The Problem is not in Salem

When Rough & Ready Lumber Company announced the closure of the family-owned sawmill on April 18^th; legislators filled Oregon’s Capitol with speeches denouncing the loss of 85 family-wage jobs and the closure of one of Oregon’s venerable companies after 90 years.

The speeches brought bipartisan offers to do something, anything, to help. Unfortunately, the problem is not in Salem, the problem is in Washington D.C. Federal forest management has failed forest health, county receipts, rural communities, and the public timber dependent industry the U.S. Forest Service encouraged to locate in the Pacific Northwest following World War II.

Jennifer Phillippi, granddaughter of Rough and Ready’s founders, has graciously responded to media requests for the rest of the story. Her portrayal of the paradox of having a mill located in the middle of a productive National Forest yet her company is unable to purchase sufficient raw materials that would allow Rough and Ready to provide lumber for the improving housing market.

Jennifer’s poise in a difficult situation would have made her late father Lew Krauss, swell with pride. While keeping the sawmill operating, Jennifer has served the timber industry and the public tirelessly as a member of Oregon’s Board of Forestry and before that a board member of the Oregon Forest Resource Institute.

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.

Revitalize the Forest Cluster?

What is the “Forest Cluster” and what will it take to revitalize it?  The forest cluster is private firms and public organizations that “support production of and benefits from primary and secondary wood products.”  In other words, an Economic Development Strategy for the forest/timber community.

The notion of clusters was introduced at the Oregon Business Plan Summit in 2006.  The Forest Cluster Work Group has been meeting since 2007. Here is a memo on the status of the Forest Cluster as of 12-1-2010  Recently, the Forest Cluster group has expanded to include private forestry and timber representatives in an effort to develop action items for the Board of Forestry and the Oregon legislature. 

As a critical response to the economic and employment problems Oregon faces, the BOF and the Oregon Business Plan are using the “cluster” concept “to make things happen.”  Stay tuned.