
DATE: Wednesday, October 29, 1997           TAG: 9710290817

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   72 lines

BILL'S FORESTRY PROVISIONS COULD LEAD TO A VETO

An Interior spending bill that increases money for national parks and retains the National Endowment for the Arts faces a possible veto by President Clinton over its handling of logging of northwestern forests.

The $13.8 billion measure covering the Interior Department and related programs was approved by the Senate 84-14 on Tuesday. The House passed it Friday, 233-171.

The bill would provide $1.2 billion for operating the National Parks, a $79 million increase over last year, and $1.3 billion for the National Forest System, a $71 million increase.

It would also provide $98 million for the NEA, less than the administration requested but defeating a congressional attempt to kill the agency.

The legislation, however, may be vetoed.

``We are mulling over the specifics of this bill and the president has not made a final decision,'' said Lawrence Haas, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget. The main concern, he said, is over the Forest Service's ability to carry out its land management plan in Northwest forests.

``The Forest Service plan, in plain English, is designed to find a middle ground between those who want to cut and those who want to conserve,'' Haas said. The administration is worried that the bill ``sets up too many roadblocks'' to the Forest Service's implementation of numerous plans for the Northwest over the next five years, he said.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who chairs the Appropriations Committee's panel that handled the Interior bill, warned the administration against vetoing it.

``This agreement is very delicately balanced and . . . a decision by the administration to come back for one more bite at the apple despite the great lengths we have gone to accommodate its concerns will not be without peril,'' Gorton said before the Senate voted.

Several conservation groups urged Clinton to veto the bill.

``President Clinton knows what the American people want him to do: Protect our national parks, national forests and other public lands from the extremists in Congress who keep making backroom deals for special interest friends,'' said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.

The White House is pleased with the bill's increases in funds for national parks and forests and with some of its environmental initiatives, including funds for land acquisition, Haas said. The acquisition funds would be used in part in the Headwaters Forest in California, where a timber company plans to cut thousands of old-growth redwoods and to close a deal with a Canadian mining company to halt plans for the New World Mine near Yellowstone National Park.

Gorton said the administration opposed Congress' insistence on appraisals of those properties before they are bought and predicted that if the bill is vetoed, ``it will primarily be because of the appraisal requirement for these two acquisitions.'' He cautioned that Congress would be more likely to withdraw the money than the appraisal requirement.

But an administration official said that while the White House wasn't particularly happy with the appraisal requirement, that alone would not prompt a veto.

The bill's $98 million for arts funding is $38 million less than Clinton requested and $1.5 million less than the NEA got last year. Yet, if the House had its way, the NEA would have gotten nothing. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

HOW THEY VOTED

The 84-14 roll call by which the Senate voted Tuesday to approve

the conference bill on Interior appropriations and send it to

President Clinton.

Virginia:

Charles Robb Yes

John Warner Yes

North Carolina:

Lauch Faircloth No

Jesse Helms No