POLICY ROUNDUP

U.S. wildfires burned a record 10.1 million acres in 2015, and the Forest Service spent 52 percent of its budget fighting fires, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last month.

Vilsack has warned that fire seasons are starting earlier and lasting longer than years ago, and officials have sought to convince Congress to change the way it funds firefighting because its budget appropriation falls short nearly every year. So far, Congress has refused.

To cover the budget shortfalls for firefighting, the Agriculture Department takes funding from other parts of the Forest Service, some of them devoted to fire prevention. In December, Vilsack told lawmakers that practice would stop and issued an angry ultimatum: If you want the Forest Service to keep putting out huge wildfires, then pay for it up front.

Vilsack was upset because Congress set aside $1.6 billion to pay for wildfire suppression in 2016, ignoring that the Forest Service spent $100 million more than that to fight blazes even before 2015 ended. The service paid $243 million in a single week in August to suppress fires — another record.

By 2025, the Forest Service estimates, fighting fires will eat 67 percent of its budget, a seismic increase from 16 percent in 1995. — Joana Suleiman

CONSERVATION

Russia, U.S. agree on the number of polar bears that can be killed

The United States and Russia don’t agree on much these days, but they do agree on the number of polar bears that can be killed each year.

The U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Commission, established by the two governments, “unanimously” agreed to keep the annual kill limit from 2010 in place, with no changes in October of last year.

The cap will stay at 58 polar bears per year, with only 19 allowed to be female, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notice. The two countries will split the number allowed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published the decision in the Federal Register, moving forward to codify the decision in a proposed rule due out in April. The rule will be made final in September, according to a pre-publication copy of the notice.

Long the symbol of the ravages of manmade climate change, the polar bear population in the Arctic has been used in several environmental campaigns to push for increased conservation and greenhouse gas regulation. The environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council uses the outline of one of the white bruins in its logo.

“Because of ongoing and potential loss of their sea ice habitat resulting from climate change, polar bears were listed as a threatened species in the U.S. under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008,” according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The Fish and Wildlife Service says the commission agreed that the quota of bears be kept unchanged, and that no new biological data, or other impact to the bear’s habitat, warranted lowering the number of bears allowed to be killed.

The regulations the service will be issuing as a draft in April will establish ways of implementing and monitoring the allowed number of kills.

Currently, the agency requires Alaskan natives who harvest polar bears for subsistence purposes, or for purposes of selling handicrafts and clothing, to report kills by presenting the “skin and skull” to agency personnel. — John Siciliano

LAW ENFORCEMENT

How much does it cost to review police cam footage?

As body cameras become more common at police stations across the nation, the question of who pays for the footage has led to lawsuits in New York, California and Missouri. In the past year, at least 10 states have passed laws restricting access to the footage. There is no uniform approach.

News network NY1 was billed $36,000 by the NYPD for about 190 hours of footage it requested under the state’s Freedom of Information Law. Complaining the price was too steep, the network is now suing the police department in state court, claiming that the bill “runs counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL, as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the body camera program itself.”

The NYPD did not say how it came up with the $120-hour rate to review footage, more than 14 times greater than the state minimum wage.

In Hayward, Calif., the police department told the National Lawyers Guild that it needed to come up with $3,000 before it would turn over requested body camera footage. The ACLU claims in a lawsuit the bill violates part of the state’s public records law. Officials in Ferguson, Mo., are charging nearly 10 times the cost of their own employees’ salaries before they turn over files under public records laws.

While police-worn body cameras can bring extra evidence into cases on both sides, they are far from a fix for police brutality. The main obstacle with these cameras is the fact that the footage is still entirely controlled by police departments. Many advocates for police accountability suggest that body camera footage should be open source, and in the hands of the people and not the police. — Joana Suleiman

HEALTHCARE

Hospitals move to offer insurance

More hospitals are starting to offer Medicare Advantage plans, a move that experts say could lead to better care for seniors.

A new analysis from the research firm Avalere Health found that this year, healthcare providers will represent 58 percent of the plans for Medicare Advantage, a program that allows seniors to buy private health insurance.

About 70 hospital and health systems will offer 403 plans in 41 states, the analysis said.

“Increasingly, large providers are leveraging their integrated delivery networks and building on their experience bearing risk to offer insurance to consumers across the country,” Avalere said.

The analysis, funded by insurance giant Aetna, also found that provider-sponsored plans deliver high quality care.

“While 32 percent of total [Medicare Advantage] enrollees in 2015 were in a 4.5 or five-star plan, 70 percent of provider-sponsored [Medicare Advantage] plan enrollees were members of a plan with a similar star rating,” the company said. — Robert King

EMPLOYMENT

Labor Dept. rolls out new sex discrimination rules

The Labor Department is updating its guidelines on sexual discrimination, the agency announced last week.

It said the existing rules, which have been largely unchanged since 1970, needed to be updated to address the “full range of discriminatory wage practices that contribute to the wage gap,” as well as discrimination related to pregnancy and child care, hostile workplaces and “gender identity” issues.

The announcement would clarify, for example, that sex discrimination goes beyond any overt act or “quid pro quo” situation and can include “adverse treatment of employees” who do not conform to “gender norms and expectations about appearance, attire and behavior.” It also would require contractors to provide bathroom accommodations for pregnant employees.

The proposed rule changes would be limited to federal contractors, a small part of the U.S. economy, but they illustrate the White House’s efforts to expand the reach of the workplace protection laws while circumventing Congress. Rather than pushing lawmakers to pass new laws, administration lawyers are instead reinterpreting and updating existing rules. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance announcement follows similar efforts by Labor Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to expand their authority.

The department estimated that the proposed rules would cost federal contractors about $26 million in one-time administrative costs and $10 million annually to provide pregnancy-related accommodations. The costs likely would be borne by taxpayers since they would drive up the costs of federal contracts. — Sean Higgins

EDUCATION

Government education budgets shrinking

Tax revenue and expenditures dedicated to education declined in the 2012-13 school year, according to the latest data released by the Department of Education on Jan. 27. On average, $10,763 is spent per student nationwide, down 0.6 percent from the previous year. Total revenues per pupil declined by 1.2 percent nationwide. Less than 10 cents of every dollar in education revenue comes from the federal government, with state and local governments splitting the remainder about equally. Utah spends the least per pupil of any state, at $6,432. New York spends the most (Washington, D.C., aside), at $19,529 per pupil.
Across the country, the share of education spending dedicated to teaching varies widely. About 55 percent of Arizona’s education dollars are spent on instruction, the least of any state. In contrast, New York spends the most on instruction, more than 69 percent. Nationwide, about 61 cents of every dollar spent on education is for teaching. Non-instruction expenditures include administration, transportation and maintenance.

District of Columbia Public Schools continues to spend more per student than most districts ($17,953), but Newark City Public Schools spends more than any district in the country ($24,670). — Jason Russell