A new forest policy or bust

 Oregon timber counties cannot prosper without more activity on federal forests 

By The Oregonian Editorial Board 

Published: Monday, January 23, 2012, 5:52 PM 

Sure, you can shift county road and school funds around like deck chairs on the Costa Concordia cruise ship, and you can try to persuade the people who live in some of the poorest communities in Oregon to raise their taxes.

But in the end, there is only one way to ensure a future for Oregon's rural timber counties: Get commercial logging and other economic activities going again on federal forests.

On Friday, legislators held a public hearing at the Capitol billed as a discussion of ways to respond to the termination of federal county payments, the loss of tens of millions of dollars of critical support and the prospect of county governments going belly up. The lengthy meeting wasn't a total waste of time, but it offered nothing new and demonstrated again that there is no getting around the basic story problem underlying the crisis in rural Oregon.

And that is, if more than half the land in an economically depressed county is federally owned and provides no tax revenues and precious little economic activity, you're dead in the water.

The hard truth is that without some action on federal lands, there are no state or local responses able to save Oregon's failing timber counties. If Curry County slips under water, or Josephine does, state government isn't coming to the rescue. Not with a state budget deficit of several hundred million dollars. Maybe the counties could shift and empty road funds, or merge with one another, and stagger along for awhile.

And of course they will have to ask their taxpayers to raise their very low property tax rates. But that's difficult, too, with voter-approved property tax limitations cramping rates and compressing levies. And never mind that the economic collapse has driven property values across much of rural Oregon well below current assessed values.

The only real answer lies in those federal forest lands, and getting the federal government to live up to the promise it kept for more than a century to provide timber revenues -- or substantial direct payments -- to the counties. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is fighting to reauthorize county payments at a reduced level, but at a time of runaway federal deficits and white-hot partisan politics, that's no sure thing.

Everyone is waiting to see the details of a proposal that Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader are preparing to get commercial logging going again on the federal forests of Southwest Oregon, while providing lasting protection for older forests, key watersheds and other important conservation areas.

The lawmakers are said to be preparing to introduce their bill in early February. Speaker after speaker Friday said they were eager to see and support the legislation, which might come in time to save the last dwindling sawmills in parts of Oregon, and provide enough critical jobs and timber revenues to preserve county governments.

Of course, a legislative solution that returns some semblance of active management to large areas of federal forests in Oregon is a lot to hope for, after all these years of legal and political gridlock. But there's political momentum, bipartisan support and, most of all, a most powerful argument for change. If it fails, so will some Oregon counties.