Federal legislation which ensures rural areas receive funding
through timber receipts is back on the table again in Congress. The
only problem: the same plan failed miserably during legislative
debates last year.

The legislation – the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self
Determination Act of 2000 – is up for reauthorization again this
year and apparently faces the same uphill climb.

The U.S. Forest Service plan, outlined during a teleconference
with reporters nationwide, including The Era, with Undersecretary
of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey,
entails selling a limited number of acres of forest land across the
nation.

Of that, 50 percent of the land sale receipts would remain
within the state in which they were collected for the acquisition
of land and access for the forest system, conservation education
and wildlife and fish habitat restoration. None of the parcels are
located within Pennsylvania.

“It’s basically the same plan we saw last year,” U.S. Rep. John
Peterson, R-Pa.’s, Communications Director Chris Tucker said
Thursday. “And when it was suggested in 2006, the reaction to it
was nearly universal: dead on arrival.”

Tucker said even the new Secretary of the Interior, former Idaho
governor Dirk Kempthorne, has suggested the plan is a
non-starter.

The program provides much-needed extra funding to school
districts and local municipalities across McKean County for
infrastructure improvements, code enforcement and to finance
additional projects.

As it stands, the county receives guaranteed payments from the
federal government instead of sharing a pot with other communities
located within the Allegheny National Forest.

“New offsets are being suggested every day in order to fund (the
legislation),” Tucker said. “Some are tailored narrowly, others
seek to reduce general spending for all accounts by a tiny fraction
of a penny.

“The challenge we have before us right now is finding an
appropriate vehicle in which to move it – and convincing the new
Democratic leadership to find a place for it on the agenda.”

According to Tucker, for now, school districts that had
previously been associated with Secure Rural Schools will be
shifted over to the alternative method of payment – a percentage of
money based on timber receipts.

“… Reauthorizing Secure Rural Schools, and more importantly,
finding a way to pay for it, remains among our top priorities in
this Congress. And thankfully, we have a sizable group of other
members to whom this program is equally important.”

The program was originally authorized for six years and was
designed to offset a sharp drop in timber receipts that occurred
during the 1990s.

Under the new proposal, Rey said the legislation would be
reauthorized in two phases – a one-year authorization for 2007,
followed by a separate four-year reauthorization between 2008 and
2011.

Officials said the amount of funding for the counties would
decrease each year of the plan; Rey said if Congress doesn’t act to
reauthorize the program for 2007, the counties would only receive
25 percent of the gross timber receipts from this year.

Uncertainty lies after 2011, where there is no solid plan to
reauthorize the program.

“We believe there is a need to reauthorize this legislation,”
Rey said, acknowledging the bipartisan opposition to the proposal.
“We think this is a viable way to pay for it. It’s not enough to
simply state your opposition to funding this … the onus is on those
that oppose the alternative to come forward with one of their
own.

“That’s a burden they have failed to lift so far in this
decade.”

According to Rey, the Bush administration is looking to sell a
total of 300,000 acres of land nationwide in order to reach a
revenue target of $800,000. “The program would then suspend.”

Funding for the 2000 legislation was derived from a portion of a
previous budget surplus.

“It was a lot easier in 2000 because we were not a nation at
war,” Rey said.

During the four-year reauthorization process, Rey said half the
money raised, or $400,000 million – $100,000 million each year –
would go toward Secure Rural Schools, while the rest would revert
to land acquisition and habitat improvement.

“For Secure Rural Schools, we would frontload the money and then
taper it off,” Rey said, adding during the one-year extension, all
the funding would go toward the program and be derived from
mutually agreed upon offsets and unspent surpluses.

Rey said he believes an additional five years for the program is
justified because some counties still lag behind economically. “I
don’t think it should go beyond those five years.”

McKean County Commissioner John Egbert said the county would
likely continue to accept the fixed amount if the legislation is
reauthorized.

“The problem we have going with the percentage of the cutting,
there is such a legal battle with the people who don’t want any
trees cut, it’s too big a risk. The county doesn’t have the funding
to assist in battling the lawsuits. There’s too much money on the
other side of the game.”

Last year, the county received a total of $1.69 million in
timber receipt funding.