After hearing about Congressman DeFazio's rumored solution to county funding on radio programs, in newspapers, and from Congressional staff for months, this weekend three of Oregon's representatives revealed their plan - though still not in detail - via an editorial in the Oregonian.

The issue at hand is that many counties are facing dire financial straights after decades of budgets being linked to unsustainable public land logging and then years of federal payments under a program known as Secure Rural Schools. It's a big issue with a long history. (Learn more here) While we can agree that a solution for counties needs to be found, we can not agree that clear-cutting a million acres of public forest lands is the way to do it. And we can't believe this plan will be good for counties in the long run as forests that give us clean air and water, habitat for wildlife, carbon storage to help mitigate climate change, and the beauty that is the reason many people live in western Oregon are slicked off to prop-up budgets.

We can't log our way out of the current funding problems many western Oregon counties face. Pete Sorenson, Lane County Commissioner, wrote about this in both the Oregonian and Eugene Register-Guard in October.

While a champion for Wilderness protections for places like Devil's Staircase and the Wild Rogue - which we appreciate greatly - Rep. DeFazio has taken up the tired argument that our forests are "in gridlock," the Northwest Forest Plan hasn't worked, and we need to find a way to fix our public forest management. In fact, many thousands of acres of forests are actively managed each year to restore fish and wildlife habitat and provide jobs in rural communities under a new model promoted by conservationists. This model, using good science and a focus on restoration, should form the foundation for any reform to forest management. Unfortunately, the current proposal being brought forward by Reps. DeFazio, Schrader, and Walden has more to do with politics than science.

Even without the final details of Rep. DeFazio's plan, we've started a public outreach campaign aimed at knocking out this bad idea and turning towards more viable alternatives. We've so far run 2 ads in the Eugene Weekly, have held a public information forum attended by 40 folks in Eugene, and put a call out to our supporters for comments on the proposal. And we've got up a new webpage with all sorts of information, maps, and more to come.

We believe there is a better solution to both management of federal public land (like focusing on restoring our watersheds, and fish and wildlife habitat) as well as county funding. We hope to reveal our own proposal addressing the latter early in the new year.