Late afternoon on Oct. 19, 2022, that controlled burn lost control to what his lawyers described as “sudden unforeseen high winds” and jumped the Izee Highway north of Seneca, Ore., scorching about 20 acres of private land.
Around the same time, Snodgrass called law enforcement to report people harassing the fire crew by driving aggressively in an area with a history of strident anti-government activity, including an armed takeover in 2016 of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The aggressive actions against Snodgrass’s crew, which followed previous abrasive incidents in the area, included swerving in front of wildland fire engines, and almost hitting a Forest Service four-wheeler, according to firefighters with knowledge of the incident. They did not want to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing case.
“There’s a very strong anti-government sentiment in the part of what we refer to as Eastern Oregon, where I live. It’s my home now,” said Eric Franta, a National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) steward who has fought wildland flames for 17 fire seasons with the Forest Service. “And particularly in Grant County, where the Malheur is located.”
Although Snodgrass called the cops, when Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley responded to the fire scene, he busted Snodgrass for reckless burning, a class A misdemeanor, while the flames continued — removing him “from his crew in the middle of its active effort to extinguish the fire,” according to his defense brief. He was not indicted and arraigned until last month.
Now, Snodgrass’s lawyer, Michelle Kerin, wants the case moved to federal district court. If that happens, it could lead to dismissal of the charges.
In her federal court motion filed last week, Kerin argued that “because Mr. Snodgrass was acting in his official capacity as a federal official … he is immune from prosecution based on the Supremacy Clause” and is entitled to have his case heard in federal court.
That part of the Constitution, Section VI, says, according to a Cornell Law School summary, “the federal constitution, and federal law generally, take precedence over state laws, and even state constitutions. It prohibits states from interfering with the federal government’s exercise of its constitutional powers …”
If the case moves to federal court, Snodgrass could still be tried, but with a state prosecutor arguing the case.
In a message to employees soon after his arrest, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said it “was highly inappropriate under these circumstances, and I will not stand idly by without fully defending the Burn Boss and all employees carrying out their official duties as federal employees. This employee should not have been singled out …”
Snodgrass’s arrest has his colleagues wondering if being a burn boss is worth the potential hassle. “With what happened to Snodgrass, there’s a lot of us just questioning the risk involved and if it’s worth it,” said Jeremiah Marsh, a burn boss in Wallowa County, in Oregon’s northeast corner. Citing anti-government attitudes, Marsh, a NFFE local vice president representing employees, including Snodgrass, in five national forests, said, “I really don’t like going down to Grant County.”
Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter declined an interview request but did provide a news release issued by his office shortly after the arrest. “To be clear,” it said, “the employer and/or position of Snodgrass will not protect him if it is determined that he acted recklessly. That the USFS was engaging in a prescribed burn may actually raise, rather than lower the standard to which Snodgrass will be held.”
In an apparent reference to political tensions in the area, Carpenter added “many will attempt to hype this into something that it is not. The question is whether one neighbor, given the prevailing conditions, was reckless when starting fires adjacent to another neighbor.”
Yet, the Malheur connection and the political atmosphere are too obvious to ignore.
In January 2016, armed, right-wing extremists, angry about government land management practices, seized control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, leading to a 41-day standoff with federal authorities, who shot and killed LaVoy Finicum, a spokesman for the occupiers. About 20 people were arrested, including leader Ammon Bundy, who was notorious for his anti-government activities.
Glenn Palmer, who was sheriff at the time, expressed favor with the occupiers, calling them “patriots,” and supported the Bundy family, according to local news reports. That fueled a continuing sense of dissonance between federal and local authorities.
McKinley, formerly a deputy under Palmer, declined to comment. He defeated Palmer in 2020, saying, according to public broadcaster OPB, “I could see more and more that it [the sheriff’s office] was going in a way that I could not support. … It appeared to me that it was just serving certain individuals in the community, and not the entire community.”
Some small-government advocates in that area back the Greater Idaho campaign to move a large portion of Oregon, including Grant County, into Idaho “so that conservative counties can become a part of a red state.” Donald Trump, who was not federal-employee friendly when in the White House, won the county’s 2020 presidential election with 76 percent of the vote. It’s a sparsely populated place, with only 7,200 people, in 4,528 square miles, less than two people per square mile.
Grant County and other Mountain West rural counties have a long history of “substantial tension” with Washington, according to John Kincaid, a professor of government and public service at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. In 1995, county voters approved a symbolic measure “prohibiting the federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service from owning and managing federal lands within Grant County,” said Kincaid, who also is a National Academy of Public Administration fellow. “In 2002, the county asked Congress to give the county title to all federal lands,” which is about 60 percent of Grant’s territory, in another symbolic effort.
The Forest Service will continue its work there, even if some don’t appreciate it.
“Our mission remains the same,” said Wade Muehlhof, a Forest Service spokesman, “regardless of where Forest Service employees are performing their duties.”
