Routt not part of forest sale
By Mike Lawrence
Steamboat Pilot & Today
Thursday, April 6, 2006
The Routt National Forest land is not included in a federal proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of forestland to provide short-term funding for rural schools.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and local rural schools advocate Paula Stephenson oppose the proposal, which is included in the 2007 budget submitted to Congress by President Bush. The proposal would reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, or SRS, for five more years. That act is to expire in September, six years after its implementation in 2000 as a response to decreasing revenues from timber sales on federal lands.
Salazar and Stephenson criticize the proposal for providing only a temporary financial fix for rural schools at the cost of a permanent loss of public lands.
A document explaining the proposal on a United States Forest Service Web site states the reauthorization would “provide affected states and counties a short-term safety net of payments, which will be adjusted downward over time and eventually phased out.”
Last week, the forest service said public comment on the proposal will be accepted until May 1.
“Extending the public comment period for an extra month will not change my skepticism of this short-sighted proposal,” Salazar said in a March 29 statement. “I continue to be very concerned about the administration’s proposal to sell off pieces of America’s permanent heritage of public lands as part of a short-term budget issue. … I intend to do what I can to prevent the administration’s bill from becoming law from my seat on the (Senate’s) Energy and Natural Resources Committee.”
Although the proposal lists more than 21,000 acres in Colorado as eligible for sale, none of those acres are in Routt or Moffat counties. The list includes more than 300 acres of the Arapahoe and Roosevelt national forests in Grand County and more than 500 acres in the White River National Forest in Eagle and Summit counties.
The Forest Service estimates that the proposed sales would generate $800 million in revenue. The first six years of the SRS generated more than $2 billion.
Stephenson, executive director of the Colorado Rural Schools Caucus, said Wednesday that very little of those revenues have reached Colorado classrooms.
“Colorado currently receives only about 1 percent of the (SRS) money,” she said. Colorado land makes up more than 7 percent of the lands eligible for sale in the proposed reauthorization.
“Only four (Colorado school) districts have received any money from the act to date, and three of those districts are not even considered rural by Colorado standards,” Stephenson said.
A rural school district in Colorado is one with fewer than 3,000 students. The Aspen School District, Stephenson said, is the only rural district that has received funding from the SRS. Districts in Eagle, Summit and Garfield counties have received funding, but each has more than 3,000 students.
“I know Steamboat has never received any money from it,” Stephenson said. Stephenson is a former Steamboat Springs School Board president.
The rural caucus represents 115 Colorado school districts at the Capitol in Denver. Stephenson said that although the caucus has not taken a formal position on the proposal, informal discussions with caucus members have led to a consensus opinion against the land sale.
“We really don’t think this is the best approach,” she said. “Yes, we believe our rural schools are underfunded and need a solid revenue stream, but this seems to be a one-time fix. We really shouldn’t be getting rid of a public good and using one program to fund another.”
How SRS funding is distributed also has raised questions.
A March 3 letter from the Routt County Board of Commissioners, sent to the three Routt County school districts, disputes a claim made by the office of Colorado auditor Joanne Hill that Routt County schools have been “underfunded” from forest service receipts.
The dispute arises from language in SRS that allows county agencies to use some of the revenues from land sales for other needs, including forest-related projects and road maintenance.
Mark Rey, national Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, said in a March 29 media teleconference that funding allocations have “accomplished a lot of good” during the past six years and are used according to recommendations from committees that determine the greatest needs for a given county or region.
Not all of the 300,000 acres eligible for sale would need to be sold to reach the reauthorization’s goal of $800 million, Rey said.
The national forest system contains more than 193 million acres of public, federally owned land. According to the forest service, the areas selected for the sale are mostly isolated plots that are no longer fulfilling public needs and are expensive to maintain.
Local and state government agencies and nonprofit organizations would have the first right to buy the plots at market value, if Congress approved the proposal in coming weeks.
