Contacts: Lane County Commissioner Sid Leiken, 541-682-4203; Lane County Intergovernmental Relations Manager Alex Cuyler, 541-682-6504
Lane County leaders are closely tracking discussions surrounding the future of Secure Rural Schools reauthorization and the broader issue of forest management. The national debate has significant implications for Lane County’s financial future.
“Living with federal lands is both a blessing and a curse,” said Commissioner Sid Leiken. “We’re surrounded by unparalleled beauty and recreational activities, but the promises made by the federal government over a century ago to hold us harmless due to the loss of local control of these lands put us into a chronic funding crisis.”
Leiken went on to add, “We obviously can’t rely on the treasury to fund Secure Rural Schools forever, and changes we had hoped for regarding timber policy have not materialized. I am in complete agreement with my colleague from Skamania County who testified today that he would gladly trade SRS for a return of the 2000 timber related jobs they’ve lost in his county.”
This week in Washington, DC, the House Natural Resources Committee, Sub-committee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands held an oversight hearing on the Secure Rural Schools Act and National Forest Management.
Go to http://naturalresources.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=249959 to view the hearing webcast and listen to testimony including Congressman Peter DeFazio’s remarks urging for a transition period back to active management.
Testimony was provided by a mix of panelists, including Congressman Greg Walden, Commissioner Paul Pearce (Skamania County, WA), Commissioner David Teeny (Cocamina County, AZ), David Crews, Superintendent of Norwood (CO) School District, Mary Wagner, Deputy Director of the United States Forest Service, as well as mill owners from Colorado and Florida, and former County Commissioner Anna Morrison, representing Oregon Women in Timber.
Lane County will remain focused on this issue until a workable solution is established that helps struggling counties find solid ground.
“Lane County has done what it can do under its authority to cut budgets and seek efficiencies but our ability to seek solutions with those tools alone has run out,” said Leiken. “Only our federal delegation can make the necessary changes to law that will help us and we are entirely dependent upon them to represent the needs of our residents with regards to the management of federal lands.”
Lane County is an active member of several state associations engaged in an effort to lobby Congress to reauthorize SRS and has long identified this Act as its highest federal priority. During the 76th Oregon Legislature, Lane County actively worked on Senate Bill 443, related to providing additional flexibility in how Lane County is allowed to spend federal timber revenue related dollars.
Lane County and SRS
Lane County is facing the final payment under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, initially passed in 2000 as a six-year Act and reauthorized twice by Congress. The Act was established due to the downturn in timber harvest from federal lands in order to support the promise first established by the US Congress in 1908 to provide revenue sharing from federal lands removed from local property taxation. Depending on the forest system from which the revenue originates, Lane County places this revenue into its General Fund, Road Fund, or School Fund. In 2008, the County received $40 million in SRS funding. Lane County’s final payment, expected in December of this year, is reduced to just $15 million.
Amber Fossen
Public Information Officer
Lane County Government
125 E. Eighth Ave.
Eugene, Oregon 97401
541.682.3718
541.359.9143 (cell)
www.lanecounty.org
www.lanecounty.org/LCSocialMediaSites