School districts near national forests stand to lose millions of dollars in federal funding this year if Congress doesn’t soon renew a key Forest Service assistance program.
Schools are again confronting one of the main shortcomings of the government’s efforts to compensate communities for decades of declining timber revenue from national forests: The law has to be renewed every two years or so, and Congress has been slow to act.
More than $166 million in payments to counties could be at stake, including as much as $39 million in Oregon and $22 million in California, according to Forest Service data.
The agency pays counties through a law called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, first enacted in 2000. If the law expires, payments revert to a 1908 statute that provided for counties to receive 25 percent of timber revenues from national forests — which in most places is dramatically less.
