Timber funds for schools may stay

To the pleasant surprise of a Skamania County official, the U.S. House Republican budget for 2012 reauthorizes a program that funnels federal money to Skamania and other rural counties that were hit by sharp reductions in federal timber sales beginning in the early 1990s.

Skamania County Commissioner Paul Pearce sent a note home from Washington, D.C., on Thursday, reporting that the House budget calls for continuing the Secure Rural Schools and Counties Act. Not only that, it makes the program a priority by putting it in the Reserves and Contingencies section of the budget, which makes it harder to cut.

In February, President Barack Obama called for reauthorizing the program in his own 2012 budget. Three weeks ago, the national coalition of rural officials lobbying for reauthorization rounded up 50 signatures from members of Congress urging support for the program.

Among the signers were five House members from Washington: Republican Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and Democrats Norm Dicks, Jay Inslee and Rick Larsen. The House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program, is chaired Rep. Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican.

The reauthorization does not include a specific dollar amount for the program going forward, and any new appropriation must be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. “The hard work of finding appropriate offset funding for the reauthorization continues,” Pearce said.

Skamania County is the largest recipient of Secure Rural Schools funding of any county in Washington. About 80 percent of its land base is national forest land. In the most recent four-year reauthorization bill, passed in 2007, the county was slated to receive $11.2 million from the program in the first year and 10 percent less in each succeeding year.

In 2007, the payments contributed about 37 percent of the county’s operating budget and 40 percent of operating revenue for the Stevenson-Carson School District.