In some counties in Oregon and Washington, more than half the land is federal forest land.
Amelia Templeton
A congressional committee met Thursday to discuss the future of an aid program for rural counties. The program has offset revenues counties once collected through logging on federal forest.
The President's new budget includes a proposal end the program of payments to timber counties over a period of five years. Oregon and Washington have received hundreds of millions of dollars from the program. Congress has managed to bring the timber payments back from the dead before — they almost expired in 2008. But the timber payments are a hard sell given budget negotiations between the parties, says Oregon congressman Greg Walden.
“You got groups in the White House trying to figure out how to cut trillions. It’s pretty tough to go say, ‘hey I need a couple billion. More.’ It’s just not that atmosphere in Washington right now.”
Walden, a Republican, has voted for the program in the past. If the payments do expire, some counties will once again rely on forest service timber sales to pay for services.