Thursday, September 15, 2011

Facing Sept. 30 deadline, Congress works to keep money flowing to national-forest counties

Congress has started work on legislation to "reauthorize or replace the Secure Rural Schools program, which pays millions of dollars annually to counties with large portions of nontaxable federal lands to help fund schools, roads, emergency services and forest restoration. The program expires at the end of the month," reports Phil Taylor of Environment & Energy News.

The House Natural Resources Committee has a draft proposal that would "boost logging, mining and other uses on national forests to help Western counties fund schools and create new jobs," Taylor writes. The plan "seeks to revive logging as a principal means of funding county programs." The program was started to replace revenues from Western logging that was curtailed mainly for environmental reasons.

In the Senate, a spokeswoman for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee told Taylor that senators of both parties are working on the issue as well as extending payments in lieu of taxes, which play a similar role in national-forest counties in the East. (Read more, subscription required)

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