Special session interrupted Sales' vacation plans

vacation? (0.00 / 0)

Not that I like the guy at all, but wouldn't a house speaker attending a conference for house speakers be more like professional development than a vacation?  I think that is a bit of a mis-characterization.

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by: colby natale @ Fri Sep 07, 2007 at 04:14:04 AM UTC

No more than (0.00 / 0)

No more than characterizing that the Governor had called the session just to mess with Sales travel plans. That comment was ridiculous, and deserved to be taken like this.

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by: Mathello @ Fri Sep 07, 2007 at 04:39:44 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

from what I understand... (0.00 / 0)

...the Good Guv had no idea this clown had a convention. It sort of goes without saying that Sales apparently assumes everybody's thinking about him as much as he is.

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by: Jay Stevens @ Fri Sep 07, 2007 at 12:42:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Devil in the details? (0.00 / 0)

I didn't see any of the statewide coverage mention much, if anything, about the establishment of a "fire suppression study committee," which has the real potential of being a political circus.

According to a letter Rep. Gordon Hendrick (who represents House District 14, which includes Frenchtown and Mineral County) wrote in the Clark Fork Chronicle, "The study committee will have 12 members, six from the Senate and six from the House, equally divided between the majority and minority parties, and will hold meetings in Miles City, Libby, Thompson Falls, Lewistown, and Hamilton."

The exact language of House bill 1 says the study must include: "An investigation of firefighting operations in Montana, including operations on tribal land and private land, by the state and federal governments and the management policies affecting the success of those operations; an investigation of the efficient use of fire suppression resources, including equipment and firefighters; an investigation of impacts of operations on private land and on the effective use of private resources to fight fires; and an investigation of state and federal forest management policies and how those policies may contribute to an increased number of wildfires, greater safety risk to firefighters, or compromised effectiveness of fire suppression efforts."

According to the bill, the fire suppression committee shall complete its study by September 15, 2008, and "report to the 61st legislature on its findings and recommendations, including any recommendations for legislation."

For those that don't know, "an investigation of state and federal forest management policies and how those policies may contribute to an increased number of wildfires, greater safety risk to firefighters, or compromised effectiveness of fire suppression efforts" is code for "blaming the environmentalists and lawsuits for the 2007 wildfires in an attempt to make it easier to log state and federal forest lands." 

This, despite the fact that a fair number of the fires this year (Jocko Lakes, Chippy Creek, Black Cat) have ripped through some of the most heavily logged and roaded landscapes in western Montana.

Also, while it seems we read the daily letter(s) to the editor in the Missoulian blaming the wildfires on environmentalists and lawsuits the fact remains that only one timber sale in the entire state is currently stopped by litigation (a smallish timber sale on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest) and not one single acre that has burned in Montana in 2007 has been either under litigation or appealed by environmentalists.

In fact, having paid pretty close attention to these issues for some time now, I cannot think of one single wildfire that has burned in Montana in the last decade in a forest that was slatted to be logged but wasn't logged because of a lawsuit.

Good to know that the first thing to go up in smoke during fire season are the facts...followed closely by reality.

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by: Matthew Koehler @ Fri Sep 07, 2007 at 14:34:20 PM UTC