KALISPELL -- A year and a half of high-level negotiations between the U.S. Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co. apparently produced almost no paperwork, in terms of substantive communications between the two parties.

"You'd at least expect some e-mails or memos between them," said James McCubbin, "but there's nothing like that. There's nothing whatsoever to explain the process they worked through."

The lengthy talks did, however, result in a controversial legal amendment to old road easements, which if approved will grant Plum Creek access across federal land for all purposes, including residential subdivision.

That amendment, which came to light this spring, rankled local government leaders. They worried taxpayers would bear the burden of providing services not to mention firefighting costs to new neighborhoods far off in the forested fringe.

Western Montana counties have argued the historic forest road easements are intended for log hauling only.

Plum Creek officials and now Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey contend the easements are unlimited, and can be used for any purpose. In fact, Rey and the company have crafted an easement amendment ensuring just that sort of unfettered access.

It has not yet been enacted, however, and remains mired in controversy. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., recently initiated a Government Accountability Office review to determine whether the private talks should, in fact, have been public.

And in June, Missoula County filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, asking the Forest Service to provide all documents related to the easement amendment.

On Monday, Deputy County Attorney McCubbin announced he had received the first documents from his FOIA request "however, the responses include many different draft agreements, but not the cover correspondence which must have accompanied it."

In short, the documents provided by the Forest Service include lots of e-mails reminding agency and company brass of upcoming meetings and conference calls, but no minutes or notes from those meetings. Nor do the documents include any follow-up correspondence subsequent to those talks.

The paperwork, McCubbin said, provides nothing at all in the way of back-and-forth between the company and Rey's office, "which we certainly expected to see."

In addition, there's no internal Forest Service communication or legal discussion regarding the scope of the old easements, "which we also expected."

Instead, the documents so far delivered cut straight from a one-sentence meeting reminder to a finished draft of the easement amendment, shedding no light whatsoever on the 18-month process of negotiation, or the parties' changing positions on the matter.

At first, agency officials told McCubbin the lengthy negotiations had produced just 14 pages of documentation; but after continued prodding they now say the file could contain as many as 72,000 pages.

"They seem to be inundating us with multiple copies of irrelevant documents instead of providing the paperwork of substance," McCubbin said.

Rey was traveling Wednesday, and unavailable to comment on the FOIA response.

"They've certainly sent a lot more in terms of paper and a lot less in terms of content," McCubbin complained. "They're definitely omitting more than they're providing."

He has more than 50 drafts of the amendment on his desk now, but not one word about how the drafts were reached, or who sent which draft to whom. Did Plum Creek write this draft or that, or did Rey's office?

In fact, some of the drafts indicate sender and receiver with color-coding, which is fine, McCubbin said, except that he was supplied black-and-white copies.

"We wanted to see how this unfolded," McCubbin said, "what the opinions were and how the rationale was reached. And that's exactly what they still seem to be trying to conceal. They're failing to disclose any documents that would reveal how the process was conducted."

Prior to the talks, Forest Service staffers seemed to think the road easements were narrow, only for log hauling. Following the talks, the Forest Service position now agrees with Plum Creek's full-access interpretation.

The documents provided through the FOIA process, however, do not make clear how that legal opinion was reached.

"We can't just ignore their failure to provide the information," McCubbin said. "We're not just going to go away."

Rey, a Bush administration appointee, has said he would like to resolve the issue prior to leaving office at the new year. He also recently promised that more documents would be provided to the county but whether the detailed communications might be included remains unknown.

"I wouldn't be surprised if those were never made public," said Mike Meloy.

A Helena-based attorney, Meloy specializes in Freedom of Information Act law.

He hasn't seen the documents provided to Missoula County by the Forest Service, "but I've run into this kind of thing before," Meloy said. "There are exceptions in the law for different kinds of communications, including minutes from negotiations, and generally, if it can be exempted it will be exempted."

Missoula and other counties have for months tried to wrest information about the easement amendment, and officials have on several occasions complained of being "stonewalled." In fact, despite assurances made by Rey and others within the Forest Service, Montana counties still have not been supplied a full list of local easements that would be affected by the amendment.

The delay has led McCubbin to "wonder why it has been so difficult for the Forest Service to locate documents which are organized in file drawers in their regional office."

McCubbin said he will continue to wait a while longer "because there are more documents coming in still, I think" but at some point he'll have to file an appeal, charging Rey's FOIA response is inadequate.

"That's probably the next step," he said. "If they refuse to supply the information, we'll have to appeal. There isn't really any other option."

Reporter Michael Jamison:

1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.