Sunday, February 11, 2007
Leave the timber pork out of schools
Christian Trejbal
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From the RoundTable blog
Several local school divisions are about to lose tens of thousands of dollars annually. Communities with little economic growth and tepid tax bases need all the help they can get, but their lost money is only a small portion of a system of federal subsidies whose time has passed.
For six years, Washington has been sending checks to counties that have federal land cutting through them.
Thanks to the Jefferson National Forest, Craig County received about $65,000 last year; Giles County, $35,000; Pulaski County, $11,000; and Wythe County, $32,000. The money went to schools, where it could pay for maybe a teacher.
The story behind the handouts goes back a century.
When the federal government took ownership of land around the nation -- national forests, Bureau of Land Management ranges and the like -- localities could not tax or develop those millions of acres. Instead, Congress agreed to share timber revenue with them.
Decades later, Americans came to their senses and realized it wasn't such a bright idea to chop down the very thing they were trying to protect. Forests put to the ax lose beautiful vistas, natural habitats and recreational potential.
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So Washington scaled back timber harvests, way back.
Spotted owls and hikers replaced chain saws and bulldozers, and communities cried foul. They could not change their economies overnight to meet the new fiscal reality, they said.
Congress in 2000 therefore passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which sent federal dollars to rural counties for six years in order to give them time to transition away from timber revenue.
Last year, counties in 39 states shared $409 million. Oregon, which received $150 million, was the big winner. California took home $70 million, Washington state got $47 million, and Idaho got $24 million.
Virginia received less than $1 million.
Some localities took advantage of the reprieve, adapting from an economy based on natural resource extraction to tourism, research or other businesses.
Others went on a spending spree: new roads, libraries and schools. Papa Washington paid the bills.
Then, in December, Papa Washington cut the last checks and the wailing began anew. No one likes government pork unless it happens to be his own.
Counties argue they deserve something in return for having so much untaxable public land.
That makes it sound as if having a national forest nearby is a burden.
Local property taxes pay for local services that do not extend onto federal land. Washington pays the bills there. The most a locality does is send a sheriff into the woods to shut down a methamphetamine lab or rescue a lost snowmobiler.
No services, no taxes. It's not complicated.
Counties also wail that they will have to lay off public employees, close libraries, reduce law enforcement and stop maintaining roads without the federal largesse. They spin it as Washington maliciously hanging them out to dry.
On the contrary, local officials are to blame. They demonstrated either obscene incompetence or gross negligence by spending their forest money without planning for the day it wouldn't be there. It was no secret the program was temporary.
Six years actually meant six years.
There's a tried-and-true method of paying for local services: It's called taxation. Forest welfare enabled many Western counties to get by with some of the lowest tax rates in the nation. Great, if you live there. Not so great if your tax dollars are paying for local services on the other side of the country.
Yet renewing this pork has received bipartisan support. Both Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher and Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, along with 102 other representatives from both parties, are co-sponsors on a bill to keep the cash flowing.
Southwest Virginia's representatives are looking out for counties in their districts, but if they really want to help, they should let the wealth transfer end.
Sure, the New River Valley will lose some money, but in the grand scheme of things, it isn't that much.
"It's not a major impact on our budget," Pulaski County schools' chief financial officer Rick Patterson said of the $11,000 in his $40 million budget. "It's not something we've really depended on."
In Wythe County, on the other hand, the disappearing $32,000 raises some alarm. "Every revenue is important to us," said Superintendent Albert Armentrout about the meager slice of his $42 million budget.
Superintendent Katherine Rodgers in Craig County called the money "critical."
Surely this is some new use of the word. Their $65,000 is less than 1 percent of a $7 million budget.
I hate to see struggling local schools lose more money, but this isn't really a local issue.
The question isn't whether a few counties in Southwest Virginia lose their pittance. It's whether taxpayers in those counties continue subsidizing artificially low taxes on the other side of the country.
Boucher and Goodlatte should know better.
Christian Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
