March 20, 2026 3:50 a.m.
Douglas County Commissioner Tim Freeman, who serves as the President of the Association of O&C Counties, recently gathered with fellow AOCC board members at their quarterly meeting at Starfire Lumber in Cottage Grove.
A county release said the board is comprised of county commissioners representing member counties. The meeting featured guest speaker Kim Prill, Acting State Director for the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon/Washington. The group toured the new Starfire Lumber timber-built administration building, along with checking out the log yard, planning facilities and long-time thriving lumber mill.
The meeting and tour follow significant federal actions regarding O&C timberlands:
*In January, Congress passed the FY26 Interior Appropriations Bill which corrects revisions made four decades ago and returns O&C counties to their historic share of timber receipts from federally managed timberlands.
*In February, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a “Notice of Intent” to initiate the development of a revised BLM Resource Management Plan governing the 2.5 million acres of O&C timberlands in western Oregon.
*In March, the BLM invited Douglas County to be a cooperating agency for the upcoming revision to the Resource Management Plan. The first RMP revision cooperators meeting took place on Wednesday, March 18th.
Commissioner Freeman said, “These three actions are some of the most exciting achievements the Association of O&C Counties has had in many decades”. Freeman said, “For the last ten years, working with the Board of Directors of the AOCC and our amazing staff, with these series of actions, we have accomplished the opportunity for a solution that will save the western Oregon O&C counties facing insolvency.” Freeman concluded, “At the same time, recovering the local economy, creating family wage jobs and putting Douglas County and the other O&C Counties back in the position of being the ‘Timber Capital of the world”.
For more information about the AOCC, go to www.oandc.org