Re-instatement of Secure Rural Schools program threatened

A federal program designed to offset lost timber dollars by providing sizable funding for schools and roads is in danger of being eliminated.

Lincoln County commissioners traveled to Washington, D.C. last week to lobby Congress to re-instate the program, known as the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

Lincoln County received between $3 and $8 million yearly from the program after its implementation in 2000.

Nationwide, the program helped sustain 4,400 rural schools and county road systems. However, it ended in 2006.

To help out, the government added a provision within the Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act that would provide payment for 2007.

As the year comes to a close, county and school officials are grappling with how to alleviate the budget crunch if the act isn't re-authorized.

If it's not, "things will have to go," according to Lincoln County Clerk & Recorder Tammy Lauer.

Like lower property taxes for those in school districts.

"It's a big deal," said school superintendent Kirby Maki.

The program provided about $500,000 to the school system here for transportation and retirement funds - "a major expense" for the school district, Maki said.

"The view would be, if I were a county person, 'How are we going to handle that in the future to minimize the effect on the taxpayer?' It would be pretty hard to handle."

The federal government established forest reserves more than one hundred years ago to offer national forests for public use. This meant that state and local governments would lose out on any funds they would have received by providing the forests to private owners.

So the feds declared that 10 percent of receipts garnered from the newly created Forest Service go to the states, which would then distribute the money to local governments. But this 10 percent could not exceed 40 percent of local income from other sources, according to a report by the Sierra Institute, a nonprofit research organization that works to sustain community and environmental wellbeing.

In 1908, the feds discarded the 40 percent provision and decided to share 25 percent of receipt garnered from national forest management.

More recently, as the debate intensified over the impacts of heavy logging, the preservation of old growth forests and the loss of wildlife habitat, federal timber harvest levels declined sharply, from 75 to 90 percent in some areas, according to the report.

Recognizing the financial impact on communities with high forest acreage, the government acted to establish compensation, which is when the foundation began for the Secure Rural Schools Act.