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August 17, 2011 in Idaho
Idaho wants to manage federal land, help counties
BOISE — Idaho’s rural counties want Washington, D.C., to let the state manage federal land as a way to boost their finances amid threats to a program that has propped up local budgets for nearly a decade.
But to some environmental groups and others, the plan smacks of previous efforts by Idaho to take over public land from the federal government that failed.
The Idaho Land Board, with support from Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, on Tuesday threw its support behind a pilot program to place 200,000 acres of national forests under state Department of Lands’ oversight. The Idaho Statesman reports the state would manage the land to benefit rural counties.
For eight years, counties have been the beneficiaries of a federal law that has replaced dwindling timber sale receipts. It sends about $13.7 million annually to Idaho. But with national debt cutting a priority, that money is in doubt.
“You had me at good morning,” Otter said at Tuesday’s Land Board meeting, on his backing of the initiative.
Despite Idaho’s support, environmental groups and others are skeptical the federal government will turn over national forest land to state hands.
John Freemuth, a Boise State University political science professor, served on a panel organized by Idaho a decade ago called the Federal Lands Task Force that came up with similar ideas. He quit that effort when its members, mostly supporters of the timber and grazing industries, refused to recognize national interests in those lands.
While this latest proposal keeps national forests under federal ownership, Freemuth still isn’t convinced it’s that different from what was proposed 10 years ago.
“What this does is builds barricades again,” Freemuth said.
The Wilderness Society says getting the federal government to agree will be difficult.
“We’re interested in finding solutions, but this presents a lot of challenges that are going to be hard to overcome,” said John McCarthy, one of the group’s representatives in Boise.
For eight years, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act has helped replace revenues for counties and school districts located in areas with a lot of federal forest but where timber sale receipts that had traditionally fueled local government had all be evaporated. The act is informally named “Craig-Wyden” after Idaho U.S. Sen. Larry Craig and Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who helped win its passage.
With deep federal budget cuts coming, the future of the funds is in doubt.
Supporters of Idaho’s proposed pilot program say if the money evaporates, they’ll need to find a replacement — or else.
“It will leave us no choice but to cut services or raise taxes,” said Dan Denning, a commissioner in heavily forested Boundary County in Idaho’s far north, on the Canadian border.
“The goal is to get us away from those federal payments,” said Gordon Cruickshank, chairman of the Valley County Commission.
© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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RedCedar on August 17 at 9:30 a.m.
There’s a legitimate issue at the root of this proposal, but I can’t see it ever passing congress. The issue is that rural communities have been dependent on timber revenues and more recently on Craig-Wyden, especially for the schools. When you have small towns far apart with federal land all around them, it’s hard to have the tax base it takes to provide necessary services. When the forests were managed mostly for logging, the money from the timber sales, plus the high property values in the mill towns was enough to provide services.
Now that the National Forests have been essentially turned into parks, it’s really tough to maintain viable communities and public services or even keep the roads repaired, in areas with essentially no tax base. People who use the National Forests as parks (either directly or by simply liking to know that they’re preserved) are mostly city people, and it only seems fair that they should somehow pay for what they want to preserve. Hiking permit and Christmas tree fees are not going to do it. As long as Americans in big cities, want to have public land preserved for wildlife and recreation and not used for its resources, they need to pay for it in some way, probably via some sort of transfer payments from general tax revenues to rural counties.
Simply giving federal land to the states is probably the wrong solution. I don’t trust our state politicians to manage it properly. The federal situation of bureaucratic paralysis and non-management is unsustainable, but for now it’s at least keeping anything terrible from being done to the land. In state hands, I suspect short-term gain will take precedence and the land will first get clear-cut, even into a depressed log market, and then the desirable parts will get sold to well-connected private parties.
Even conservative Idahoans like the idea of public land. When Bush Jr. cynically proposed selling National Forests “for Katrina victims”, the entire Idaho congressional delegation came out against the idea. The real disagreement is about how to use those public lands. Some want all the land completely locked up as nature preserves, some want it open to all recreational use but don’t want it logged and mined, while others want it used for any profitable purpose. Where there’s widespread agreement is that public land should remain public.
If the Land Board wants to take over Forest Service land and they can convince the Feds to let them, they need to make the case to the citizens that they can manage it for public benefit better than the Feds. When I drive through the wasteland of a forest north from Dworshak Reservoir, which is probably the largest contiguous block of State timberland, I’m not impressed. A large and prime old-growth forest was clearcut, mostly back in the days when old growth logs were bringing $100/MBF or so. It no doubt made the budget look good and kept school funding high, but it was an endowment that was irretrievably squandered. If you went back over that whole mountainside today you’d get nothing but ton logs off of it.
Another factor to consider is that in many areas today there are no mills buying saw logs within economical hauling distance any more. I was talking with a logger out of Missoula last year who said they were selling saw logs to the pulp mill because there was no sawmill close enough to be worth hauling them to. So, just because the land board thinks they might be able to get their hands on umpteen million board feet of federal timber on the stump, and logs are selling at $600/MBF today (or whatever it is), that doesn’t mean any logger will bid anywhere near that if it costs as much to haul the logs to a distant mill as they’re worth.
Now, if I believed the state would do a better job than the feds at keeping public land open to the public and at allowing a reasonable amount of non-destructive use of it, I would support shifting USFS land to state control, but at this point, I’m not convinced.
johnclarke on August 17 at 10:23 a.m.
“Now, if I believed the state would do a better job than the feds at keeping public land open to the public and at allowing a reasonable amount of non-destructive use of it, I would support shifting USFS land to state control, but at this point, I’m not convinced.”
Agreed.
“For eight years, counties have been the beneficiaries of a federal law that has replaced dwindling timber sale receipts. It sends about $13.7 million annually to Idaho”
“in many areas today there are no mills buying saw logs within economical hauling distance any more.”
These statements, one from the story and one from Red Cedar confuse me. So, Uncle Sugar has the Idaho timber industry on welfare, because oh gee it’s not profitable. My idea? Maybe the “timber folk” should seek another like of work. Idaho may be in love with the rugged timber industry and all that, but people that make horse buggys had to go find a new line of work. Maybe it’s time to get off my tax dollars, rugged independant Idaho residents.
Another question I have - and maybe I missed something here - is the whole objective of this proposal to simply go cut down the trees for money? Seems like a bad plan to me. I vote no. Those lands do not “belong” to Idaho, they belong to everyone.
WHS on August 17 at 10:51 a.m.
So, let me get this straight. Idaho, the republican tea party we hate the government poster child… Is getting how many millions of Federal dollars each year… To supplement loss of incomes.
So Idaho and tea party Senator Crapo, which is it? You want smaller federal government, no more spending, that we need to adhere to a fundamentalist approach to the Constitution, blah blah blah… but this is somehow ok…
F’ing hypocrites!
WHS
MBBDirks on August 17 at 11:19 a.m.
RedCedar, I think you have some good points, and reason for concern. I am in favor of our state managing the federal lands, but it needs to be done right.
I spend a lot of time on Federal Land and some of that land needs to be logged for the over all health of the forest. We need to use a little common sense here. There are to many people in WA and other large cities who want to rubber stamp things like this. We as Idahoans know what is best here in our forests.
johnclarke on August 17 at 6:06 p.m.
“We as Idahoans know what is best here in our forests.”
I guess I’d like to see some examples. Also, those lands are not “yours”. I don’t know where this attitude comes from really, national lands are national. That is intended to protect them for everyone. Otherwise, what - we have 50 different ways to manage 50 forests ?
Also, the concept of “health” of the forest is managed just fine by mother nature.