By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
WASHINGTON - Central Oregon's three federal lawmakers have battled the Bush administration this session over an effort to phase out a program that pays rural counties to make up for lost timber receipts.
Yet the Oregon delegation not only wants to renew the county payments program, but also would like to see it made permanent. So far, the lawmakers have been unsuccessful in their efforts to extend the program, which makes up for revenues that some counties received when there were extensive timber harvests on federal land.
"Long-term there will always be some, and should be some, assistance to those local governments," Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said last week.
Walden, along with Sens. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been actively looking for ways to keep funding the program. Oregon receives nearly $280 million from the program each year, according to U.S. Forest Service data.
Between 2000, when the county payments law was enacted, and now, the program has handed out about $1.6 billion to 29 states. But the Bush administration's proposed budget trims the total amount in half, to about $800 million over the next five years. By 2011, the administration envisions cutting off those funds completely, a proposal that has outraged the Oregon lawmakers.
"We need an extension of the current county payments to give us time to create a new relationship between the federal government and timber-dependent communities," Smith said Thursday.
Ben Lieberman, an analyst at the conservative group the Heritage Foundation, agreed that county payments are needed, at least in the near term.
"To the extent that the federal government is responsible - I think we ought to be looking at ways to deal with (the shortfall)," he said.
But rather than continue payments indefinitely, Lieberman favors plans like those proposed by both the Bush administration and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, which would allow states to collect revenue from sales of some federal land.
Rural Oregon counties have used money from the program on everything from hiring firefighters to repaving roads and keeping elementary schools open. Last year Deschutes County received nearly $4.7 million from the program; Crook County collected more than $3.5 million and Jefferson County got about $870,000. In all, 33 of Oregon's 36 counties get money from the federal program.
"If we lose our county payments, we are really just down to a bare-bones maintenance program," said Tom Blust, Des-chutes County roads department director. He said the department gets about $3 million each year from county payments, and that amount makes up a quarter of its budget.
Unless the county payments program is reauthorized, the Des-chutes road department would receive its last payment late this year, so the impact would not be felt immediately, Blust said. After next year, though, the county would not be able to do asphalt overlay projects, which extend the lives of roads without having to demolish and rebuild them. And the second phase of a project at U.S. Highway 97 and Des-chutes Market Road, between Bend and Redmond, would also get put on hold indefinitely, he added.
Oregon's delegation has tried a number of tactics in recent weeks to ensure county payment money keeps flowing at its current level, but none has been successful.
Smith attempted to wedge funding into an emergency spending bill several weeks ago, but his move was blocked because the issue was deemed irrelevant to the bill itself.
And although Wyden introduced a bill to reauthorize county payments by closing an obscure tax loophole, Senate Republicans closed the loophole themselves last week to help offset the president's most recent tax cut package.
"He is willing to look at alternatives but it's very clear that we shouldn't replace a very successful approach until there is a better idea on the table," Geoff Stuckart, a spokesman for Wyden in Portland, said Thursday.
On the House side, Walden said, "We're looking under every rock. It's very difficult to find (money)."