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Forest Sale Plan Would Yield Most Benefits for Northwest

Posted on: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By MATTHEW DALY Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- More than a quarter of the $800 million the Bush administration plans to raise by selling national forest would benefit rural schools in Oregon and Washington, although just 6 percent of the sales would occur in those forest-rich states.

Only about 10 percent of the proceeds would go to rural schools in the South and Midwest, the two regions where more than a third of the sales of more than 300,000 acres would occur, according to an analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Oregon alone would get $162 million in exchange for 10,581 acres, under the administration's plan for reauthorizing a law set to expire Sept. 30.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, said the law was devised to help rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal lands. Parcels proposed for sale are isolated, difficult or expensive to manage, or no longer meet Forest Service needs, he said.

"They are not evenly distributed" throughout the country, Rey said, although Congress could adjust the formula. The plan also calls for a phased reduction in funding to zero by 2011.

David Carr, the public lands director for the nonprofit law center, called the regional disparity unfair and said the land sales would set a dangerous precedent. The center's analysis is based on how states fared under the Forest Service land sales program this year.

"Selling off America's natural heritage is not the way to fund government services," Carr said. "We need to be adding to the public- land base in the South, not holding a bake sale on bits and pieces of our limited national forests for short-term budget needs."

Even prominent Republican leaders question the plan.

"Why sell most of the lands in those states that don't get much money from these payments and very little land in the states that get the most money?" asked Sen. Pete Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The New Mexico Republican said he wanted to "keep an open mind" about the idea. His state would get $2.3 million, just one-fifth of 1 percent of the overall proceeds, for selling 8,000 acres, or 2 percent of the sales.

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., also questioned the proposal, saying there was no guarantee that money generated by the sales would stay within Missouri.

"We need to see more of the benefit of this proposal than we are now seeing," Talent told Bush administration officials at a Senate hearing last week.

Under the Bush plan, 21,566 acres in Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest would be sold, and the proceeds would go to a general fund. The sell-off would be one of the biggest in the country. However, Missouri's share of the school-funding is among the lowest at $2.7 million.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat and one of the chief architects of the rural schools law, called the questions raised by Talent and Domenici legitimate and said they were a key reason he opposes the plan.

Wyden and other Oregon lawmakers say the state receives so much money under the rural schools law because it was hurt the most by federal policies that restricted logging in the 1990s.

Money from the six-year-old "county payments" law has helped offset sharp declines in timber sales in Western states.

Forest Service: www.fs.fed.us

Southern Environmental Law Center: www.southernenvironment.org

Source: Tulsa World

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