◼ Congressional Republicans are looking at an alternative fix to allow locals to raise their own funding again without burdening federal taxpayers, by giving them permission to cut down the trees and again reap the benefits of timber revenue - Audrey Hudson/Human Events @AudreyHudson
Christopher Weaver was one of thousands of prisoners released from Oregon jails last year until his “get-out-of-jail-free” card quickly turned into a round-trip ticket and he was arrested a few hours later for robbing a bank.
Local officials blamed the purge of 5,500 jailbirds including Weaver on dwindling federal funds marked for prison operations, but that revenue source was intended to be only a temporary economic fix. Those funds backfilled local tax revenue losses following the Oregon timber industry’s sharp decline in production after the 1990 spotted owl controversy.
“The release of these inmates from the Lane County Jail is directly related to the significant reduction in federal funding and is indicative of the lack of active management of the federal forests that make up half our land base,” Sid Leiken, Lane County commissioner said in a statement Dec. 1 after the Weaver incident.
“Congress has all but completely walked away from this promise,” Leiken said.
It has been two decades since Congress pledged to temporarily help communities get back on their feet after the Northern Spotted Owl was added to the endangered species list—a status that severely restricted the region’s essential source of revenue from logging and eliminated more than 100,000 jobs.
Despite the funding offer as a temporary solution to the rocky economic transition, billions of dollars in federal aid were distributed while many communities in the Pacific Northwest continued to struggle to pay for local services, all the while demanding federal dollars rather than raising local taxes.
But Congressional Republicans are looking at an alternative fix to allow locals to raise their own funding again without burdening federal taxpayers, by giving them permission to cut down the trees and again reap the benefits of timber revenue.
