Wrangell Sentinel -

(AP) WASHINGTON – The U.S. Forest Service is in the business of preventing fires, not starting them.

Yet the agency set off alarms in Congress and state capitols across the West by citing automatic spending cuts as the basis for demanding that dozens of states return $17.9 million in federal subsidies. And it’s all come down to a bureaucratic squabble over whether the money is subject to so-called sequestration because of the year it was paid – 2013 – as the Obama administration contends, or exempt from the cuts because of the year it was generated – 2012 – as the states insist.

Right now, it’...