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Forest Counties & Schools Coalition Legislation
Immediate Action Needed!
S 1608 Talking Points (these points are incorporated into automated Email letter below)
Forest Counties & Schools Coalition
Send a letter in support of S 1608 before it's too late!
Use the following form letter to send a strong letter of support for S 1608 to key U.S. Senators.
S 1608 Talking Points (these points are incorporated into automated Email letter above)
- The safety net provisions must not be permanent; express support for the approach taken in H.R. 2389, which provides for a 7-year temporary payment, while advisory committees work to restore revenue producing activities on federal lands.
- S.1608 must include Title III from H.R.2389 which provides for a National Committee of School and County personnel to make recommendations to Congress on what the relationship between counties and federal land managers should be. The Committee would also make recommendations concerning what laws and regulations should be changed to ensure that healthy National Forests and healthy rural communities are maintained.
- S.1608 must contain provisions to hold counties harmless if the safety net provision would reduce the amount they would receive under the current 25% formula. This only affects counties in a few states, but is crucial to remaining faithful to the Principles of the Coalition.
- Counties, boroughs and rural communities must retain the authority to decide whether to opt out of the safety net provision – this authority should not be given to governors, which would undermine the local control concepts embodied in the Coalition’s Principles and H.R. 2389.
- The local projects provisions in Title II must be strong in empowering local communities to design projects and ensure their implementation. This requires that revenue-generating projects are allowed and that decisions made by local committees be decided by a simple majority plus one. It is also necessary that communities control the project funds, not the Secretary of Agriculture. The bill already provides that the Secretary must approve the project and that the project be consistent with the Forest Plan. If control of the funds also resides with him, the power of local committees can be utterly usurped and a central provision of the Coalition’s Principles will be compromised.
EMAIL a letter of support for S 1608 NOW!
S.1608 is a bill developed by Senators Larry Craig and Ron Wyden. It is modeled after H.R.2389 which passed the House on a vote of 274 to 153 last year, and is supported by more than 850 organizations from 37 states, including Alaska. The National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition (NFCSC) endorses both of these legislative proposals. NFCSC is composed of 850 national, regional, state, and local organizations representing more than 1.2 million school children, 800 counties, and more than 5,000 rural school districts. The National Education Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, several major labor unions, and a number of national and regional timber associations, including AFA, support the concepts of S.1608.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to mark up S.1608 on March 29th.
The White House has offered a counter-proposal, based on H.R.2389, that is totally unacceptable and that would decouple county payments from resource management on the National Forests.
Areas of concern with S.1608:
(Based on Senate Staff briefing at NFCSC meeting on March 20th)
1. The Administration has proposed that the safety net, called for in S.1608, be a permanent payment and the sponsors of S.1608 seem to be inclined to adopt that proposal. H.R.2389, as passed, includes a 7-year temporary payment that maintains the 1908 county payments law. If S.1608 adopts a permanent safety-net payment strategy, AFA and the other members of the NFCSC believe the Administration will have prevailed in its draconian decoupling proposal. AFA and the NFCSC do not support the current approach described by Senate staff and strongly believe the language in H.R.2389 should be adopted.
2. S.1608 fails to adopt H.R.2389's Title III language which empowers the Congress to appoint a National Committee of School and County personnel to work with agency representatives to make recommendations to Congress on what the relationship between counties and federal land managers should be. The Committee would also make recommendations concerning what laws and regulations should be changed to ensure that healthy National Forests and healthy rural communities are maintained.
Failure to include Title III of H.R.2389 will effectively say that Congress is happy with the new direction the Forest Service and BLM are taking, and could in the long run result in a permanent decoupling of 25% Payments from active forest management. Both AFA and the NFCSC strongly support the inclusion of Title III from H.R.2389 in the final bill.
3. A number of counties in Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and South Dakota would receive less money in net safety-net payments under S.1608 (as we currently understand it) than they received in FY 1999. The concept of holding counties harmless and ensuring they receive the higher of their 25% Payment or their net safety-net payment is the only way to guarantee that Congress does not inadvertently decouple county payments from forest management.
4. S.1608 currently contains language that would allow a state's governor to decide whether or not to accept the safety-net payment, offered by the bill, or to stay with the current 25% Payment system. The 1908 County Payments law articulated two state responsibilities: (1) to decide what portion of the 25% Payment will go to schools and what portion will go to county road development and maintenance; and (2) to distribute the payment to the counties based on how much federal land is in each county. S.1608, as we currently understand it, would give a governor veto power over what should be a county or borough level decision. In states like Alaska, Oregon, Washington and California, some of which have governors who have already spoken in favor of decoupling, the language in S.1608 would fundamentally erode the communities’ power to decide their own fate. AFA and the NFCSC steadfastly oppose any attempt to shift power from the county or borough level to the state level.
5. The Administration has proposed to make fundamental shifts in Title II. Title II would empower local communities to invest up to 20% of their safety-net payment into Forest Service and BLM projects, allowed under current forest plans, through a local advisory committee designed to improve the economic conditions in rural communities and to improve forest health. The Administration is proposing to change these provisions in two ways: (1) to impose the principle of "ecosystem restoration" as the primary purpose of the local project initiatives by eliminating commercial timber harvesting or other revenue generating projects; and (2) to manipulate the makeup and scope of the local advisory committees by giving the radical preservationists veto power over whether or not a project could move forward and by converting locally based groups into large multi-state groups.
The Senate staff working on the legislation has indicated they will reject the Administration's proposals. We remain very concerned that S.1608 not inadvertently include language which could be interpreted to mean Congress has in any way adopted any of the concepts of the new Forest Service Planning Regulations, or walked away from the principle of multiple-use.