This is why they didn’t hand out a lot of the money they were supposed to, I thought it was known they were saving it for pet projects.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, who has acknowledged climate change’s role in worsening wildfires, proposed $150 million for five years’ worth of fire-fighting costs, plus more for new fire personnel.

According to actual wildfire fighting companies this isn’t the case at all. In the late 90’s early 2000’s the government went from spending a couple hundred million on prevention a year which would give these companies and employees year round work to only fighting fires.

Now the budgets for the forestry service is in the billions and it’s only to fight fires not prevention by clearing underbrush dead/diseased trees and thinning the forests.

If you’re company has proven itself you might be on the fire line for a day or two then they send in the companies that are newer. Most people sit around for days while getting paid the entire time. Some leave in disgust and think it’s all a charade.

One air drop of fire retardant which doesn’t work but is for show could pay the whole ground crew for a day.

I have to find that article with all these insiders complaining.

Found it:

But over the past few decades, the federal government built an industry designed to fight fire, not light it. Concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, these operations have infused government cash into towns and businesses damaged by the loss of timber jobs, and it has provided much-needed reinforcements during intense wildfire seasons when rural communities and forest homes are threatened.

Critics say it also created a special interest that lobbies Congress and federal agencies for policies and funding that support fire suppression, and that the government has escalated costs through inflated pricing and wasteful spending. As Congress and the Forest Service poured more money into firefighting while failing to rein in costs, they undercut their own plans to return forests to healthier, safer conditions.

In 1995, wildfire was about 16 percent of the Forest Service budget. A decade later, it took up more than half of it. That is not solely the product of natural disaster, drought or forest fuels. It was part of the plan.

Facing an uncertain future for the Forest Service and the prospect of many out-of-work loggers, the Clinton administration sold Congress on a vision of a new economy around forest restoration, with fire as a major component.

“You have this agency whose raison d'être was logging the national forests. That rug was pulled out from under it. The Forest Service needed to find a new reason for being,” Stahl said.

“Heavy machinery such as dozers, lowboys, and water tenders, formerly part of the public fire cache, were now contracted at high rates and with stiff premiums for standby availability whether used or not,” Pyne says.

Wildfire is a sliver of business — but a lucrative one — for Alexander Hodge, a construction contractor in Bend. He said his profit margins typically run 20–30 percent, but when he rents out his equipment on a wildfire, it’s closer to 70 percent.

Waylon Beymer, owner of Chilkat Logging in Warm Springs, Oregon, estimated that in a busy fire season he’s made close to $400,000 in a single month renting out his logging machinery.

Albert Rollins, a 42-year-old timber faller who worked his first fire at age 18, said for a typical falling gig he’d expect around $400 per day. On a forest fire, he can make closer to $1,200 per day.

“Whether you start your saw or you don't start your saw,” Rollins said. “It's just insane how much money you can make. I've been on fires and sat there for five days — that's almost $6,000 I made — and I never even put my boots on.”

He said he walked off a fire job once, fed up with the waste he saw.

Sanders noticed as his crews improved, he started getting more of what he considered “rewards” from the Forest Service: After working a few days on an active fire, he’ll be held for a while with no suppression work to do, still in a paid status whether he’s needed or not and put to work brushing roads or improving fire lines.

“It’s make-work,” he said. "But they could just have us sitting around."

During a fire, his fully equipped 20-person crews cost the government $960 per hour. That's 30 percent higher than if the government assigned him the same work outside of fire season.

“It's our tax dollars. It's insane. It's absolutely insane,” he said.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/wildfire-forest-service-budget-suppression-portion/