Hearing of Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests - The Secure Rural Schools and Communtiy Self-Determination Act of 2000

Hearing of Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests - The Secure Rural Schools and Communtiy Self-Determination Act of 2000

STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, U.S. SENATOR FROM OREGON

Senator Wyden. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think it is very appropriate for our subcommittee to be
starting with an oversight hearing on this issue, and I want to thank you again for all the cooperation and effort to meet me
certainly halfway on these kinds of key issues.

It was not very long ago, I think the chairman knows, I had a significant amount of people in the environmental community
picketing outside my office for my efforts on this. And suffice it to say, the chairman had a lot of people coming to him
saying why was he not using the law to push this as a vehicle to drive up the cut of timber around the country.

We said this was too important. This bill is essentially the lifeblood for thousands of rural communities across this
country that are hurting. This is not some kind of ideological trophy for them. This is a question of whether they get the
economic and education help to survive. A lot of these communities are just barely hanging in there, and if the Federal Government simply gives them short shrift in an area where Federal policy has dominated their life on a day-to-day basis, I am of the view, and I know Chairman Craig shares this view, that a lot of these communities simply will not survive.
So this is a law that works.

I think it would be fair to say that if this law was a credit card commercial it read something like this. Making additional investments and creating new jobs: Thousands of projects. Stabilization of payments to counties for roads and schools: Millions of dollars. Improving the lives of families living in forest-dependent communities nationwide: Priceless. Now, suffice it to say, there is more Federal----

Senator Craig. That was rather original.

Senator Wyden. There you are. [Laughter.]

Senator Wyden. After the Super Bowl, we all have these commercials on our mind. [Laughter.]

Senator Wyden. But suffice it to say that it is our view that the county payments law has produced nothing less than a
revolution in resource-dependent communities. It is helping Americans in more than 40 States and more than 700 counties
nationwide, including 32 counties in my home State of Oregon.

This is an oversight hearing today, and we are not going to get into the details of the budget, per agreement of the
chairman and me. But suffice it to say--and I want to use this forum as an opportunity to make the case that Chairman Craig
and I did: We are going to need the administration's strong support in order to have this legislation properly funded.

This is a different climate, colleagues, than when we brought together a bipartisan coalition before. When Senator
Craig and I began our work on this issue, there was a budget surplus. Now there is a very significant budget deficit. There is going to be an effort certainly to say every program is going to have to tighten its belt. Absolutely. We are prepared
to make the case that this program is a cost effective one, but we ought to make it clear that there is something different in
terms of belt-tightening than strangling these rural communities. That is what we seek to get across in the course
of the debates.

Mr. Chairman, I know that we are going to have a strong bipartisan coalition behind this once again, and I look forward
to working with you. I see Senator Johnson is here and he was supportive. The ranking minority member was very helpful as we worked through some of the legislation as it related to resource advisory committees.

We are going to hear later today from Tim Lillebo, who is representing the Oregon Natural Resources Council, talking
about the resource advisory committees. Suffice it to say, through those RAC's, we have people talking to each other about
natural resources policy, who not only would not talk to each other in the past, they would not even show up in the same room
together. I think that is an indication of what it takes to try to build consensus.

And I look forward to working with you to get the bill reauthorized.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our witnesses have been very helpful.

Again, because we are not going to go into the budget, I am just going to make my own statement with respect to where we
are. If we do not get full funding for the county payments law, our region faces what literally could be a triple whammy.
Yesterday, the budget called for a massive rate hike on Bonneville customers, a $2.5 billion rate hike, a rate hike
that would be economic poison for our region, one that is opposed by myself, Chairman Craig. Senator Smith deserves great
credit for essentially announcing on the front pages of our paper. He opposed it with everything he has got, and I thank
him for his excellent statement.

But the combination of the massive rate hike for Bonneville, not getting full funding for forest health--you know, we were pledged in the bipartisan forest health bill $760 million. We are talking about several hundred million less, at least $200 million less. And then the question of the county payments. If we do not get this money, our region is staring right at a triple whammy that would be devastating to our economy.

By agreement with Chairman Craig, this is going to be an oversight hearing and not a budget hearing, but I just want to
use this opportunity to make it clear how important it is that we have the administration's support on this particular
initiative because of the importance to the region and what we are faced with in terms of our economy.

What I would like to do for a couple of minutes--in fact, let me start with one point that you made, Mr. Rey, on the
question of the 31 counties that have not been moving quickly. Why do you think that is? I think that given the fact those are
big counties and counties where you would say, look, this sounds like a pretty attractive thing, what are you picking up
in terms of why they might be reluctant? Because I think that is something that we would like to factor into this bipartisan
reauthorization.

Mr. Rey. I think that it involves a couple of things. First, in some of those counties, the county commissioners looked at the prospect of sharing the decisionmaking authority for the use of money under title II and compared it to the unilateral authority to spend the money they want on title III projects, and decided they preferred the latter.

Second, I think a lot of the counties decided to wait and see how well the resource advisory committees were working
before they invested the time and energy into going through the process of getting a resource advisory committee chartered.

And third, I suspect that, as I looked through the list of those counties affected, there were in some cases counties that
I knew had fairly pressing needs for funding some of the activities that are allowed through title III funding.

So I think those would be the three primary reasons that we saw some counties, who arguably should have been attracted to title II, slow to form resource advisory committees. What I hope we can persuade them of in the future is that if you look
at the experience of the counties who formed resource advisory committees, the opportunity to engage in a more civil and
constructive discourse on how the Federal land should be managed generally inures benefits that go beyond just the money
that is invested.

Senator Wyden. I think you are right. I particularly sense that there are a lot of people in the wait-and-see department.
Let us try to get the word out now that this is in fact working. I think that we will get some of those 31 counties on board.

Give me a sense, in terms of 1,800 projects authorized, about some of the numbers. What is your sense about how many
now or will produce merchantable timber?

Mr. Rey. I can get you more specific numbers for the record. We do maintain a data base on the projects. I would say
a relative handful are producing merchantable timber. By law 50 percent of the projects have to deal with road or trail
improvement or watershed improvement. Our figures indicate that roughly 56 percent of the projects do that. In those projects,
you are obviously going to have at most an incidental or occasional amount of commercial timber. I will get you the exact numbers, but my sense, having reviewed the data base once, is that that is a relatively small number of projects.

Senator Wyden. And how many do you think are serving to improve forest health and fire preparedness?

Mr. Rey. I think a fairly significant number. Probably 25 to 30 percent of them probably have forest health or fire
hazard reduction goals attached to them.

Senator Wyden. The only other question I had for you, I think what the chairman and I are interested in--the
cooperation that we have seen as a result has now made this essentially the only significant area of foreign policy--of
forest policy that has not turned----

Senator Craig. That was not a bad slip. [Laughter.]

Senator Craig. There was some foreign policy involved here.

Senator Wyden. You got it.

This seems to be the only significant area of forest policy that is not a litigation derby. I think that what we are
interested in is not as part of this legislation--when you said you were not calling for any amendments to this bill, we
appreciate that because it will be a challenge to get this reauthorized. What we have been interested in is whether we
could use this RAC model in other areas of forest policy simply because it does stand out as essentially the only area in
natural resources that has been significant, with a significant amount of dollars, that is not a lawyer's full employment
program. So why do you not give me your thoughts on that, whether we can take this RAC model and use it in other areas,
not just this one as it relates to forest policy to try to help find the common ground.

Mr. Rey. I think generally whenever we can find ways to involve people at the community level, we are getting better
results. That is clearly the case with these resource advisory committees. It also appears to be the case with the community-
based fire plans that are being developed now under the auspices of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. But as we move
forward to discuss the bills that were introduced last week, we will also give some thought to where we can productively expand the role of resource advisory committees beyond the four corners of this legislation.

Senator Wyden. I am going to be interested in talking with both of you. Ed, I will not jump you on this at this point. But
I am interested particularly in asking you two about areas where we could use the RAC model and the model as it relates to
bringing people together as it relates to water issues. Ed, you all get a fair ways into this issue, but I think all over the
West, the water issues are going to be very, very contentious in the days ahead, the whole issue of competing uses and the
fact that we westerners want the water for all of them, be it the economic needs, the environmental needs, the agricultural
needs. We have got to find some model to get people again work together. So we are going to continue to explore with both of you this question of how we can use the RAC model in other areas.

We will keep the record open I think, Mr. Chairman, so that Mr. Rey can give us the numbers in terms of projects. In fact,
why do we not see if we get a count on merchantable timber projects under the law, environmental projects under the law,
and forest health and fire preparedness projects under the law, and we will hold the record open for that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Senator Wyden. All of you have been excellent. We thank you for your support. Of course, as you heard me say earlier, we
are going to need it now more than ever because of the budget picture that is so much different now than it was back in the
days when we got this authorized the first time and there was a surplus.

The only question that I had is we have primarily been talking, particularly with the resource advisory councils,
about the better cooperation we are seeing with the environmental community and the industry and the whole cross
section of stakeholders.

What we have not really covered is whether the resource advisory committees and the communications going on have
changed some of the attitudes toward the natural resources agencies, particularly the Forest Service and the BLM in the
area. What we are hoping, of course, is that some of the cooperation through the RAC's will start rippling over to the
agencies as well. I am curious whether any of you would want to take a crack at whether the RAC's have also had some beneficial aspects in terms of generating more cooperation with the agencies.

Mr. French. Sir, I would have to say yes. It is one thing being on an advisory council. It is another thing being on an
advisory council with a checkbook. I think we have meaningful participation, and I think that the Forest Service needs us to
help them with their work. It is one of the vehicles for getting work done. On one of our ranger districts, RAC projects
are the only fuels reductions projects in that district. So it is a critical relationship, marriage, a date, whatever you want to call it.

Senator Wyden. Does anybody else want to take a crack at that?

Ms. Krulitz. Senator, I would like to mention also. We budget $1 million a year. Of that, my county only has 13,000
people, but $600,000 of that $1 million comes from my county. Maybe we are small in numbers, but when you bring $600,000 to the table and you are spending it in region 1, you do get attention.

It is also putting kids to work. Every one of our five northern counties has a RAC crew made up of college kids who
are out there doing trail restoration.

It is bringing light to people that did not realize what is out there and available through I guess an agency or a RAC,
whatever we want to call it, a contingent group, that you would not have had the players at the table. They are focusing on
good things, and I think a lot of them are leaving their baggage at the door when they come into those meetings to focus
on some good things. And they are doing that in the Idaho panhandle.

Senator Wyden. Dr. Creal, do you want to take a crack at that? I did not want to cut you off there.

Dr. Creal. Yes, Senator. I just want to mention that the committee held a listening session in Portland, Oregon, and
both the Federal representatives and the county people and any other citizens there all expressed that they felt that things
were going well with the RAC process, and collaboration and a better understanding between all the groups was evident.

Senator Wyden. Tim, anything else?

Mr. Lillebo. I was just thinking on a couple of our RAC's, the Forest Service does listen very carefully and it seems like
they may have left some of their baggage too behind, as well as the people that are on the committee itself coming and leaving
some of their baggage behind. And we have been able to come up with some projects and even modify some proposed projects. So I think they are listening.

I was very interested in the idea of maybe taking a portion of certain national forest budgets. That might even have them
listen more and the public even get more involved if you have a little bit more to work with.

Senator Craig. You did catch the essence of that question.

Mr. Lillebo. I think I got most of it. [Laughter.]

Senator Wyden. The only other thing I want to do is just say thank you for hanging in there with us. Especially Chairman
Craig has heard this. It was not a lot of fun at the beginning when I had all those picketers and ads and Ron Wyden, you know, is decimating the public forests because he was working with Chairman Craig and the like. You all hung in with us. You
bucked us up and made it clear that we were going to try to take a baanced approach and, heaven forbid, try something that
had not been done and that was give people some incentives for working together. Literally, as I said to the last panel--maybe
some of you were here--this seems to be just about the only area of forest policy that has not become a litigation derby.
And to think that you can tell us several years into the implementation of the act that there has not been an appeal anywhere in the United States is really a tribute to the kind of good work that you are doing.

I am going to have to duck out. I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, how pleased I am that Senator Salazar is here. I
think he is going to be a real voice for the kind of natural resources policies that we are talking about, which is to try
to bring people together rather than figure out ways to drive them into opposite camps. So I look forward to working very
closely with him and glad he is here.

Mr. Lillebo. Senators, may I say one more thing? I just really did want to again thank all of you. It has made a huge
difference in Oregon as far as how the natural resources, the fish, the wildlife have been treated. It also made a huge
difference to school kids. So I really wanted to thank you for that. And in the bipartisan spirit, please send us some snow.

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