BUTTE — County commissioners with federal land slated to be designated wilderness in Sen. Jon Tester's controversial forest bill blasted his move to insert the measure into a massive spending bill this week.
Calling it an end run around Congress to avoid an honest debate, Beaverhead County commissioners said they've made it clear to Tester that they are staunchly opposed to the measure.
Tester this week had his Forest Jobs and Recreation Act included in the 1,900-page omnibus spending bill, a $1.1 trillion package that funds the federal government for the next year.
“That is shoving it through,” said Mike McGinley, Beaverhead County commissioner. “That's not what we send people back to D.C. or Helena or a county commission office to do.”
Tester proposed his bill in July 2009. It would designate more than 660,000 acres of wilderness in Montana, with the vast majority in the southwestern corner of the state on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. It also calls for 70,000 acres of logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and 30,000 acres on the Kootenai over a 15-year period.
The measure came as a result of timber companies and environmentalists who worked together and touted it as a way to end decades of gridlock over wilderness and logging.
But local officials have blasted the measure as representing two narrow interests while ignoring ranchers, miners and motorized enthusiasts without any guarantee that a single logging project would move forward.
Jefferson County Commissioner Dave Kirsch said Tester's move after the bill couldn't get beyond a lone committee hearing last year flies in the face of open government. Kirsch said Jefferson County made it clear that it is strongly opposed to the bill and doesn't believe it will lead to more logging, but Tester ignored those concerns.
“It was very low-handed to try to sneak this in,” he said. “It wasn't going to pass on its own merits so he's going to try to pull some kind of caper to get it passed.”
Madison County Commissioner Dave Schulz said he made telephone calls Wednesday to the office of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to try to get the measure taken out of the bill.
Schulz said he's deeply disappointed the measure was put as a rider on a spending bill.
“It was important enough that it needed to stand alone,” he said. “Putting it in the omnibus bill for Montanans isn't fair, no matter which side of it you're on.”
But Aaron Murphy, a Tester spokesman, disputed that this blindsided Montanans, noting that Tester last month said he would try to get the bill attached to the spending bill and got it done, which took a lot of work.
Murphy also said the bill had been through extensive public comments that spurred numerous changes.
“It's been vetted over and over again for a year and a half; that's not a secret bill,” he said. “(Tester) said he's going to get this passed and he's going to get this passed and it's going to create jobs.”
Not every county official in southwest Montana is against the bill.
Powell County commissioners came out for the measure this summer, said Cele Pohle, commissioner from Deer Lodge. She said she doesn't like rider bills and has concerns about the final language of the bill.
But she said it's vital that something be done to address the rapidly dying forests in the county. And she said if Deer Lodge lost Sun Mountain Lumber, one of the lumber mills in the original partnership that crafted the bill, it would devastate the town's economy.
She said that while she understands why other counties are opposed, the increased logging provisions would help Powell County.
“I look at my neighbors and I know how much logging has decreased in Powell County because of the lack of trees to cut because of all the restrictions put on it by the Forest Service,” she said. “All of those things come into play and we look at it a little bit differently.”
