Treating Tribes and Counties As Good Neighbors Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PEREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Grijalva for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1450, the Treating Tribes and Counties as Good Neighbors Act.

This bill is critical for districts like mine. Why? This bill gives back the flexibility that is critical to counties and Tribes, who understand that wildfires and natural disasters do not discriminate between Federal and non-Federal lands, and ensures that we use all of the tools at our disposal to mitigate the effects of wildfire and maintain healthy forests.

In the 2018 farm bill, Congress expanded Good Neighbor Authority to make Tribes and counties eligible to enter into Good Neighbor agreements. However, Tribes and counties were not afforded the same authority as States to retain the receipts from these GNA project revenues to reinvest in conservation. This fundamentally reduced the ability to engage and partner on critical management projects like wildfire mitigation, invasive species management, and habitat maintenance.

Additionally, the 2018 farm bill removed the ability to carry out restoration services that were agreed to under the Good Neighbor Agreements to take place off of Federal lands. You can literally get out in the woods, and you can see the boundaries and political boundaries between the treated land and untreated land that has resulted.

As a result, adjacent Tribal and county land that is essential to the health of national forests can no longer be restored as comprehensive landscapes.

Rural, timber-based Skamania County, my home county, is leading innovation with Good Neighbor Authority by hiring foresters with these funds to advance timber harvests for forest health, fire management, and invasive species management, all mounting issues in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest that have not been addressed for decades.

Skamania County was the first to build a relationship with the State Department of Natural Resources to determine how this Good Neighbor Authority could help the forest health conditions of the national forests, which make up 80 percent of Skamania County.

This partnership between the Forest Service, the State agency, and Skamania County has been hugely successful. The additional flexibility provided by this bill is a commonsense fix to a program that has been proven to be highly successful.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I thank Congressman Fulcher for his leadership on this bill. I thank Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Grijalva, as well as Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member Scott, for their support of this critical legislation.

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