With the local county budget in dire straits, loss of historical federal timber payments could prove to be catastrophic
TIMBER! – Loggers use machines to clear a hillside of timber and debris up Rocky Pointe Road on Monday.
Tyler Graf / The South County Spotlight
An Oregon delegation of lawmakers and interest groups has ramped up its push for a proposed second reauthorization of a federally funded timber payment program for counties, which is set to expire in 2012. But with a political climate that is more likely to cut existing programs than add new ones, timber payment proponents are concerned it may disappear altogether or be replaced.
Staff responsible for crafting Columbia County’s budget warns that without the reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, which provides the groundwork for the federal timber payments, Columbia County stands to lose millions of dollars.
In the 2010-2011 budget year Columbia County received $1.65 million in federal timber payments, about 17 percent of the county’s unrestricted general fund, which has decreased each of the last four years.
Since Congress first reauthorized the legislation in 2008, the county has seen its annual payout decrease by 10 percent annually, part of a planned phase-out of the program through 2012. At the time of reauthorization, lawmakers said the program was not intended to last forever.
As a corollary to the decreasing federal timber payments, the unrestricted general fund for 2010-2011 decreased by 2.9 percent over the previous year, a fiscal effect heightened by a 10.3 rise in personnel costs.
The trend toward widening budget gaps is a cause for concern among county leaders.
That’s why in March, former logger and current county Commissioner Tony Hyde and other members of the Association of O&C Counties — which represents the interests of 18 Western Oregon counties — will travel to Washington D.C. to make the case for reauthorization.
“We’ll be hitting [the issue] hard,” Hyde said. “We’ll have a full-fledged policy plan.”
At the center of Hyde’s argument is the notion that states with a large percentage of land tied up in federal ownership — most notably Oregon, with 60 percent of its land owned by the federal government as timber reserves — are economically hamstrung by the agreement. Development is not allowed on the federally owned land, meaning there’s no property tax revenue. And logging the land has become less profitable over the past 20 years.
Traditionally, Oregon and other states received a percentage of the revenue generated from federal forest logging. But when Congress toughened environmental regulations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, profits for both federal and private logging dropped precipitously.
Since 1990, the amount of timber logged statewide dropped from 1 billion to 200 million board feet, said Rocky McVay, director of the Association of O&C Counties.
Despite the continuing downward slide in revenue, McVay said he expects the proposed reauthorization to receive far less bipartisan support nationwide than it did when it was initially passed in 2000. That’s why the Association of O&C Counties has also proposed alternative legislation, called the Federal Forest & Schools Stabilization Act of 2010.
The proposal combines a plan for preserving 1.2 million acres of timberland for old-growth dependent wildlife species, as well as selling an equal number of acres that have previously been cutover, burned or subjected to intensive management. The proceeds from the sale would partially fund a 10-year program of safety-net payments to schools and counties nationally and would provide a permanent trust for the benefit of Oregon’s 18 affected counties, McVay said.
Though McVay said he considers the proposal a permanent replacement for the current timber payment program, he noted that it has yet to elicit a commitment from legislators. “In today’s reality of public deficits, the rock we’re pushing is going up a very steep hill,” he said.
Perhaps the one place where the program has universal, bipartisan support is among Oregon lawmakers.
For one, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden reiterated at a Jan. 22 town hall in St. Helens his promise to push for reauthorization of the program. Wyden was chiefly responsible for writing the initial legislation in 2000. He also helped reauthorize it in 2008. Tom Towslee, Wyden’s state communications director, said the county payment program would remain Wyden’s “number-one priority.”
Both Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, and Rep. Greg Walden, a Republican, have taken hard-line stances on reauthorizing the legislation. Hyde said he hopes Walden’s new-found leadership role within the current Republican congressional majority helps sway votes. Republican Party leaders have tapped Walden to be chairman of the House Majority Transition Committee.
And U.S. Sen. Merkley, the state’s junior senator, said he will also lobby to get the legislation reauthorized. “We’re trying very hard to get it into the president’s budget,” he said. He added that he’s placed pressure on President Barack Obama’s new director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jack Lew, to provide appropriations for the program.
The president’s budget is due out on Feb. 14. Its release is considered a precursor to further legislative maneuvering, depending on whether it includes funding for the timber payment program or not.
Nonetheless, the next round of reauthorization talks may be hampered by the House’s new policy of “CutGo,” which requires new Congressional appropriations to come at the expense of existing programs of equal value, McVay said.
“Right now, we’re looking at all of our offsets we can make,” he said.
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