$6 Million In Tax Money Gone On Failed Oregon Forest Land-Swap Scheme

[hatrack]

"Eugene businessman Aaron Jones is an undisputed genius at lumber milling. Over the past half-century, he invented dozens of methods for cutting logs into boards, built the world's most efficient sawmill and made himself a multimillionaire. But when he turned his mind to public policy, the results were a major disappointment.

His highly touted Umpqua Land Exchange Project is winding down next month after a decade of effort and with little to show - except the expense of $6 million in federal taxpayer money. And a chorus of "I told you so's" from environmental groups. These critics said Jones' idea of creating an experimental computer system to plan swaps of forestland between private companies and the federal government in western Douglas County was misguided from the start. "It really seemed like a boondoggle to us," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the nonprofit Western Land Exchange Project watchdog group in Seattle. The government "gave them $6 million to design their model and run their model. This is taxpayer money, and it's just gone down the tubes."

EDIT

Jones recently had bought 165,000 acres of timberland in southern Lane and northern Douglas counties, and he was frustrated by the onward rush of environmental restrictions. His original idea was to transfer environmentally sensitive private lands into public ownership - and, in return, the federal government would give timber companies less-sensitive land that they could log at will. The computer was supposed to analyze the study area, acre by acre, after which the swaps could be made. As part of the project, Jones proposed swapping about 26,000 acres of his own Umpqua forestland to the federal government.

But a full decade after Jones launched the effort, no land has changed hands, and other private timber owners appear to have lost interest. The private Jones-led foundation that Congress awarded the bulk of the $6 million in grants has spent virtually all the money. Finally, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decided last June to pull the plug on the project and to try to recover some of the public money. The final accounting is due next month. Federal lawmakers - including some who initially helped Jones get the money - are loath to talk about the enterprise. Four times, Congress passed bills that included money for Jones' idea, yet few lawmakers are demanding to know: What did the project accomplish? Former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who originally put the funding into a Senate bill so Jones and his allies could avoid messy and time-consuming public hearings, insists that he remembers nothing of the project. Staffers for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who was among those voting to give Jones the money, refer all questions about the project to other members of the Oregon congressional delegation."

EDIT

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/04/24/a1.umpquamain.0424.html

[Wickerman]

1. Social programs & education are required to be evaluated annually

I guess we go on trust with developers and bidnessmen cuz they got smarts. And, of course, the social programs are only there to rip off the taxpayer - a corporate interest only has the good of the country at heart. :sarcasm:

If this would've had proper oversight this would've been killed early when they showed no substantial progress.