The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act

THE SECURE RURAL SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY SELF-DETERMINATION ACT

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THOMPSON of California. Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to thank all of you who have taken time to come to the floor tonight to talk about this very, very important issue, an issue that impacts all of our districts, and most important the people that live within our districts.

Mr. Speaker, and Members of this House, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act was created to provide critical education and transportation funding for all of the counties that do not receive property tax from lands managed by the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

This program was enacted by this Congress to compensate local governments for the tax exempt status of these public lands. The law authorizing these payments, as you have heard tonight, expired at the end of fiscal year 2006.

And all of the counties that are touched by this issue received their last payment on December 2 of 2006. If we do not reauthorize this funding by the 15th of March, county school districts will have to fire teachers, and reduce critical education programs.

Counties will be forced to slash their transportation budgets. My Congressional district is heavily impacted by this issue, because of over 1.2 million acres that are managed by the National Forest Service.

The National Forest Service acreage in my district is twice the size of the State of Rhode Island, and every single acre is exempt from property tax. No county in my district will be hurt more than Del Norte County. I have a map of Del Norte County, not wanting to be outdone by my friends with their visuals, but no county will be hurt more in my district than Del Norte County, where nearly 80 percent of the county, 80 percent of all of the land within the county is owned by our Federal Government.

Jan Moorehouse, the Superintendent of the school district up in Del Norte, and she was I think very, very succinct in pointing out the problem. I will just tell you what she said. I cannot say it any better.

She said, the loss of funding is heart wrenching and carries an enormous impact on our ability to fund critical education programs for our youth. This is our future leaders. These are the people that will serve in Congress, serve in the State legislature, run the businesses, be on the city council, the people that will make the money to generate the greatness that our country is known for.

And we are taking money right out of their education, the things that will benefit them the most. Without this funding, the school district will have to increase their class size and lay off as many as 25 teachers. And that may not seem a lot to big city school districts, but up here it is nearly 10 percent of the entire teaching faculty. With more students and less teachers, this will dramatically reduce the student to teacher ratio and shortchange our kids.

In addition to the loss of faculty, Del Norte County School District will have to close their art and music programs, and some of the smaller schools in our county will have to close completely because they won't have the money to keep the doors open. Now, this is going to require that the school district bus students who live far from town travel over an hour each way to school on seasonably treacherous rural mountain roads.

Other county school districts in my district will also be hit hard and will have to eliminate teachers and staff for early literacy programs, special education and arts education. The Klamath-Trinity School District on the Hoopa Indian Reservation will have to lay off eight teachers, nearly 15 percent of their entire faculty.

And as I mentioned earlier, the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act also provides critical funding for county transportation needs. Again, this is because the counties do not receive property tax from land managed by the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Humboldt County in my district has over 1,200 miles of county roads. The funding this program provides represents a large portion of that county's road maintenance budgets. Humboldt County has a maintenance backlog of over $150 million. Many other rural counties have similar backlogs, and the loss of this funding is going to be devastating.

Back in Del Norte County, the transportation money from this program represents 20 percent of the county road budget. And to add insult to injury, 40 percent of the county roads in Del Norte County are within the national forest. So the county is responsible for maintaining the roads in the very areas that are exempt from property taxes.

Mr. Speaker and Members, I urge this Congress to reauthorize and to fund this very important program as soon as possible. It is unconscionable for the Federal Government to walk away from our obligation to help these rural counties. Rural counties depend on these funds. They have no other option. We made a commitment, and it is up to us to follow through on that commitment.

Again, I thank you for taking the time to put this Special Order together and help us convince all of our colleagues how necessary and how important this program is and how critically important these funds are to a large area within our great country.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov