On Wednesday, Sept. 7, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 744, a bill that would have greatly enhanced public access to information about timber harvest plans by making them available online.

Making THPs available on the internet would have made it much easier for concerned citizens to find and comment on them.

“Greater access to public-domain records on logging projects is something the timber industry does not want,” said Paul Hughes, executive director of Forests Forever. “We’re very disappointed that the governor chose to heed his well-heeled industry backers rather than the elected representatives of all Californians.”

Currently THPs are processed exclusively on paper, making dissemination of this information slow and cumbersome.

The bill also would have helped ease the paperwork burden on the California Department of Forestry (CDF). The agency cranks out between 800 and 1,200 timber harvest plans a year, all on paper.

In his public statement on the veto, the governor said the CDF “is working to improve the public’s access to . . . timber harvest plans . . . through a pilot internet access program.” He went on to say that “the prescriptive nature of this bill could interfere with CDF’s ability to test the practical aspects of converting documents to an electronic format and displaying them on the internet.”

The only “prescription” the bill made, however, was to set a time limit on when this conversion would take place. It would have required the CDF to do what it claims it intends to do anyway.

“Forests Forever would be glad to send a member of its staff over to CDF– and the governor’s office, for that matter– to show them how to use a scanner and create PDF documents,” Hughes said. “The governor’s stated reason for not signing the bill is weak at best.”

Making public access easier increases the transparency of government processes, and benefits everyone– except those who would prefer to have their plans become reality without public scrutiny.