Groups offer solution to timber county crisis

By Associated Press Published: Feb 2, 2012 at 1:13 PM PDT Last Updated: Feb 24, 2012 at 4:07 PM PDT
Groups offer solution to timber county crisis
This Oct. 26, 2005 file photo shows an area of Fiddler Mountain inside Siskiyou National Forest of salvage logging activity in Oregon. Prompted by evidence that too much logging on state and private forests is harming fish by allowing streams to get too warm, the Oregon Board of Forestry is considering changes to the state's benchmark law for balancing timber harvest against the health of the forest ecosystem. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard, File)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Conservation groups are offering a different approach to the fiscal crisis facing timber counties in Oregon.

Instead of just increasing timber production from 2.6 million acres of federal forests known as the O&C lands, they suggest that counties, the state of Oregon, and the federal government share the load.

The Oregonian reported Thursday that the plan suggests the $110 million needed by the 18 rural counties could be generated by nearly tripling state harvest taxes on private timber, saving on forest management by transferring the O&C lands to the U.S. Forest Service, and calling on voters in timber counties to approve higher property taxes, which are among the lowest in the state.

Conservation groups offered the plan as an alternative to one from members of Oregon's congressional delegation that would put half the O&C lands into a timber trust managed for maximum timber production and revenues for the counties. No specific bill has been published.

Oregon Wild, the Sierra Club, Geos Institute, Coast Range Association, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Larch Company said it's time for a new approach.

"The best we can do is put out reasonable and fair measures for people to consider," said Randi Spivak of the Geos Institute, the plan's principal author. "Let's look forward; let's change the paradigm."

The counties get half the revenue from sales of timber on a checkerboard of lands management by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Western Oregon. The federal government took the lands back in the early 20th century after the Oregon & California Railroad went broke. The money began drying up in the 1990 when logging on national forests was cut by more than 80 percent to save the northern spotted owl and salmon from going extinct. The government offered a series of safety nets, but the last of them, the Secure Rural Schools Act, has expired and some counties could go broke without some alternative source of cash.

Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader, and Republican Rep. Greg Walden, issued a joint statement rejecting the plan.

"''They propose increasing property taxes in counties that are struggling with record unemployment," the statement said. "They propose nearly quadrupling the state tax on logging, diverting that money from the state's general fund to pay the affected counties. Finally, they suggest transferring lands to the United States Forest Service which the Forest Service itself has said will not result in savings."

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Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com

 

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