12:44 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 15, 2004

By The Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Two U.S. Forest Service employees filed a complaint alleging U.S. Rep. Henry Brown used his office to threaten the service if he was fined for a fire last winter in the Francis Marion National Forest.

The complaint filed last week with the Department of Agriculture Inspector General's Office alleges Brown, R-S.C., and a member of the House Budget Committee, threatened there would be close review of agency programs if he is fined $250 and ordered to pay $7,000 in firefighting costs.

The complaint alleges a half-dozen officials refused to allow officers to give Brown a ticket and a Bush administration official ordered the matter dropped.

"I've been working for a long time in the Forest Service, 34 years, and this is the worst abuse of anything I've ever seen in terms of poor decision-making and arrogance," Jack Gregory, special agent in charge of the Forest Service's southern region told The (Charleston) Post and Courier.

Gregory and John Andy Sadler, a South Carolina patrol captain, filed the complaint.

Brown said he never made any threats and accused the men of manufacturing evidence.

The March 5 prescribed burn charred 238 acres on Brown's property and jumped a fire line, burning 20 acres of national forest land.

Brown said it was "an act of God" the fire jumped to public lands.

"I did everything I could with good intentions," Brown said. "The people who did this have a real vendetta."

He said he argued with Forest Service officials about the ticket but it was nothing he would not have done for a constituent. The 18-page complaint says Brown sent memos, made phone calls and urged officials to amend laws in his favor or drop the fine.

A prescribed burn helps keep forests healthy by burning ground debris, pine needles and fallen branches.

Forest Service firefighters who responded to the scene said Brown and another man did not seem prepared to contain it with garbage cans filled with water in the back of a pickup truck. They said Brown didn't realize the fire had spread to the national forest.

Brown said he has been burning on his property for years and it was the first fire that ever escaped, even though Forest Service fires have burned his property in the past.

"We lost $20,000 or $25,000 worth of timber on a fire, did we get compensation?" Brown said. "I didn't complain then. It just happened."

Mark Heitzman, the Forest Service officer on the scene, thought Brown should get a ticket because under federal law, even if a fire escapes unintentionally, those who started it are responsible.

Violations are ultimately handled by the U.S. attorney's office, which wants to be consulted before politicians or other officials are ticketed. In this case, the U.S. attorney's office said Brown should be treated like anyone else.

Gregory told his officers to ticket Brown who was called as a courtesy and took the news badly, according to Sadler, the South Carolina patrol captain.

Brown said political opponents would find out about the fine if he had to list it on his ethics report. He said if he got a ticket, Forest Service programs "might need to be scrutinized more closely," according to the complaint.

Last April, Forest Service officials stopped by Brown's Washington office on a lobbying visit and delivered an apologetic letter from Chief Dale Bosworth saying that Brown would have to pay.

Bosworth promised to see if officers could use "discretion" since the escaped fire was clearly an accident.

Brown responded that "if wording in the Code of Federal Regulations was what was driving this, he wanted the Forest Service to change the wording ... and make it retroactive so that no offense would have occurred," the complaint said.

In May, Brown met with Bosworth and Natural Resources and Environment Undersecretary Mark Rey, a Bush appointee. Brown said he was concerned about being billed for the fire costs in an election year, the complaint says. Brown faces only third-party opposition this year.

Two days later, Gregory was ordered not to ticket Brown and told the order came from Rey.

Rey's spokesman said Tuesday the case has not been closed but would not comment further.

Gregory and a claims officer tried again to bill Brown but said he got visits from various agency officials telling them to stop. Gregory, who oversees 185 agents in 14 states, said the case has struck a nerve.

"If a congressman gets away with this, everyone we cite is going to think they should get away with it," he said.

"They've got a right to their opinion," Brown said. "I was straight up with them, I tried to stop that fire. I could have paid the fine, but that would be like admitting I did something wrong."

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Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.charleston.net