Thanks to American Forest Resource Council
Bend Bulletin
We’d rather work for forest funds
Published: February 16. 2011 4:00AM PST
Back in the good old days — when logging was a significant part of the Central Oregon landscape — schools and counties could rely on a share of federal taxes collected on cut timber to help balance their budgets. Those days have been gone for years, however. Since 2001, at least some of the lost tax revenue has been made up through the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. This year it pumped nearly $7 million into the Central Oregon economy.
Yet, the word “secure” in the law’s title is surely misplaced. Money doled out under the act has never been secure, although each time the measure is set to expire, Congress has extended it.
Now, President Obama has included money for the act in his proposed 2012 budget, some $328 million in all to be divided among 729 counties around the country. The proposed budget would extend the program for five years, though the amount shelled out would drop in each successive year. It remains to be seen how that budget, including money for the Secure Rural Schools act, will fare in the deficit-slashing atmosphere of the House of Representatives.
We hope the act survives. While less than $400 million is nearly invisible in a government that deals with trillions of dollars, it is important to every county and school district that receives it.
At the same time, we agree with those who argue that the size of the current federal deficit threatens us all. In fact, we’d argue that the Secure Rural Schools act is different than pork. It helps fill a budget gap created when the federal government made timber harvesting, most grazing and mineral extraction on federal lands the exception. Those practices not only put money in federal coffers and, ultimately, county and school pocketbooks, they employed people all across the country as they did so.
Given a choice, we suspect that most of those who benefit from the Secure Rural Schools act would much rather have the jobs and the taxes that disappeared in the 1990s. They’re unlikely to get their wish, however, and in the meantime, the secure schools funding is better than nothing. Obama’s proposed five-year extension will give members of Congress who serve recipient counties time to work on finding a permanent replacement.
Eugene Register-Guard
EDITORIAL: Counties get a foothold
But extension of payments has long way to go
Published: Wednesday, Feb 16, 2011 05:01AM
County officials across Oregon aren’t exactly doing backflips over President Obama’s decision to include another five-year extension of county timber payments in his 2012 budget.
That’s understandable. Yes, the payments would provide vital funding for roads, county services and schools in rural areas of the state dominated by public timber land. Those payments are in the third year of a four-year step down and will sunset in 2012. If the president and Congress do not push through another extension, the loss of payments will blow holes in the budgets of 18 Oregon counties.
At a time when Obama proposes cuts in domestic spending, it’s a tribute to the persistence of Oregon’s congressional delegation that the White House included an extension of county payments in its budget. It’s also a tribute to Obama, who as a candidate in 2008 said he would honor the federal government’s century-old obligation to rural timber counties.
Yet the amount of money included in the budget for counties falls far short of what’s needed to keep the cracks from spreading in already overstressed budgets.
The president’s budget calls for $1.06 billion spread over a five-year step down. Counties would receive $328 million next year and declining amounts each year after that. For perspective, the amount in the first year is equivalent to what counties are now receiving in the third year of the current four-year phase-down.
It’s worth remembering that counties had urged the president to include $620 million for next year and $6 billion over 10 years to avoid major cuts to public safety, health and human services and other core programs. County officials are grateful to have the payments included in the president’s budget, but they’re aware that by the end of the proposed five-year phase-out, counties would have a trickle of what was once a river of federal funding.
County officials’ reaction is also tempered by uncertainty over how the proposed extension will fare in Congress, where its surprising addition to a budget filled with painful cuts will make it a prime candidate for elimination. That’s especially true in the House — Republicans, who now hold the majority, have imposed budget rules requiring new programs to be offset by cuts in other programs. Many GOP lawmakers also have long viewed payments to counties as the equivalent of welfare, and targeted the funding for elimination.
County payments are not welfare. A century ago the federal government claimed hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland in 39 states, much of it in Oregon. In return, county governments in those states would receive a share of receipts from their timber resources to reflect the loss of economic benefits to rural communities. Congress further agreed in 1937 to use timber receipts to compensate 18 Oregon counties, including Lane County, for property taxes they lost when forestlands granted to the Oregon & California Railroad, which was never completed, reverted to the federal government instead of being sold into private ownership.
After enforcement of federal environmental laws reduced timber harvests, payments to rural counties did a fast fade. Sen. Ron Wyden’s Secure Rural Schools Act of 2000 provided payments to counties in their place.
Obama’s budget proposes a third extension of that safety net, one lawmakers should improve by doubling its length to give counties a decade of relative stability. They also should lock in payments at the proposed $328 million first-year level for the duration of the extension rather than phasing them out. Congress should also restore funding under the O&C Act, a unique commitment to the counties that the federal government has a special obligation to meet.
The president is right to include county payments in his budget. Congress should not only keep it there, but expand it as well.
Coos Bay World
Oregon's greeting card from Obama
Rural Oregon received a lovely Valentine from President Obama: a budget proposal to extend county timber payments. While the candy and flowers are nice, jobs in Oregon's forests and mills would be even more welcome.
Obama's budget, while slashing many government programs, includes money to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act for five more years. This is the law, set to expire this year, that provides a thin ration of federal aid in lieu of productive access to federal timber.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., welcomed the news, but he also noted that local governments need more than a short-term extension. He's right on both counts.
Obama's 2012 budget would provide $328 million the first year, less each year thereafter. This structure may reflect hope that county governments can be weaned from federal help while they seek new revenue sources.
The trouble is, nobody has any idea what those revenue sources might be.
Because the federal government holds so much Oregon land (53 percent), rural communities are hard-pressed to build local economies that don't rely on federal timber. That's especially true of Oregon's 'O&C" counties, whose borders encompass property of the defunct Oregon & California Railroad.
Nearly a century ago, when O&C land passed into federal ownership, counties forever lost the opportunity to collect property taxes on it. Later, when logging was sharply curtained, communities also lost much of their economic base.
Including county payments in Obama's budget is a positive gesture, but it falls short in at least two ways:
1. The fiscal plight of Oregon's rural counties is a permanent problem, in need of a permanent solution.
2. Cash aid to local governments is a weak substitute for restoring responsible, sustainable access to federal timber, to help rebuild healthy rural economies.
Corvallis Gazette-Times
Timber payments survive, but for how long?
For years now, we've been predicting the demise of those special federal payments to timber counties throughout the West, only to see the program time and again lurch out of the grave.
Which is fine: Many counties in Oregon rely on the money to help pay for essential services. The idea behind the program is to give a hand to rural counties struggling to replace their share of revenues that have declined as fish and wildlife protections have increased on federal lands.
So we weren't overly surprised to see that the timber payments have survived, in a reduced form, in the budget submitted Monday by President Barack Obama.
But just the fact it's included in the budget proposal is no guarantee that the program will survive, especially with Republicans in Congress already sharpening their budget-trimming knives and fretting (not without justification) about the ballooning federal deficit.
Obama himself doesn't seem particularly wedded to the program, either in the short or the long run: For starters, the budget includes just $328 million for the first year of a five-year commitment, a 10 percent reduction, with funding then declining 20 percent each successive year.
The Obama proposal also would eliminate funding for states that get less than $10 million a year after three years and would change the program's budgetary designation from mandatory to discretionary.
In other words, it looks to us as if Obama is planning an exit strategy for the timber payments program.
Members of Oregon's congressional delegation said they were pleased that the program was included in the budget - and vowed to try to find ways to make it permanent. And, truthfully, members of the delegation have been effective at shocking the program back to life even at times when the cause has seemed hopeless.
But our guess is that the program is on its last legs - and that the counties across the West that rely on the timber payments have about five years to wean themselves off them, as difficult as that may be. (For years, Benton County has been careful not to count on any timber payments - and has used the money, as it comes available, to reduce the amount generated by a citizen-sponsored county operating levy that voters approved in 2007.)
Of course, Benton County enjoys resources that are not available to other counties in Oregon, including voters who are at least willing to consider local-option levy measures.
In 2008, a task force appointed by then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski issued a dire report that identified six Oregon counties (Benton was not on the list) that could fail financially within a year or two after the payments end. So the stakes still are high. We may or may not have five full years to work out these problems, but we need to take advantage of whatever time we have remaining before the payments finally expire for good.
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