If the connection between
logging and closing libraries isn’t clear to you, then you
don’t live in Oregon. Here, the connection is the stuff of
crisis, the subject of daily news stories and of increasingly
desperate political maneuvering. It is a crisis that reveals much
about changing expectations and attitudes concerning government
services, taxes and public-land management in the West.
In Oregon, over half of all land is in the hands of the federal
government, primarily the Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management. This situation is repeated throughout the West: For
example, publicly owned lands cover 48 percent of Arizona, 50
percent of Idaho, 57 percent of Utah, and 84 percent of Nevada.
Since federal land can’t be taxed, counties with high
percentages of federal land have reduced tax bases, making it a
challenge to fund public services.
For almost 90 years,
this problem was resolved in Oregon and other Western states by a
deal with the federal government, whereby rural counties received a
share of the revenues generated by logging on federal land. It was
an abundant income stream, and it supported excellent schools and
libraries, while allowing property tax rates to remain low.
In the 1990s, that system broke down. Logging on federal
land fell sharply, partly due to environmental regulations built
into the Northwest Forest Plan, and partly due to the changing
economics of the timber industry. At the same time, the Western
taxpayer revolt was in full swing, resulting in tight restrictions
on local governments’ ability to raise revenue.
By
2000, timber-dependent counties in Oregon and throughout the West
were facing a full-blown funding crisis. In response, Congress
passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination
Act to provide transitional assistance to these communities. Oregon
counties, with the greatest loss in timber receipts, received the
lion’s share of the grants — over $220 million per year. The
funding was never intended to be a permanent, however, and it
expired in September 2006. Efforts by Oregon’s congressional
delegation to pass an extension of the law have so far failed.
The Bush administration has proposed its own solution,
which would pay for a four-year extension of county payments
“through the sale of identified national forest system
lands,” says the Forest Service. But Western legislators have
declared this privatization scheme — one of several the Bush
administration has proposed — as “dead on
arrival.” So whether or not a last-minute deal is made to
extend federal payments, it seems clear that rural counties face a
future without this source of income.
The immediate
consequences for county budgets and public services will be
catastrophic. Coos County, on the Oregon coast, will lose over half
of its discretionary budget. Josephine County will be reduced to
one sheriff vehicle to patrol an area larger than the state of
Rhode Island. Jackson County, where I live, will completely shut
down each of its 15 libraries.
It is tempting to blame
this crisis on over-zealous environmentalists, and indeed, local
newspapers are full of letters-to-the-editor doing just that. Just
return logging to 1980s levels, the writers declare, and our
problems would be solved. This ignores the unsustainable intensity
of that logging, as well as drastic changes in the timber industry
in the past 15 years. It also avoids taking a hard look at our own
responsibilities as citizens and taxpayers.
According to
the Tax Foundation, Oregon ranks 36th among the 50 states in per
capita total tax burden. Residents of Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and
Idaho, for example, all pay more. Oregon has never had a state
sales tax, and through the 1990s, voters passed several measures
limiting property taxes.
There was little planning, at
either the state or county level, for how to adapt to the end of
the federal “transitional payments” in 2006, even
though many formerly timber-dependent counties in Oregon have
successfully made the transition to more diversified economies. My
county, for example, is now a regional center for retail and health
care services, and is a magnet for retirees. Many of our new
residents cannot imagine a county without libraries.
Rural counties in Oregon and throughout the West face some big
decisions. We must decide what level of public services —
police, schools and libraries, among others — we consider
essential. Then, with traditional Western self-reliance, we must
pay for those services. With few exceptions, we have the means. The
question is, do we have the will?
Pepper Trail
is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist
and writer in Ashland, Oregon.
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