Timber bills alone will not solve county funding woes (op-ed)

Medford Mail-Tribune:

Counties in Oregon are in financial distress, as many as eight reporting near insolvency. Eighteen Oregon counties built much of their infrastructures and services around funding from the timber receipts of the O&C Act of 1937. After years of unsustainable harvesting on these lands, the Northwest Forest Plan of 1994 reduced timber sales on federal lands to a small fraction of their historical levels. Oregon counties are now reconciling the costs of their service levels with drastically reduced timber receipts and our recent economic calamity.

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