House doesn’t renew Secure Rural Schools funding

1908 Act money instead, Payment in Lieu of Taxes money likely less

NEWPORT — Forest counties and school districts in them will get less from the federal government this year for federal land on which property taxes can’t be levied.

Most of land in both Pend Oreille and Bonner counties is owned by the federal government, mainly federal forests. In Pend Oreille County, it’s the Colville National Forest and in Bonner Count it is the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

The Secure Rural Schools and Communities Act wasn’t renewed this year, although Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican, introduced the act in the Senate in February. The Act wasn’t brought up for a vote in the Senate and not even introduced in the House. Instead, funding reverted to the 1908 Act of May 23, which gives counties federal money based on a percentage of timber harvested from national forests, 25% of a seven-year average.

Pend Oreille County commission chair Brian Smiley, R-Metaline, said Secure Rural Schools, established in 2000, was always a program to allow counties and school districts to cope with the loss of timber money as timber harvesting slowed because of environmental lawsuits and other factors.

“That means every few years we have to fight for it again,” Smiley said.

This year it is tied up with discussion of increased timber sales from the Trump administration. He said he doesn’t think national legislators understand that in the Colville National Forest, any money from increased timber sales goes into supporting the forest. The counties hardly see any of it, he said.

Pend Oreille County got about half of what was received last year in SRS money, said Pend Oreille County Treasurer Nicole Dice, an elected Republican.

“Last year we got $334,482,” Dice said of Secure Rural Schools funding. That money went to the county road department. The three public school districts in the county divided a similar amount, with $229,136 going to Newport, $56,257 going to Cusick and $49,088 going to Selkirk.

This year under the 1908 Act, Pend Oreille County received $313,862 last week, half of which will be divided among the school districts.

In Bonner County, Treasurer Clorissa Koster, also an elected Republican, said the county got $436,707 in SRS funding in 2024.

Heather Dauphin, Director of Business Services for the Cusick School District, said money the district receives for Secure Rural Schools is put into its general fund and used for expenses toward overall district operations.

“Any loss of revenue will have an overall negative impact on our school operations but we will adjust accordingly,” she said.

Idaho U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher, R- Meridian, told The Bonner County Daily Bee in an interview last week that he had concerns about both Payment in Lieu of Taxes and SRS funding. He told The Bee that his collogues in the Midwest and East are sick of funding the programs.

He said that changes in both programs could come up quickly.

“This could be thrust upon us, and we have no plan,” he was quoted as saying in The Bee story Saturday.

Washington’s 5th District U.S. Rep Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, said in a column in this week’s Miner that the money doesn’t entirely go away when SRS isn’t passed.

“They revert to a formula based on erratic annual timber revenues, scrambling the budget planning of local governments,” he said.

Smiley said the SRS money isn’t nearly what it was when the Act was adopted in 2000.

Payment in Lieu of Taxes funding is up in the air. A lobbyist told Pend Oreille County it would likely be funded but possibly at a lesser amount than previous years.

Last year Pend Oreille County got $1.4 million and Bonner County got $1.08 million in PILT money.

County commissioner Robert Rosencrantz said he was told on a call with lobbyist Robert Weidner that some PILT money is likely coming but it’s unsure how much and when. Smiley said PILT makes ups a significant portion of Pend Oreille County’s budget, about 10%, and that if it didn’t come there would be a hiring freeze and probably layoffs.

Smiley said it is clear to him that when the national forests were started back during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, an impact on local government was anticipated.

“When they created the national forest system, they understood it was going to have an impact on local government and local economies,” Smiley said. Taking that much land out of possible development was recognized as having an impact. “They anticipated and corrected that impact through timber sales.”

“To me, it needs to have a permanent solution,” he said. He doesn’t want to go back to the days of clearcutting the forest for money. “But we need to have a broader discussion of how that impacts county revenues.”

Smiley has already booked a flight and hotel to go to Washington D.C., along with other representatives from forest counties, to talk with legislators about the importance of PILT and SRS funding to county government.