who voted against giving our firefighters proper funding have to live with that decision, but you do not have to vote for them. To vote against fire suppression when all signs pointed toward a disastrous fire season is not bad luck, it is bad judgment, perhaps rooted in a misunderstanding of the separation of powers principle. Your state legislators were elected to serve you in Boise, not Washington, D.C.

This year, our legislators voted to support the fire fund after the fire bill totaled $60 million last year, putting firefighters and homeowners in great danger.

If your legislator voted against S1190, you deserve to know why. More importantly, our firefighters deserve better…something to keep in mind when you vote on May 17.

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For more details about the intent of the law or the funding go to: http://legislature.idaho.gov/legislation/2015/legIndex.htm

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Sandy Patano is a member of Republican North Idaho Political Action Committee (Republican NIPAC or NIPAC): “Protecting Individual Freedom, Promoting Individual Responsibility: Our mission is to help rational, dedicated, problem-solving people get elected to public office — by motivating citizens to register, affiliate, and vote in the upcoming primary elections.”