‘Depriving the States': Lawmakers Press House Leadership to Reinstate Funding for Rural Communities

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging House leadership to fund a lapsed program aimed at helping rural communities surrounded by federal forests, particularly those in the West and Northwest, pay for schools, roads and police.

In a letter obtained by NOTUS, Sens. Mike Crapo and Ron Wyden, along with more than 80 members of Congress from both chambers, called on House leadership to pass a standalone bill or attach the program to a larger legislative package before the end of the year.

The program, which pays counties a percentage of the revenue they once earned from federal timber receipts, has gone nearly two years without funding, meaning counties’ budgets have shrunk.

“The bottom line is that this is something that has been supported and reauthorized again and again and again over the years, and I believe that the House just needs to have a lot of both senators and House members from both parties make their case made now that it’s getting urgent,” Crapo told NOTUS in an interview.

Counties with a lot of federal land can’t levy property taxes on that land, meaning they’re left with less money to fund public services. For decades, counties cashed in on revenue from logging and other profitable activities on the land, funneling it back into communities. But that revenue started shrinking in the 1990s, in part due to a push for conservation and species protection that led to vast restrictions on logging.

To address this, Congress passed the bipartisan Secure Rural Schools Act in 2000, also led by Crapo and Wyden, intended to assist rural counties surrounded by federal land amid shrinking revenues from timber and other natural resources.

“These counties, their schools, their law enforcement, their safety efforts and health care support all depends on them being able to have access to an adequate property tax base or a replacement of that, which is what the Secure Rural Schools system is,” Crapo said.

The program must be reauthorized yearly, but House leadership didn’t bring it up for a vote in 2024 to extend it. The Senate has passed measures twice to get it going again, but it has yet to come up for a vote in the House. Earlier this year, SRS was floated as an attachment to a reconciliation package, but was stripped out because of procedural Senate rules.

Crapo said House leadership understands the problem but just hasn’t found the right legislative vehicle to move the reauthorization forward. He also acknowledged that the program costs money, which raises budget hawks’ concerns.

“Congress just needs to get to the point where it recognizes that even though we have a budget crisis and an explosive national debt, that this obligation, I think above almost all other of the programs that Congress is looking at, this is one which is a matter of fairness to the states, where the federal government is actually depriving the states of property tax revenue,” Crapo said.

House Republican leaders did not respond to requests for comment about what has kept this bill from coming up for a vote.

Since the authorization ended, counties across the West and Northwest that heavily rely on this funding have seen a 63% decrease in funds, according to the National Association of Counties, resulting in schools closing, police departments cutting staff and infrastructure maintenance being delayed or canceled, among other things.

In Klamath County, Oregon, for example, the entire patrol division of the sheriff’s office is funded using SRS dollars.

Derrick DeGroot, a county commissioner, told NOTUS in November that even after four trips to Washington, D.C., this year to advocate for reauthorizing SRS, he’s not optimistic. He called the odds of getting that money back anytime soon “a coin flip.” In the meantime, he is worried about the rescue and patrol capabilities of the force on vast stretches of road connecting national forests.

“If folks fall into the caldera at Crater Lake, it is those dollars that pay for their rescue,” DeGroot said. “If folks get lost out in the woods, it is those dollars that pay for their rescue.”

The House has a bill with more than 89 co-sponsors from both parties also aimed at reestablishing the program. Part of the difficulty in getting it passed, Crapo said, is the “intense” budget negotiations that happen each year, causing many reauthorizations to fall by the wayside.

But he insists it’s a “matter of fairness to the states” for whom the federal government is a major landlord.