The failure of Congress to renew the Secure Rural Schools program is an act of legislative misfeasance.
By failing in its legislative duty, the House of Representatives has strangled the ability of remote communities to serve their constituents. It also has demonstrated the need for long-term solutions that allow those communities to fend for themselves and generate jobs and revenue, rather than relying upon the whims of the federal government.
In simplistic terms, the Secure Rural Schools program provides federal payments to make up for restrictions on timber harvests. As The Columbian has written editorially, “The federal government has limited the revenue-producing harvest of timber, telling counties it will pay them subsidies to not cut down trees — until it doesn’t pay them.”
Skamania County is an exemplar of the situation. In the 1970s, the county saw as many as 399 million board feet of timber being harvested in a year; by 2000, after a series of harvest-suppressing federal policies, Skamania County felled 26 million board feet — a decline of 93 percent. This, predictably, had a dire impact on the local economy and presented a scenario being echoed in rural counties throughout the Western United States.
In 2000, pushed by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Congress approved the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, providing payments to timber-dependent counties that had been devastated by the downturn in the industry. Since then, the act has been a political amusement park ride, with funding levels resembling a roller coaster and counties being beholden to the federal government.
Last year, the Senate approved renewal of the program, but the House has declined to consider the issue. Speaker Mike Johnson has not said why the bill has not been brought to the floor.
“It’s unacceptable,” Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, said. “This inaction is driving me crazy, candidly. I have been urging my colleagues to take this seriously, to think about it as if it were their children whose school districts were considering a four-day school week (and) were cutting shop class. I’m fighting tooth and nail to make sure that we don’t have stupid cuts due to inaction, and I’m going to keep fighting hard.”
With a new Congress in place this year, the process for passing the legislation has started from scratch. This will result in delayed payments, even if the bill eventually passes.
Therein lies the crux of the matter. While Congress for the past 25 years has toyed with funding for needy rural counties, it has not done enough to help those counties become self-sufficient. Skamania County, for example, is 80 percent owned by the federal government, with most of that being the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Another 8 percent is owned by the state, and 10 percent is designated as private timberland that generates tax revenue only when harvested.
The county has limited resources for creating tax-producing jobs, and cuts or delays in timber payments hamper its ability to provide even the most basic of services. Limitations upon timber harvests have moved Skamania County — and other rural areas — toward a welfare state that is reliant upon federal largesse. That is a failure of policy and must be addressed with long-term goals in mind.
Congress should quickly renew the Secure Rural Schools program to avoid devastating short-term cuts. More importantly, it should focus on the second part of the bill’s title — Community Self-Determination Act.