Schools & Roads
The new administration in Washington, DC wants to significantly increase timber production on federal lands, reopen thousands of miles of roads and trails through our National Forests, and greatly increase US manufacturing abilities while placing tariffs on foreign imports.
Lane County is in an enviable position to take maximum advantage of these proposed changes, if it chooses. Adoption of the new Executive Orders and rescissions of costly and counterproductive rules and regulations could reasonably add hundreds or thousands of jobs to county payrolls and produce hundreds of millions in tax relief, with a particular focus on improving county roads and schools.
When National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) O&C Lands were operating at sustainable and legal levels in the period between WW II and 1990, hundreds of millions of dollars were paid into Lane County coffers through timber sales -- much of which was specifically earmarked for schools and roads -- and hundreds of millions more were paid in the form of taxes by local workers and businesses.
With the federal listing of the spotted owls as an endangered species in 1990 and the related Warner Creek environmental protests in 1991, government timber sales in western Oregon were dramatically reduced. This caused a major trend in unemployment and bankruptcies among rural Lane families, businesses, and communities that has continued to the present time.
A further difficulty has been the greatly increased size, cost, and severity of catastrophic wildfires on federal lands that has predictably coincided with the absence of timber sales, abandonment and lack of maintenance on roads, and major reductions in worker presence and recreational access.
Current political actions offer opportunities to help reverse these circumstances and a begin a return to meaningful rural employment; improved roads, schools, and recreational opportunities; and a great reduction in frequency, size, and extent of major forest wildfires.
US Forest Service. The Forest Service was created in 1905 and initially allocated 10% of its income to counties "in lieu of taxes" that would otherwise be paid from private land ownerships, as outlined in Gifford Pinchot's seminal 1907 "Use Book."
The Act of May 23, 1908 (16 U.S.C. 500) increased these payments to 25% of the revenue generated from National Forest activities to the states in which those forests are located. These funds are then distributed to the counties within those states that contain portions of National Forests and must be used specifically to benefit public schools and roads.
From WW II until 1990 Lane County received hundreds of millions of dollars by this method, created thousands of long-term, full-time rural jobs, and had good schools and roads as a documented result.
BLM O&C Lands. Lane County contains a large amount of BLM O&C Lands, which formerly produced significant income in the form of direct annual payments to the county, with no restrictions on how the money was spent. This arrangement was created by the 1937 O&C Act, or "Oregon and California Sustained Yield Act."
The Act mandated that the BLM would manage USDI O&C timberlands in 18 western Oregon counties for the "sustained yield" of timber products, water, recreational opportunities, and income to counties.
At the time the law was written, sustained yield meant to harvest no more -- and not too much less -- than the forest could grow. Catastrophic events, such as wildfire, windstorms, or landslides, etc., and changing market conditions, could be taken into account by achieving averages over time.
The original amount allocated to counties was 75% of revenue, but in 1953 this was reduced to 50%, with BLM to receive an additional 25% for management. Funds are allocated annually, and Lane County's share is 15.27% of the 18 counties' 50%.
Currently available numbers for Lane County's income from O&C Lands only extend from the 1940s through 2003, but they are sufficient to illustrate the sharp change in timber revenues and related family jobs during the 1990-1991 "pivot" from active forest management to passive management and catastrophic wildfire projects:
For the 13 years before 1991 (including the 1982-1985 recession), BLM payments to Lane County averaged more than $15 million a year; for the 13 years from 1991 to 2003, the average dropped more than 80%, to only $3 million per year. These numbers haven't been adjusted for inflation, or the difference would be even more striking.
PILT & SRS. These are the government acronyms for "payment in lieu of taxes" (PILT) and the Forest Service's "Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act" (SRS).
The PILT program was established in 1976 (Public Law 94-565) in "response to a policy shift towards retaining federal lands rather than disposing of them." The purpose was to have the federal government make payments to county governments to offset losses in property taxes caused by the existence of tax-exempt federal lands within their boundaries.
Current records show that PILT payments to Lane County from 1999, when they apparently first began, and for the 27 years from then to 2025, only averaged $620,000/year.
Congress first enacted the SRS in 2000 to "help fund counties comprising large swaths of public, tax-exempt forest land that previously received revenue from timber sales." The program expired in 2023, but the newest bill, passed unanimously by the Senate on June 18, extends funding through 2026.
SRS, as with PILT, is entirely funded by US taxpayers, can be ended at any moment, and is given to counties that used to put millions of dollars into state, county, and federal coffers, not depend on them.