Ore. Lawmakers Plot To Add Timber Payments In Next Supp
By Peter Cohn
CongressDailyPM
April 25, 2007
Before the ink was dry on the $124.2 billion war supplemental conference report, requests began piling up for Round 2 of the bill after President Bush's likely veto next week. Oregon lawmakers say they have already secured a commitment from Democratic leaders to include in the post-veto bill a provision reauthorizing for five years a program providing payments to rural counties suffering from lagging timber revenues. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio, both Oregon Democrats, said they spoke Monday with House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid after it became clear supplemental negotiators were dropping the proposed five-year extension, which was added by the Senate on a 75-22 vote. Conferees scaled the provision back to one year, providing $425 million for county payments. "We're going to stay with it. We have not been able to get the Senate and House together to move this on a fast track, but I talked to Sen. Reid last night and he told me we are going to get this done," Wyden said Tuesday.
Wyden's amendment, co-sponsored with Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., would have provided $2.2 billion over five years for the program. Enacted in 2000, the program provides payments to rural counties dependent on timber revenues for basic services such as roads, schools and policing. Funding is based on historic timber revenues, rather than actual sales each year. The law, which expired last October, was intended to cushion the blow of declining revenues since the late 1980s, when lawsuits over timber harvest in northern spotted owl habitat curtailed the federal timber sale program.
Rural counties in the Pacific Northwest, primarily Oregon, are dependent on the program because the federal government owns so much of the land and it cannot be taxed. The Wyden-Smith amendment also would have added $1.8 billion over five years for the Payment In Lieu of Taxes program, a related program which compensates states for loss of tax revenues from federal ownership of lands in the state. The total cost of funding the amendment was offset by revenue-raising provisions -- some of which were used instead to offset the cost of a $4.8 billion package of small-business tax cuts that were attached to the supplemental.
Wyden, a member of the Finance Committee, and DeFazio said the cost of the amendment and how to pay for it cle were issues for conferees. "There were concerns about the costs and the offsets and the complexity," DeFazio said. "We have some areas where we can secure the funding," Wyden said, although he did not elaborate. "It's a new area for some senators with pay-fors and the like, but I've talked to both the speaker and the majority leader in the last 24 hours and it's still very much in play."
