By RAELYNN RICARTE
News staff writer
March 11, 2008

Hood River County Administrator David Meriwether is preparing the 2008-09 budget with a sense of déjà vu; there may or may not be federal dollars covering $1.7 million in road maintenance costs.

“We have even less confidence for an extension (of county payments) than we did last year,” said Meriwether.

“We’re looking now at different budget scenarios so that we will be able to adjust our activities accordingly.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and other members of the Oregon delegation have been unsuccessful this winter in united efforts to get a Congressional vote on the issue. In 2007, federal officials included a one-year extension of the Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act in an emergency supplemental bill. The legislation was originally approved from 2000-2006 to compensate rural counties for logging cutbacks in national forests

Meriwether now wants to form a revenue committee that will look for ways to cover the loss of harvest receipts and federal assistance. In addition to county payments being used for road work, another $50,000-131,000 was dedicated annually to search and rescue operations. Hood River County’s share of the state school fund has been $580,000 for the past seven years.

The formula for payments was established on harvest levels in each county during three high years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The Board of Commissioners will also soon consider levying Transportation System Development Charges on new construction. The proposed fees, such as $1,300 per single family dwelling, would offset the cost of roadway improvements and maintenance.

Meanwhile, Walden, who makes his home in Hood River, sent a series of letters in January urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow a floor vote on House Resolution 3058. The Public Land Communities Transition Assistance Act of 2007 was proposed by Walden and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. The bill reauthorizes the Secure Rural Schools legislation until 2012.

“As you have been made aware, timber-dependent communities throughout the Northwest will be devastated if the federal government does not maintain the century-old commitment to forested counties represented by this bill,” states Walden’s Jan. 18 letter to Pelosi.

He appealed for the full House to consider the bill after it was discharged from the Agriculture Committee and free to be voted upon.

“HR 3058, if passed and signed into law, would ensure that schools, roads, libraries, law enforcement and search and rescue in rural America are not irreparably harmed by a dramatic loss of funding,” wrote Walden to Pelosi.

In a Jan. 17 letter Walden, DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., and David Wu, D-Ore., informed Pelosi that rural communities are already struggling with higher poverty rates than their urban counterparts. The federal officials provided these facts to back up that assertion:

• The Census Bureau calculates that about 7.5 million persons, including 2.5 million children, or 14.2 percent of the rural population, were poor in 2003 compared to 12.5 percent of other citizens.

• The public-land-heavy South and West have the highest rates of rural poverty, near 16 percent.

• Rural median family incomes remain well below urban family incomes, by more than $13,000, and rural counties have disproportionately low employment rates.

• Oregon, a state dependent upon the Secure Rural Schools program, has the eighth-highest unemployment rate in the country.

• Just under one-quarter of all rural households pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income for housing costs and are considered “cost-burdened.”

“Research consistently indicates that, as poverty and unemployment increase, so does substances abuse and violence. Local counties are then asked to provide drug treatment, mental health care, and law enforcement to address the up-tick in drug use and violence.

“But, without federal payments through the Secure Rural Schools program, these needs — and countless others experienced by rural communities — will go unmet,” the letter also stated.

Efforts by Oregon’s delegation to get county payments included in the recent economic stimulus package have also failed.

Walden said it is “hopeful” that President George W. Bush did include $200 million for county payments in his proposed 2008 budget. He said, historically no money, or a very nominal amount, has been included for the program in a presidential budget.

However, Walden said the $200 million is spread out over the next three years, averaging $67.33 million per year. He said the program previously paid out $400 million each year, with Oregon receiving $280 million.

“The request in the president’s budget is not adequate,” said Walden.

“It is, however, a starting point for the Congress as we work through the appropriations process this year.”

He said it is unacceptable that there be any lapse in county payments funding. He and other members of the Oregon delegation are looking for any “moving vehicle” that can move at least another one-year extension through political channels for 2008.

Federal laws of 1908 and 1937 specified that the government share harvest receipts from national forests with counties. By the mid- to late-1980s, wildlife habitat protection regulations had drastically reduced harvest levels. And payments dropped by more than 80 percent nationwide.