County gets reprieve with timber payment extension

The payments were part of the federal economic rescue plan, and will be phased out by 2011

By Anthony Roberts

The Clackamas Review, Oct 7, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

submitted photo / Clackamas Review

Federal timber payments help to pay for programs like Dump Stoppers, a county initiative to clean up the roads around the Mount Hood National Forest.

Looking for a local benefit from Congress’s $700 billion financial rescue plan? Try better roads in Clackamas County – for now.

The rescue bill, H.R. 1424, included a three-year re-authorization of federal timber payments, amounting to a $12.5 million dollar shot in the arm for Clackamas County and its shrinking revenue.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski praised Congress’ vote, saying the rewritten financial rescue plan offered a lifeline for the state’s residents and small businesses.

“The bill Congress passed includes a critical extension of the county payments program, providing the financial bridge we need to prepare for the eventual loss of the program,” Kulongoski said. “It is essential that we use the time we have been given through this temporary extension to roll up our sleeves and work together to find common and lasting solutions.”

Timber payments were absent from the initial version of the bill defeated by the House on Monday, Sept. 29, but were included among $100 billion worth of so-called sweeteners added to the legislation to insure its passage.

While the payments are back, the annual amount will decrease by 10 percent from the previous year each year during the re-authorization, and be phased out completely after 2011. Clackamas County spokesman Tim Heider said the extension “allows counties to plan how to provide critical government services over the long term.”

“In Clackamas County, we’ve already started crafting our plan–we knew the money was being eliminated and we tried to stay ahead of the curve, to minimize any disruption in important services,” Heider said. “We believed the most prudent and fiscally responsible thing to do was to budget as if the county payments would not be included. While we now have a small reprieve, we have not fundamentally changed our approach to managing our increasingly scarce resources.”

That means moving ahead with ballot measures that will set up special districts to support county libraries and Extension S ervices. And while the money will be used for road paving, Heider said skyrocketing maintenance costs coupled with dwindling resources only mean the county will “fall behind at a slightly slower pace” on such projects.

The timber payments, officially known as the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, supply funds to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in logging on federal land. The timber payment extension added $3.3 billion to the cost of the financial system rescue bill.

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