Uphill fight remains in efforts to renew safety net: Robertson

After meeting Thursday with U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith, Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said it’s going to remain an uphill battle to win approval of an extension of the federal timber safety net.

“We’ve got our hands full, there’s just no question about it,” Robertson said Thursday afternoon by telephone from Washington, D.C.

Robertson met with Oregon’s two senators a day after they introduced a bill into the Senate to extend the safety net — which expired at the end of September and provides payments through the end of the county fiscal year June 30 — for another seven years.

Already, the bill has turned away one prominent Western senator who co-sponsored the original law with Wyden in 2000. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said the formula which determines how much money goes to individual counties needs to be overhauled so that the money is more evenly distributed.

Craig said Oregon — where more than half of the land in the state is owned by the federal government — receives too much of the safety net proceeds.

Last year, Oregon received $149 million of the $385 million distributed nationally by the U.S. Forest Service as its share of the safety net. The amount was more than double the $66 million handed over to California, the state with the second-highest payment. Washington state received $42 million, while Idaho received $21 million.

Oregon also receives tens of millions of dollars from the federal Bureau of Land Management, through its management of the Oregon & California Railroad timber lands. Douglas County and 17 other counties in western Oregon share in the profits from timber cut in those checkerboard tracts.

Oregon receives more than half of the safety net money spread among 39 states and Puerto Rico. The money is meant to pay for roads, schools and county services provided through general fund spending.

Combined, Douglas County received $52 million from the Forest Service and the BLM. That’s more than many states receive.

Craig wants to see the formula that determines how much each state receives adjusted. Without that adjustment, he gives the bill little chance of passage.

“Larry has been looking at the political realities of the Senate — and the political reality is with Oregon getting 51 percent of the (overall) monies, we can’t convince enough senators to pass it in this kind of budget situation,” Craig spokesman Dan Whiting told the Associated Press.

Wyden and other Oregon lawmakers recognize the political difficulties presented by the formula. However, they say it’s fair because Oregon was impacted so much greater than any other state because of logging curtailments imposed in the 1990s. Added protection for the northern spotted owl reduced logging in Oregon, Washington and California forests by 80 percent.

“If Ron Wyden can get his bill through Congress that would be great. Larry’s not convinced he can,” Whiting said.

Robertson said he continues to push for at least a one-year extension to buy time to talk about the formula but to also prevent Douglas County and other counties from imposing drastic cutbacks in services and massive layoffs.

“We’re trying to make the case that we need a short-term solution so that we have time to talk about long-range solutions. But if we don’t get something short-term, there isn’t going to be much to talk about,” Robertson said.

“People are starting to identify layoffs that are going to have to be made in states, counties and school districts,” he said.

Without an extension to the safety net, Coos County commissioners said they would lay off 100 employees, a quarter of the county’s workers. Jackson County is comtemplating shutting down its library system.



• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.