Lawmakers respond quickly when salmon dollars disappear
May 10th, 2009 by cdunaganI can’t help but wonder exactly what was on their minds when 10 U.S. senators and 20 U.S. representatives from throughout the Northwest fired off a letter to the White House on Friday, one day after they got a copy of the president’s budget.
It seems almost as if they were preparing for a political battle, and I guess you can’t blame them
Under the president’s announced budget, there would be no funding next year for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund — the fund where Washington and other Northwest states get tens of millions of dollars to restore salmon and their habitat.
By the time I wrote my story on Friday (see Saturday’s Kitsap Sun), officials were calling the budget problem an oversight.
George Behan, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, pieced the situation together for me and Kitsap Sun readers. To put it simply, it appears the Obama administration was working from a budget document left over from the Bush administration. My story has a few more details.
Ironically, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco are top officials who oversee the salmon program — and both are from the Northwest and well aware of the importance of this fund.
Read on below for the complete text of the letter from the Northwest congressional delegation to the Obama administration. (Peter Orszag is the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama.)
Dear Director Orszag, Secretary Locke and Administrator Lubchenco:
We are writing today to express our deep disappointment that the President’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget request eliminates the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and to request a budget amendment to restore this critical program funding.
The PCSRF was created by Congress in Fiscal Year 2000 to address the need to protect, restore and conserve Pacific salmon and steelhead, and their habitat in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Alaska, and Nevada.
On the West Coast and especially in the Pacific Northwest, salmon are part of our heritage, our culture and our economy. Salmon are a link to our past, and it will require a generational effort to recover these iconic species. The PCSRF takes that long view, and focuses on measurable results.
Past program funding has resulted in impressive accomplishments in local and state salmon recovery efforts. Federal funding, together with state and local resources, has allowed local citizens and officials to initiate thousands of restoration and conservation projects, including hatchery reform, within our states. In 2008, every federal dollar spent on this program leveraged about 2 local and state dollars.
The majority of these projects, developed using a “bottom up” approach, focus on direct improvements to habitat for salmon and steelhead, resulting in more than 500,000 acres of restored habitat, and approximately 3,575 opened stream miles. This form of citizen involvement is exactly the type of commitment needed to succeed in protecting and restoring these important species of fish that are so integral to the economic and ecological well-being of our states.
Funds have also been used for on-the-ground restoration projects, ranging from culvert replacement at single sites to erosion control over large areas, and have generated hundreds of jobs for unemployed timber workers while producing additional economic benefits over time as they contribute to the recovery of commercially and recreationally important species. In particular, the jobs produced by road decommissioning, re-vegetation efforts and fish passage projects represent valuable employment opportunities in today’s depressed job market.
The National Marine Fisheries Service developed and implemented six program performance goals and numerous performance measures that are monitored on an annual basis to assure federal and state funds are being used responsibly and effectively. Real progress toward salmon recovery is being made, as noted in the 2008 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Report to Congress on the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund: “Through the PCSRF and efforts and contributions of state and tribal partners, progress is being made in the overall recovery of Pacific salmon and steelhead. Continued commitment, collaboration and resources are required to achieve the overarching goal of full recovery and sustainability.”
Recovering our salmon populations to continue our way of life, and put our fishermen back to work is a challenge that we on the West Coast take seriously, and we remain committed to its success. We look forward to working with you to correct this elimination and restore the program funding.
We look forward to hearing from you on this matter.
Sincerely,
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Representative Norm Dicks (D-WA 6th)
Senator Mark Begich (D-AK)
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Representative Adam Smith (D-WA 9th)
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Representative David Wu (D-OR 1st)
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Representative Brian Baird (D-WA 3rd)
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR 3rd)
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA 6th)
Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR 4th)
Representative Greg Walden (R-OR 2nd)
Representative George Miller (D-CA 7th)
Representative Dave Reichert (R-WA 8th)
Representative Kurt Schrader (D-OR 5th)
Representative Lois Capps (D-CA 23rd)
Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA 7th)
Representative Sam Farr (D-CA 17th)
Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA 12th)
Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA 1st)
Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA 1st)
Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA 14th)
Representative Rick Larsen (D-WA 2nd)
Senator Jim Risch (R-ID)
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
May 11th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
You know, if the federal government had not collected all those tens of millions of dollars in funding from local communities, then our Northwest delegation would not have to be begging the Obama Administration to return some of it now.
The federal government pulls hundreds of millions of dollars out of local economies, wastes a portion through inefficiency and lack of information, then “gifts” only a portion back to the local economies that they extracted the funds from in the first place. It would be better to let dollars earned locally to be spent locally rather than processed through the federal fund reducer. That way there would be more money available for the salmon and other projects.