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GAO-01-1101R 1 (2001-09-21)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaalvr0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 September 21, 2001 The Honorable Cynthia McKinney The Honorable George Miller House of Representatives Subject: Financial Management: Annual Costs of Forest Service's Timber Sales Program Are Not Determinable Over the past several years, the Forest Service has reported the annual costs of its timber sales program in its Forest Management Program Report. Much of the information contained in this report is obtained from the Timber Sales Program Information Reporting System (TSPIRS); hence this report is commonly referred to as the TSPIRS report. For fiscal year 1997, the Forest Service reported the timber sales program lost $88.6 million. Concerned that this amount did not reflect the total federal costs associated with the timber sales program, and absent any information about the costs of the program for fiscal years 1998 and 1999, you asked us in March 2000 to attempt to determine the total net federal costs associated with the Forest Service's timber sales program for these fiscal years.' We met with your respective staffs in May and September 2000 and advised them that our ability to perform the requested analysis would depend on the availability and reliability of the Forest Service's cost information and that we would proceed with this work as soon as the TSPIRS information was available. In July 2000, Forest Service officials told us that the fiscal year 1998 TSPIRS report had been drafted but not yet finalized for a number of reasons. As we discuss in more detail later in this letter, a draft of the fiscal year 1998 TSPIRS report was made available to the Congress and the public in February 2001. We ultimately received the final fiscal year 1998 TSPIRS report in June 2001, and in August 2001 Forest Service officials told us they were not going to prepare the fiscal year 1999 TSPIRS report. Accordingly, we are now addressing your question with the information we have at our disposal. Results in Brief While we deferred our response to your questions pending the Forest Service's completion of the fiscal years 1998 and 1999 TSPIRS reports, ultimately it was the serious accounting and financial reporting deficiencies that existed at the Forest Service during fiscal years 1998 and 1999 that precluded us from making an accurate 'Total net federal costs, as discussed in your request, would include the costs incurred by the Forest Service to carry out the program, as well as costs incurred by other federal agencies that either support the timber sales program or incur costs as a result of it, offset by timber sales revenue. GAO-01-11O1R Forest Service Timber Costs

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