Free Republic

School leaders in rural northwest Oregon are worried about big budget cuts. The Oregon Department of Forestry is working on a plan to protect habitats for endangered species across 640,000 acres of state forest. The loss of timber revenue will affect local schools. The Jewell School District expects to be the most heavily impacted because it gets almost all of its funding from timber revenue. It could see budget cuts of 40 percent. The Jewell School District has about 150 students and a budget of $5 million. District superintendent Cory Pederson estimates the cuts will bring his annual budget down...

Representative Derek Kilmer (D-WA) called on Congressional leaders to reauthorize a program that provides key support to rural communities. Representatives Kilmer, Chris Stewart (R-UT), Jared Huffman (D-CA), and Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) led a letter urging the swift renewal of Secure Rural Schools (SRS) to help counties with national forests. Since national forest land cannot be taxed by counties or states, for more than 100 years the Forest Service has shared revenues from timber harvests on federal lands with the nearby communities. In the letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the members pointed out that SRS...

WASHINGTON — A House Natural Resources Committee investigation has found that President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget ordered that sequestration cuts be applied retroactively to funding for rural schools over the opposition of the Agriculture Department. The committee’s report released today, “A Less Secure Future for Rural Schools: An Investigation into the Obama Administration’s Questionable Application of the Sequester to the Secure Rural Schools Program,” detailed how last February the USDA had determined 2013 sequestration wouldn’t apply to 2012 funds that had already been distributed in the program. The White House stepped in and overruled the USDA, though both...

The Senate removed a provision from the energy bill that would have extended for four years payments to rural counties that once depended on federal timber money to pay for schools and libraries. A House bill approved last week would set aside more than $1.5 billion to compensate 700 rural counties in 39 states -- mostly in the South and West -- that were hurt by federal logging cutbacks in the 1990s. An additional $350 million would have gone to rural states through a program that reimburses state and local governments for federally owned property. The timber plan had support...

Environmental groups sharply criticized the Bush administration's proposal to sell up to 85,000 acres of national forests in California to pay for rural schools, saying the loss of protected land in an already crowded state would be devastating. California would lose the most acreage of any state under the plan, which calls for the sale of more than 300,000 acres in 34 states. The list includes up to 500 parcels in 16 national forests located across the Golden State, with the Central Valley and Northern California potentially losing the most open space. The plan also lists possible, smaller, sales in...

With budgets getting tighter every year, the U.S. Forest Service plans to raise up to $800 million in much-needed cash by selling off 200,000 acres of land across the country... The proposed land sale would be authorized under a Congressional amendment to the 2,000 Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. The law is intended to help rural communities that have seen National Forest logging-based revenue drop as timber cutting dwindled across the country. The list is based in part on land ownership adjustment analyses that designate lands suitable for disposal. Most of the lands to be sold are parcels...