October 2, 2019 11:00 a.m.
Oregon’s U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley along with both of Idaho’s Senators, and 27 of their Senate colleagues have requested that any end-of-year legislation include at least a two-year reauthorization of the Payments in Lieu of Taxes and the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act programs.
A release from Wyden and Merkley said in a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, they said that “Congress has an obligation to ensure counties with large swaths of federally-owned, tax-exempt forests and rangelands can adequately provide essential services to their residents”. The letter said that as history has proved, without the certainty of these two critical programs, schools, libraries and jails will close.
The letter said a short-term reauthorization of at least two years is critical to provide fiscal certainty for counties containing federally-owned lands.
Wyden and Merkley were part of a group that recently introduced legislation that would reauthorize the PILT program for ten years. They were also part of a group that introduced the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act to make SRS permanent by creating an endowment fund to provide stable, increasing and reliable funding for county services.