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White House
budget proposes 50% cut
to County Payments funding
Administration proposal would cut $650
million from Oregon counties over five years, including $85 million
from Oregon classrooms
February 6, 2006
Portland, Ore.
– The Administration today released its FY2007 budget plan,
which includes a 50 percent funding cut to the successful Secure
Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (or county
payments). Under the White House proposal, Oregon counties would
see a $650 million reduction, including $85 million that currently
goes into Oregon classrooms.
“Governing is about priorities,
and this proposal to cut funding to rural counties by 50 percent
tells rural Oregon that we’re not very high on the Administration’s
priority list,” U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said. “The
Administration found billions to fund subsidies for energy company
boondoggles, so I have trouble believing they couldn’t find
the money in this budget environment to maintain support for rural
Oregon counties.”
Of Oregon’s 36 counties, 33
received payments through the county payments program, totaling
almost $280 million last year alone. Before passage of the county
payments law, Oregon counties were receiving payments as the result
of 1908 and 1937 laws specifying that the government share 25
percent of U.S. Forest Service (USFS) receipts and 50 percent
of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) receipts with counties in any
state that hosts Federal land from which timber is cut. These
payments had been used to help finance rural schools and roads.
Toward the mid- to late-nineties, however, the principal source
of those revenues — federal timber sales — declined
by over 70 percent nationwide. Consequently, the corresponding
revenues shared with rural counties throughout the country declined
precipitously, hurting school and transportation funding.
In 2000, legislation authored by
Wyden and U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) to remedy this imbalance
was enacted into law, establishing a six-year payment formula
for counties that receive revenue-sharing payments for USFS and
BLM lands. The formula established a stable source of revenue,
a safety net or “full payment amount,” to be used
for education, roads and county services in rural areas. The safety
net amount was based on historical timber receipts.
If counties elect to use funding
for projects on public lands, the projects must be developed by
consensus and approved by a Resource Advisory Committee (RAC),
a group designed to ensure expanded economic activity for the
resource-based communities that benefit from this legislation.
RACs are made up of individuals from the local area dedicated
to directing a portion of the funds for projects in their respective
regions. A county may also choose to use funds for search and
rescue, community service work camps, easement purchases, forest-related
education opportunities, fire prevention, and community forestry.
“The county payments law is
the most successful forestry law of the last thirty years because
for the first time it has brought together counties, timber interests
and environmentalists to collaborate on thinning, fire reduction,
biofuels and wetlands projects,” Wyden said. “Today
we have collaboration instead of litigation and confrontation.
We can’t afford to walk away from that.”
The original county payments law
enacted in 2000 is expected to provide more than $1.6 billion
in stable funding to Oregon counties over the life of the bill.
Members of Oregon’s Congressional delegation introduced
the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Reauthorization
Act of 2005 last February, which would reauthorize the law for
an additional seven years. Companion bills were introduced in
both chambers (S. 267 in the U.S. Senate and H.R. 517 in the U.S.
House of Representatives).
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