Audrey Caro
The Association of O&C Counties filed a summary judgment memorandum on Dec. 12 in a civil suit filed last August in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
The complaint was filed by 17 Oregon counties, which comprise the Association, in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s resource management plan for woodlands, which was released on Aug. 5, 2016.
On recent court documents, defendants Neil Kornze, director of the Bureau of Land Management and Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior, have been replaced by Michael D. Nedd, acting director of BLM and Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior.
“This case arises out of the federal government’s failure to comply with its mandatory legal obligations to manage approximately 2.1 million acres of forest lands as required by the Oregon and California Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road Grant Lands Act of 1937,” the motion states.
The O&C Lands are approximately 2.6 million acres of land located in 18 counties of western Oregon.
The land was originally granted for construction of a railroad from Portland to San Francisco, but was returned to the U.S. government in 1916. Since then, the 18 counties where the O&C lands are located, including Linn County, have received payments from the United States government as compensation for the loss of timber and tax revenue. Over the years, as timber production decreased, so have the payments.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Linn County Commissioner John Lindsey on Dec. 13. “The legality of federal land management issues on the O&C (Lands) have been a problem for years.
“Congress, through the spotted owl safety net legislation and the rural schools coalition-county payment legislation, has had money transferred to the counties for over two decades to keep Oregon counties at bay. We no longer have influence in the U.S. Senate and are facing continued financial burdens in rural Oregon. Those payments have ended.”
Lane County Commissioner Sid Leiken is an AOCC board member and filed a declaration of support of the motion.
“Like the other O&C Counties, Lane County depends on O&C timber receipts to help support public services paid for out of our general fund,” Leiken said.
“When timber payments under the O&C Act fell drastically in the 1990s due to the Northwest Forest Plan, Congress responded with short-term ‘safety-net’ legislation that temporarily reduced the harm to O&C Counties.
“The safety nets included the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which in its initial form provided payments based on historic timber receipts.”
There was a steep decline in payments to the O&C Counties from 2007 to 2015, Leiken said.
“AOCC contends the (2016) RMPs violate the O&C Act by, among other things, placing most O&C Lands (78 percent) in reserves in which timber harvest is almost entirely prohibited, as opposed to managing such lands for sustained yield timber production, thereby depriving AOCC’s members of the receipts from timber sales from those lands as required by the O&C Act,” Leiken said.
“The declared allowable sale quantity (“ASQ”) projected by the RMPs is less than half of the minimum amount required under the O&C Act, with the result that the O&C Counties will be deprived of many millions of dollars of receipts from timber sales each year.
“Those revenues are an important component of general fund budgets used to support public services provided by the O&C Counties.”
Douglas County Commissioner Timothy Freeman is president of the AOCC and also filed a declaration in support of the AOCC’s motion.
“The relief requested by AOCC in this case is for the development of (resource management plans) that comply with the O&C Act’s mandates to manage O&C Lands for sustained yield timber production and to ensure minimum harvest levels,” Freeman said.
This relief, he said, “will help Douglas County and the other O&C Counties restore community and economic stability as contemplated by the O&C Act.”
The summary judgment memorandum states “the 2016 RMPs should be vacated and remanded to the BLM with instructions to manage all O&C Lands that qualify as timber lands for permanent forest production and to meet the minimum harvest requirements of the O&C Act.”
According to the federal court docket, the defendants’ cross motions for summary judgment and oppositions to plaintiffs’ motions are due by Feb. 13, 2018.