 Please Don’t Fire Us
For Publishing This
Letter, Chief Kimbell
By Richard Artley
New Forest Service Chief Has History of Firing Whistle-Blowing Employees
Dear Abigail Kimbell,
Regional
Forester, Northern Region,
U.S. Forest Service,
Why am I not surprised that you have been selected to succeed Dale
Bosworth as
the next Chief of the U.S. Forest Service?
It's clear to most thinking Americans that Bush has no regard for the
environment.
Bush's staff and their corporate allies spend an incredible amount of
time and
money to seek-out people who will carry on Bush's anti-environment
legacy long
after Bush is gone from the White House in January of 2009.
I knew you Abigail on a day-to-day basis at Oregon State
University
from 1978 to
1980. We were both pursuing our master's degree in logging engineering.
I could
not understand at the time why you were never able to envision a tree
as
anything other than several logs. To you, a tree was a "piece"
that weighed so many "kips" to be hauled to a "landing."
It never occurred to you that these trees you wanted so desperately to
log were
part of a forest ... or a favorite picnic site for a family ... or a
critical piece
of wildlife habitat ... or that these trees might shade a blue ribbon
trout
stream.
I never said anything to you at the time. I felt you might grow out of
it. I
thought once you left academia and actually started walking alone in
the forest
you would see the majesty of the natural world without human tinkering.
I was
wrong.
Based on your history (shown below) it's obvious that your skewed sense
of values
stayed with you and became even more bizarre after you left college.
Your Bighorn
National Forest Mistakes
You were selected as the forest supervisor for the Bighorn National
Forest
in 1997. Prior to your arrival on the forest, you knew that in 1994
some Bighorn
forest employees wrote a letter to their regional forester, disclosing
that the
Bighorn forest supervisor had created a hostile work environment for
his
employees and was mismanaging the forest in several ways (see below).
Rather
than thanking these employees for their work, you reacted differently.
Within a year after arriving, you decided to abolish 14 positions with
a forest
reorganization. Of the total 14 positions that you proposed to be
abolished, five were the positions of the six people who signed the
1994 letter
that were still working on the Bighorn National Forest. You told
the
press that the reorganization was vital to stay within your budget.
Over the next two years, you used the WRAPS process to reassign four of
the
1994 letter signers to other duty stations. One of these four
people was
reassigned to a position in Arkansas
that he had never performed before and had no prior experience in. One
letter signer
had his job abolished and was able to be re-employed on the Bighorn
only after
various members of congress spoke on his behalf.
By the year 2000, only two people remained on the Bighorn who had
signed the
1994 letter to the Regional Forester pointing out massive mismanagement
of
public land.
The Government Accountability Project (a non-profit law firm) defended
the
employees that were threatened by you Ms. Kimbell. The GAP
attorneys
alleged that the reorganization was an attempt by you to discipline
whistle-blowers.
The GAP was right. It was no coincidence that your reorganization had
eliminated the jobs of most of the employees on the Bighorn that signed
the
1994 letter.
Abigal, you carried out all this punishment and caused so much
heartache for these
splendid employees because they told the regional forester in their
letter that
the previous Forest Supervisor Larry Keown had:
· approved timber sales that damaged caribou habitat,
· abandoned his legal reforestation commitments,
· cost the taxpayers money by favoring politically-connected
timber companies,
· abandonment his wilderness preservation commitments,
· violated the employees' civil rights with sexual
harassment and
"contempt" for handicap access regulations,
· approved the construction of roads through Native American
sacred sites, and
· a "pattern and practice" of whistleblower retaliation.
On April 22, 2003, U.S. Office of Special Counsel(OSC) announced the
favorable
settlement of eight whistleblower retaliation complaints filed by the
Government
Accountability Project (GAP) on behalf of eight former and current
employees of
the U.S. Forest Service's Bighorn
National Forest in Wyoming.
Under the settlement, the
Forest
Service was ordered to pay a lump sum amount of $200,000 to be divided
between
these eight people. The agency was also ordered to provide corrective
personnel
actions for two of the eight complainants, mitigating a 14-day
suspension to a reprimand,
and providing an interim bridge appointment to a former employee who
experienced a break in federal service after he was removed for
refusing to accept
a geographic reassignment.
Special Counsel Kaplan stated, "This was an unusually complex
retaliation
situation given that it occurred over a lengthy period of time and
through a
dubious reorganization that took advantage of WRAPS procedures."
Unfortunately, one employee who signed the 1994 letter lost her job
after her ecology
position on the Bighorn forest was abolished before the settlement
proceedings had
begun.
Most forest supervisors
would have been grateful to these caring employees and rewarded them
for
pointing out such mismanagement of public land. Not you Ms. Kimbell.
With this one act, you had just placed yourself at the top of the
Bush's search-list
(which would start in 2 years) of potential anti-environmental
candidates for either
BLM Director or Forest Service Chief.
If any readers would care to check the accuracy of the Bighorn
information presented
here, please access the Office of Special Counsel April 4, 2003 press
release at:
http://www.osc.gov/documents/press/2003/pr03_10.htm
Your Promotion to Associate Deputy Chief
of the Forest Service
You were named to become the Associate Deputy Chief of the Forest
Service in 2002
to lead the nation's timber program on national forest land, a Bush
administration
decision. They were now grooming you to be Chief. After your Bighorn
performance, they knew you were exactly what they wanted.
Your Promotion to Regional Forester
You were named to become the Regional forester for the Forest Service's
Northern
Region in December 2003, again, a Bush administration decision. This
was your reward
from the Bush administration.
Few American citizens know that much of your time at your last job as
Associate
Deputy Chief in Washington
D.C., was spent
authoring the tragic Healthy
Forests Restoration Act of 2003. Bush signed that Act into law
the same
month you became Regional Forester in December 2003. The vast
majority of
the statements of fact that you wrote in the Act were contradicted by
the
general scientific consensus. You knew this, yet you wrote them anyway.
You now knew that you were on the fast-track to the Chief's job, the
first
woman to hold that position. It was time to lay low and make no
mistakes,
appear to care for the public land.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots of your past.
Your Job as Chief of the U.S. Forest
Service
You and your new boss (USDA Asst. Secretary Mark Rey) will get along
great. You have so much in common. You know this, since you have
worked
with him before. You can continue to trade stories and laughs about
Mark's
previous employment as a timber industry lobbyist.
Abigal
Kimbell, you
shouldn't be Chief, you should be ashamed.
I can only
pray that your
stay in the Chief's office will end with Bush's departure in January
2009.
Every
person in America
that
cares about their public land will be watching your every move like a
hawk, including
members of the new congress.
Sincerely,
Richard Artley
Retired Forest
Service Land
Management Planner
Grangeville, Idaho
dartley@connectwireless.us
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