The Timber Industry's Secret Lobbyist: Schools

In 1980 the timber industry pushed a bill through Congress requiring the Forest Service to turn over 25 percent of all gross receipts from timber sales on the national forest to local counties. The money was to be used to fund county road projects and school programs. This program had the effect of making many school systems in the West dependent on timber sale receipts. In fact, through the 1980s and early 1990s, when Forest Service timber sales were at their peak, this fund was generating nearly a half billion dollars a year for public schools.

Thus, school superintendents became one of the timber industry's most ardent lobbyists. In 1991, school districts in California, Oregon, and Washington submitted testimony to Congress opposing the listing of the spotted owl as a threatened species on the grounds that cut-backs in logging rates to save the owl would decimate their school budgets.

In return, many schools in rural districts have invited the timber industry into the classroom. One timber industry sponsored program is called Project Learning Tree. Funded by Weyerhaeuser, Louisiana-Pacific, and International Paper, Project Learning Tree provides lesson plans for courses in biology, ecology, and natural history from kindergarten through middle school. One Project Learning Tree program teaches children that "forests need to be frequently logged to keep them in healthy condition."

Timber sales have declined since the early nineties, but the counties' take has remained high thanks to their friends in Congress. In 1995, Senator Mark Hatfield, who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee, drafted a provision keeping county payments at historic levels despite the drop in timber sale receipts. Since Hatfield's retirement, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has continued to dole out the money. Last year, the counties took in more than $270 million.

Now, amid much fanfare from the press, the Clinton administration has announced its intention to "delink" the county payment system from logging receipts. Instead, the administration, in its forthcoming budget, proposes to simply freeze the county payments at current levels. "Why should the education of rural school kids and other social services be contingent on what level of timber harvest we have from national forests?" Forest Service spokesman Chris Wood told the Associated Press.

This is a good question, but Clinton's solution, urged upon him by The Wilderness Society, won't solve the school funding problem and may actually provide a backdoor way to keep logging levels high. And, in fact, the proposal made by Clinton is hardly revolutionary, since it merely makes permanent the subsidies guaranteed by Hatfield and Stevens.

The 25% fund was intended to function as a kind of impact fee on the timber industry to cover the damage done to rural roads by logging trucks and to provide education for the children of timber industry workers. Instead, the price-tag was picked up by the taxpayer and the fund became yet another form of corporate welfare, in some years approaching $750 million. The system was always grossly inequitable, with timber-rich states, such as Oregon, making a killing off the fund, while timber-poor states, such as Utah, made only a pittance. Both Oregon and Utah have approximately the same amount of national forest acres, but Oregon pulled in $81 million last year in 25% fund money while Utah received only $1.6 million. In fact, 80 percent of the 25% fund receipts go to four states: Oregon, Washington, California, and Alaska. The new Clinton plan will do nothing to correct this imbalance.

A more intriguing problem concerns the new source of the revenue. If the money doesn't come from logging, where will it come from? Most likely from the Forest Service's long-sought goal of charging fees to hike, hunt, and camp on national forest lands. This trend is already beginning. In selected national forests, the Forest Service is charging fees for hiking in wilderness areas and national recreation areas. The fees range from $5 to $25 per day.

One Forest Service study estimates that the agency could raise more than 8 times the amount of revenue it gets from timber sales by charging all recreation users of the national forests. The study estimates that by 2005 the Forest Service could be generating $8 billion in recreation oriented fees. Of course, this strikes at the very heart of the public lands ideal--which were supposed to be open and accessible to everyone despite income level. Under this scenario, the forest Service envisions a sliding fee formula, charging high prices for the most popular and scenic areas, such as old-growth stands in Oregon or the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. One plan has the agency turning over the management of these recreational areas to private firms, such as Disney.

Like most Clinton era eco-fixes, this one is mostly for show. Changing the 25% fund is an easy way to placate the DC environmental crowd without actually interfering with the flow of log trucks coming out of the national forests. Indeed, it may be a shrewd way of dealing with two problems at once: gripes about the 25% fund and below-cost timber sales. Here's the reason. The 25% fund is calculated on the gross timber sales receipts, not on the "profits." Thus, on a timber sale that sells for $1 million dollars, $250,000 will be set aside for the counties. Since road construction and reforestation costs usually gobble up 85 to 90 percent of timber sale receipts outside the Pacific Northwest, nearly all federal timber sales lose money. The administration has promised environmental groups to curtail money-losing sales. By delinking 25% fund receipts from the timber program, the administration will be able to make a more rational argument that most timber sales are now at least paying for themselves, at least through a strict cash-flow analysis that excludes the environmental damage to salmon streams and forest productivity. For example, the Wilderness Society estimated that the Forest Service lost $200 million on its timber program last year. The 25% fund payments totaled $270 million. If the Clinton plan is adopted, the Forest Service may be able to boast next year that its timber program actually made a profit of $70 million, and have the Wilderness Society to thank for it.