Gloria Flora got the ball rolling. After she resigned
as supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in November
(HCN, 11/22/99: Nevadans drive out forest supervisor), the Forest
Service sent a team to investigate her charges of “anti-federal
fervor” and “fed-bashing” in Nevada. Although the team’s report
says that working conditions for Forest Service employees
throughout the state are generally good, it also says that staffers
in northeast Nevada face an unusual amount of antagonism. Agency
employees and their families in Elko, Nev., and other rural towns
in the area tell of verbal attacks in public and ostracism from
community groups. One Forest Service spouse says other women at her
son’s bus stop screamed profanities at her when articles about the
Forest Service appeared in the local paper. Nonetheless, the team
discovered no incidents worthy of attention from the Justice
Department. However, the nonprofit Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility says Nevada’s U.S. Attorney has been
unwilling to prosecute criminal complaints brought by the Forest
Service, and has failed to assign priority status to any such case
in the past six years.
And according to a recent
editorial in the Reno Gazette-Journal, while there may be no
criminal actions to prosecute, the pervasive harassment of federal
employees is “not the way to act in a supposedly civilized
society.”
PEER’s report, Forest Service
Complaints Ignored by Justice in Nevada, is available on
the Web at www.peer.org/action. To request a copy of the
Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Work Environment and Community
Relations Fact-Finding Report, contact the Forest Service’s Robert
Swinford at 801/625-5347.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Fed-bashing investigated.
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