Firefighter, Fire-Setter, But No Paper-Pusher
I'm just catching up with a Sunday piece in the Arizona Republic about the Van Bateman, a Forest Service fire management officer who has pleaded guilty to deliberately setting two fires. "Why, the paper asks, "would an expert on the lethal devastation of wildfires suddenly begin setting them after 34 years of public service?"
Bateman actually makes the answer to that question pretty clear: He simply didn't think the rules of the bureaucracy applied to him. Listen to his description of his actions in setting one of the fires:
"I'm saying I came out here, and I was doing my job. I came out, and I lit this thing. Did I obtain the proper authorizations? No, I did not . . . (But) I wasn't trying to start an arson fire. I was just trying to clean this piece of country up. . . . I would be shocked if there's anybody who's spent their career in forest management who hasn't done this."
Larry Humphrey, a retired wildfire supervisor at the Bureau of Land Management who worked with Bateman, calls what he did "a damned minor infraction. There's not a fire management officer who didn't do that sort of thing. . . . If you had to bend the rules a little, you bent the rules."
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Government Executive Staff Correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg takes a look at news affecting the management and operations of the massive federal bureaucracy.
While the officer did apparently violate protocol, this incident is a sign of excessive and flawed logic within the forest management bureaucracy.
FidelGonzales Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2007 1:04 PM