The “Secure Rural Schools and Community Act” turns out to be a misnomer. The 2000 federal law signed by President Bill Clinton was supposed to provide communities near national forests with money for schools and roads that was more dependable than the 25 percent of national forest logging, grazing and mining receipts historically shared with states and counties. But that law's due to expire this year. The Bush administration proposes to extend it but only to phase it out over the next five years. Meanwhile, money for the school and road payments supposedly will come from selling hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest, an unlikely prospect.
Let's start at the beginning. Starting in 1908, shortly after creation of the national forest system, the federal government granted states and counties 25 percent of revenues generated from forest activities - including logging, mining and grazing. These payments have, over the years, proved significant to communities surrounded by national forests, especially in areas of the West where public land exceeds private land subject to property tax.
The Secure Rural Schools and Community Act offered counties the choice of the traditional 25 percent share or an average of the three highest payments received between 1986 and 1999. Most counties went for the new formula, a reflection of the pessimism about forest receipts again amounting to much anytime soon.
Congress almost certainly will vote to extend the current payment system, the Bush administration's proposals notwithstanding. This is shaping up to be a crucial midterm congressional election year, and loss of this funding has the potential to turn red states blue.
But extending funding communities can't really depend on is of little help beyond the short-term. Besides, over time, it makes decreasing sense to base payments on federal resource revenues no longer generated. The payments ought to be based on something definable.
We can all argue - indeed, we are all arguing, sometimes intensely - over how much logging ought to take place on the national forests. But it isn't necessary to resolve that dispute before concluding it really doesn't make sense to retain a century-old concept of revenue sharing - not when there's a better, more logical alternative.
That alternative is called payments in lieu of taxes or PILT. Some federal agencies, including the Forest Service, already make these payments to local governments in acknowledgement of the considerable costs that government activities and employees impose on communities - costs that can't be offset with property taxes because the federal government doesn't pay property taxes. PILT is a fine concept but suffers from a couple of significant flaws.
Payments “in lieu” of taxes don't come close to the equivalent of property taxes paid by private property owners.
PILT arrives with strings attached; the federal government dictates what the money may be used for.
PILT is based on overly complicated formulas.
Rather than have redundant (sometimes offsetting) PILT and 25 percent/Secure Communities payments, Congress ought to come up with a simple, straight-forward and adequate payment in lieu of taxes. These payments ought to bear a relation to the real costs federal lands impose on states, counties and school districts - roads and other infrastructure, public safety and classroom capacity, to name some. Like property taxes, they shouldn't be something the payer - Congress - gets to waive or reduce every time a budget crunch or new spending priority surfaces.
Counties and school districts don't collect and depend on a percentage of revenues generated from taxable property. It's time the federal government modernized its method of paying its fair share of community costs associated with its vast land holdings. This doesn't need to be added to the federal budget. This is an expense that ought to come ahead of other things the government buys.
Just judging from the tsunami of public opposition to the president's plan to sell national forest acreage, it seems safe to suggest that Americans would sooner shell out for meaningful payments in lieu of taxes to communities than auction off the lands to taxable buyers.
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