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Post-Show: Timber Payments and Tax Fantasies
Talk about trying to wrestle the beast to the ground! We didn't even get the full history of timber payments in the show, let alone hear all the ideas of how to make up the money from reduced logging now that Congress appears unwilling to help out.
Thomas Brandt of Eugene left me a message with another solution after the show:
"Go to a tax department of any county and look up your taxes," he said. "Then look at the taxes of the timber companies."
He says he's got ten acres near Eugene and pays $600 in property taxes on it. He looked up a timber company parcel nearby and found the piece of land was a bit bigger but had much lower property taxes.
Another idea he suggested: go back to the early 1900s, when timber lands that were designated to fund schools were essentially stolen by rich investors. Change the law to take them back from the current owners and give them to school districts, he suggests. Then districts could run their own forests, sell some logs and teach students natural resource management, all at the same time.
"It's all fantasy," he says, and he's probably right.
Brandt has several personal beefs with timber companies who own land around his property and that experience certainly colors where he looks for solutions.
But plenty of parts of Oregon's unusual tax system were someone's fantasies, once!
(By the way, I'm giving Thomas some leeway because this is our first week. In general, if you want to give us your two cents, leave them on this site!)
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This mornings show did a poor job of explaining the history of public land in the west. The issue goes back that far! The result is a lot of urbanites chiming in about raping the forest or counties on the public dole or raising taxes. The point is that the presence of public lands in many rural counties prevents the developement of a sufficient tax base to support an infrastructure. When federal lands were set aside 100 years ago many of the communities in eastern Ore were some of the major communites in the state. American society, through its government, chose to set aside large areas of the west as public lands for multiple use - not all parks! This was a radical change in policy that previously was designed to dispose of public lands into private hands for developement. The detrimental effects on the developmental abilites of these communities were anticipated. The result were programs that gave local communities payments in lieu of taxes, timber payments, local preference in grazing permits, timber harvest programs designed to foster mill developement in the far corners of the NW. Without getting into an argument over whether timber should or should not be harvested, the fact of the matter is that American society has changed after 100 years of management of our public lands. The portion of our society that wants our public lands to managed like parks have won out in the courts and in the public debate forum. Now these folks have to realize that they have to pay for these "parks". If you want to drive to Joesph, Burns, Prineville or John Day to visit the scenic splenders of our Public Lands then you will need to to pay for the roads. If you want to be able to find a gas station, campground, motel room, restaurant, or grocery store while there then you will need a local population to provide those ammentites!! This local population will need family wage jobs to raise their children and to support local schools. To this point, all the environmentist industry has done is bring controversy and poverty to this population. Step up Oregon! Pay for the roads, schools and law enforcement in rural communities that you demand in urban areas but denigh to these rural communites through your so called enlitened environment attitudes.
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