By Allen Best
Times Staff Writer
Businessmen have forever been wanting government to be operated more like a business. Francis Pandolfi is no different.
The president and CEO of Times Mirror Magazines from 1988 to 1995, Pandolfi joined the U.S. Forest Service in January, assuming the new title of chief of staff for Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck.
He had worked with Dombeck during the last couple of years while Dombeck was acting director of the Bureau of Land Management.
As the gatekeeper for the boss, Pandolfi can help steer policy. And from comments he made to ski area operators at a national convention in Colorado Springs during May, expect the Forest Service to be like a big cruise ship slowly turning direction.
Unclear from his comments was what will be left behind. Logging is the image that has defined the agency, he said. More evident is Pandolfi's belief that the agency should adopt fundamental business practices, and should look at recreation as a business, and a booming business at that.
He foresees the Forest Service taking its cue from major corporations such as Proctor & Gamble, which has such brand names as Tide, the detergent.
Instead of selling brands of detergent and toothpaste, Pandolfi envisions the Forest Service having brands of recreation, such as camping, biking, skiing.
"The Forest Service needs brand managers, and they will manage their brands the way you manage your brands and Proctor & Gamble manages its brands," he said.
Because as a government agency the Forest Service is subject to laws private businesses are spared, Pandolfi envisions growing partnerships with such companies as L.L. Bean and Coleman, and with such trade groups as the National Ski Areas Association to provide "a conduit to do business in ways we cannot."
Wait - there's more. He envisions linking up with the Nashville Network , USA Today, chains of newspapers in rural areas, to help sell recreation on the National Forests. {{note: Nashville Network is owned by Recreation Roundtable member Gaylord Communications, Disney (an ARC sustaining member) owns multiple chains of newspapers.}}
"These are not exclusively dreams, he said. He predicted realization in the next decade.
Pandolfi also wants Congress to loosen the purse strings, allowing the Forest Service permanent authority to charge for recreation and reinvest the money back into the product. Districts temporarily have that authority.
"Three dollars for a full day on the forest isn't so bad," said Pandolfi, whose Times Mirror was the umbrella company for the magazines of Ski and Skiing.
He had also worked for CBS Inc. as vice president and group publisher.
He decried the pad press the Forest Service had received and extolled the "good soldiers" of the agency. He said that by "respecting business management as much as they respect resource management, we will find more money to put out on the ground."
But don't expect miracles overnight. "It takes a long time to turn the Queen Mary around," he said of the 35,000-employee agency," so be patient."
"The Forest Service talks a real good game when it comes to accountability, and we don't have it, but that's going to change," he said.
Promising adoption of standard accounting practices, Pandolfi concluded: "It ain't brain science. Debits and credits have been around for 200 years, and it's time we used them."
Ski area operators wanted to know about their input in selection of local district rangers (he said the agency welcomes it) and about the return of ski area revenue to local forests.
Had he been taking questions from a national convention of environmental groups, he probably would have been asked about the role of Forest Service lands in already fast-growing mountain valleys and about the impacts of recreation to public lands, deemed by some environmental groups to be as great as those of resource extraction.
He wasn't, though, nor did he address those recreation-related topics.