Governor’s Office Describes an Oregon Solution for O & C Forests

Tom Tuchman, Governor John Kitzhaber’s Forestry & Conservation Finance Advisor, described an initiative for 2.6 million acres of federal forestland in Western Oregon to two legislative committees (House Agriculture & Natural Resources and Joint Task Force on County Payments) on September 13, 2012. 

The goal of this typical “John Kitzhaber” enterprise is to develop an Oregon Solution to break the gridlock that is leading many Western Oregon counties to insolvency and pushing unemployment rates upwards of 20%.  Kitzhaber has succeeded in developing Oregon Solutions that have led to federal Medicare and other Health Care waivers.  Kitzhaber exceeded expectations in getting buy-in from the federal bureaucracy.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-4^th Congressional District, Rep. Greg Walden, R-2^nd District, and Kurt Schrader, D-5^th District have spent months crafting compromise federal legislation that seeks to restore timber production from the O & C forest lands. 

Tuchman described a process aimed at enhancing the federal legislation by gaining support of the environmental community to go along with county and timber industry backing.  A joint Task Force will meet until the end of 2012 to develop an Oregon Solution that the new Congress can adopt in 2013.

Committee members peppered Tuchman with questions regarding specifics of this solution.  Tuchman declined to presuppose what the new Task Force will produce.  Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, and Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley, both wondered why the same type of resolution couldn’t also apply to Oregon’s State Forests.  Legislators have tried several times to increase timber harvests on Northwest Oregon State Forests only to be thwarted by first Governor Ted Kulongoski and then Governor Kitzhaber.

During the Joint Task Force on County Payments hearing a parade of state agency leaders who describe all of the services the state will have to assume when counties are no longer solvent.  Not just high profile law enforcement and criminal retention, but other more mundane services like unemployment insurance or the issuance of building permits.

Nearly 15 years of declining federal welfare payments intended to make up for the lack of timber revenue have postponed the inevitable county funding crisis that the timber industry predicted when President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan was adopted in the mid 1990s.