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B-302992 1 (2004-09-10)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptapqr0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SGAO Accountability * Integrity Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 B-302992 September 10, 2004 The Honorable Richard W. Pombo Chairman Committee on Resources U.S. House of Representatives The Honorable Greg Walden Chairman Committee on Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health U.S. House of Representatives Subject: Forest Service-Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment brochure and video materials This responds to your request for our legal opinion regarding the Forest Service's use of appropriated funds to produce and distribute a brochure entitled Forests With a Future: Protecting Old Growth Trees, Wildlife and Communities in Sierra Nevada. Specifically, you asked whether the use of appropriated funds for the brochure constitutes a violation of the prohibition on using funds for publicity or propaganda purposes enacted in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108- 199, Div. F., Tit. VI, § 624, 118 Stat. 3, 356 (2004). You also asked whether the Forest Service's contract with a private company, OneWorld Communications, Inc. (OneWorld), to assist with the production and distribution of the brochure violated 5 U.S.C. § 3107, which prohibits the use of appropriated funds to pay a publicity expert without authorization from Congress. To respond to your request, we wrote to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) requesting factual information and its legal justification for its use of appropriations to produce and distribute the brochure. Letter from Susan A. Poling, Managing Associate General Counsel, GAO, to Nancy S. Bryson, General Counsel, USDA, May 11, 2004. In response to our letter, we received a copy of a legal memorandum written by Ms. Bryson to Mark E. Rey, Under Secretary, Natural Resources and Environment, USDA, Apr. 23, 2004 (Bryson Memo). This memorandum explained USDA's legal justification as to why the brochure at issue here did not violate the publicity or propaganda prohibition and other anti-lobbying prohibitions of the

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