Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Linn County will receive about $2.5 million it hadn’t anticipated in new timber payments from the federal government after the passage of the $700 billion bank bailout plan earlier this month.
Also included is another $6 million for the county’s road fund.
The total timber payments will be about 10 percent less than last year, and the amount will decrease about 10 percent annually for the following three years.
The program was extended for four years as part of the bailout plan passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last week. It includes $3.3 billion to counties that once depended on federal timber sales to pay for schools and county services in rural areas. Thirty-three of 36 counties in Oregon receive the funds. The timber payments were included in the bailout to entice lawmakers to vote for the bailout.
The program ended last year, leaving Oregon counties cutting their budgets. Linn County avoided the drastic cuts faced by other counties by saving and cutting personnel through attrition prior to the end of the funding.
Oregon will receive approximately $254 million this year.
The Linn County Budget Committee will look at the new revenue at a meeting on Oct. 29, Commissioner Roger Nyquist said.
Certainly some of it will be used to add back some things that had been cut, Nyquist said, and it may be used to restore one-time capital expenditures that will cost more later.
Unless facing extraordinary circumstances, the commissioners aren’t interested in adding back personnel, Nyquist said. “We wouldn’t want to hire a bunch of employees and be back in the same boat next year.”
Some budgets are “underwater” right now, Nyquist said. The Planning Department is short about 40 percent of its revenues with the number of building permits down this year.
“We took a half million of economic development money and put it in the fairgrounds this year,” Nyquist said. That probably will come out, so the county can keep it for economic development.
For the Road Department, the commissioners have already approved work on a contract, which was ready to go, that the commissioners had thought would have to wait.
Right now, he is just speculating on what will happen with the money, he said. It won’t be decided until the Budget Committee weighs in.