Lawmakers frustrated with Obama over timber payments

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers in a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday expressed frustration with President Barack Obama for not fixing problems in the county timber payments program, or planning for what happens when the payments end late next year.

The handful of mostly western U.S. House members at the hearing asked U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials to follow through on promises Obama made in 2008 to meet with local and state officials about what happens after the Secure Rural Schools and Communities Self-Determination Act expires in October 2011. They also pressed the federal officials to speed up confirmation of advisory board members who hand out millions of dollars in grants through the program.

“I’m pretty frustrated; I don’t feel like there is a high-level focus or sense of urgency,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. “I just don’t hear anything going on or see anything going on.”

The county timber payment program provides more than $100 million a year to rural Oregon counties and schools, to compensate for the large swaths of land owned by the federal government. That program, though, expires after next year’s federal budget, which prompted the hearing Thursday.

In the last four-year funding, the county money had decreased 10 percent a year, leaving the Curry County general fund increasingly deficient. In the final two years, Curry County is set to receive $2.6 million this year and $1.6 million in the final year, when payments are cut to 40 to 45 percent of the original amount, before the federal payments are scheduled to end, leaving the current tax for the county’s general fund without enough money to pay for essential services.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., co-wrote the original bill in 2001 as a way to soften the blow of the decimated logging industry. The program was set to expire in 2006, but it was extended for a year in 2007 and then for four years in 2008, when it was attached to the Wall Street bailout just days before its final passage. It’s now set to expire at the end of the 2011 federal budget.

Curry County Commissioner Georgia Nowlin said she feels the frustrations of the members of Congress.

“At the local level, where the rubber meets the road, we’re going to be looking to what happens if we don’t have funding for our county in the next year or so. I appreciate what they’re trying to do. I’m with the frustration,” Nowlin said.

“I’m seeing things coming out of the Administration that don’t recognize rural communities – not only in resources. We need to be vital communities, not just a playground,” she said.

“I’m seeing decisions the Administration is putting out right now affecting our way of life and the culture of rural communities in the natural resources area. There’s the new child labor standards that, to me, are really saying we don’t trust people out in the woods earning a living,” Nowlin said.

“A lot of the Administration doesn’t recognize the needs that are paramount for us and O&C counties to have this funding,” she said.

“I’m just seeing a lot of things coming out of this Administration not addressing rural communities at all, not recognizing our need to be vital communities. I really appreciate our congressional delegation speaking up,” Nowlin said.

“I’m hoping other communities and states outside Oregon recognize the needs for funding not only for our county but our schools, our future, our children,” she said.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., pointed out that the last extension of the timber funds was sold as a way to transition rural counties away from continued federal subsidies.

There was “the expectation that rural communities would begin to move away from fed dollars toward more sustainable budgets,” Grijalva said.

In response to DeFazio’s criticism, Forest Service Deputy Chief Joel Holtrop said federal agencies are thinking about what happens in 2011.

“I do believe there is both a responsibility at our level to be looking at ways to come up with approaches to what obviously is a significant transition when this program ends,” Holtrop said.

After the hearing, DeFazio said Holtrop’s language mischaracterized what will happen to rural counties, like Curry and Douglas, where a large percentage of their annual budget depends on county payments.

“We’re not looking at transition, we’re looking at catastrophe,” DeFazio said.

He added that the administration hadn’t responded to a letter asking Obama to continue the program, which he sent two weeks ago. The letter was signed by 60 House members. A similar U.S. Senate letter drew 29 co-signers.