NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Newton County Sheriff Keith Slape is excited by the prospect of Congress restoring $38,460 he was counting on to run his office but thought lost due to a clerical error.
“This’ll mean I’ll get tokeep a couple of folks on for the rest of the year,” Slape said. “I’m pretty excited, I’ve already scratched a bald spot on my head.”
Newton isamong 14 Arkansas counties that received only partial allocations for fiscal 2011 under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which is intended to compensate counties with national forest land that doesn’t generate property tax, said Bill Pell, a staff officer with the Ouachita National Forest.
The U.S. Senate approved an amendment to the federal transportation bill March 8 that would restore the funding to the 14 counties if it becomes law, said Marc Kelley, director of the Partnership for Rural America Campaign, an organization working to get the rural schoolsact extended.
The Senate approved the bill Wednesday with the support of both Arkansas senators, Republican John Boozman and Democrat Mark Pryor. The bill, which would replace the existing transportation law that expires March 31, moves to the House.
The federal rural schools act was passed in 2000 in response to declining timber sales precipitated by lawsuits and federal regulations in the 1990s. Previously, counties with national forests received a percentage of profits from the U.S. Forest Service harvests. The rural schools act became an important source of revenue for rural counties that are primarily made up of national forest, Kelley said.
The act expired Oct. 1, so there will be no further appropriations under it, absent the passage of the transportation bill, Kelley said. The amendment extends the act one year, with a payment to be made next January but at a 5 percent reduction from this year. Without a further extension, the Forest Service assistance to the counties will revert to the terms of a 1908 agreement.
The 1908 agreement requires the federal govern-ment to pay states 25 percent of the revenue made off timber harvests, which is significantly lower than the payments under the rural schools act, Kelley said. The act was always billed as a temporary measure to help counties until timber revenue returned, he said, but Congress never directed the Forest Service to harvest timber while addressing the environmental concerns that prompted the lawsuits.
Kelley said the one-year extension will buy time to have a discussion about getting the Forest Service back in the business of harvesting more timber. He said if the national forests start making money again, Congress won’t have to keep sending money to these counties.
“It’s hard to get people to focus on their long-term future when they’re starving to death at that very second,” Kelley said.
FUNDS FOR 29 COUNTIES
There are about 2.6 million acres of National Forest land in the state and 29 counties that receive some sort of payment from the Forest Service, based on how much forest land is in their boundaries. Four of the counties receive the 25 percent payment, while the rest receive an allocation based on the formula used in the rural schools act.
Of the 25 counties paid according to the act, 14 didn’t receive as much money as they could have because the necessary paperwork didn’t reach the Forest Service by Sept. 30.
Pell said the act provides qualifying counties with three types of funding, referred to as Titles I, II and III. Title I is split among school districts that cover the forests and roads, while Title III is limited to fire-prevention projects, and reimbursement for emergency services, such assearch and rescue, he said.
Title II money can only be used on infrastructure maintenance, Pell said, and only on approved projects. One of the best examples of how the program is supposed to work, he said, is in Montgomery County, where Title II money is used to maintain 13 recreational areas on Forest Service land.
“In Montgomery County, we enjoyed a very good relationship,” he said. “They’ve done a better job than we could with our staffing levels.”
Pell said the counties are required to submit forms by Sept. 30 detailing how they want the money divided by title, but only Stone County met the deadline in 2011. The error affected Baxter, Crawford, Franklin, Garland, Johnson, Logan, Madison, Montgomery, Newton, Perry, Polk, Pope, Scott and Yell.
Officials in the 14 counties blame the state for the mistake, while state officials blame each other. The Arkansas Department of Education had been responsible for sending the forms, but the job was given to the state treasurer starting last year.
A spokesman for the treasurer has said no one notified the office that the responsibility had been transferred from the Education Department.
Stone County Treasurer Carla Stewart said she marked the deadline on her calendar and noticed when the election form didn’t arrive. Historically, the Education Department had sent the form to the county judge. She called the department and was told the responsibility had been transferred to the state treasurer’s office.
Subsequently, a Forest Service official told her how to find the form online and where to fax it.
Stewart’s persistence netted the county $31,835 in a total allocation $159,175.
“Even though it’s not all that much, I didn’t want thecounty to lose it,” she said. “We were doing a project and I wanted it to go through.”
Stewart said she was surprised to learn the other counties weren’t getting their allocations and hopes the Forest Service addresses the matter.
“I just thought everybody would be doing what I did,” she said.
If the funding is restored, Slape said he expects to apply the money toward two salaries. He said he was able to use $21,955 in proceeds from a February auction of seized property and old patrol cars to temporarily keep the sheriff’s office fully staffed with six deputies.
The $38,000 accounts for about 15 percent of his total budget, he said. The county total allocation was expected to be $549,437.
Scott County received the largest rural schools act appropriation at $1.5 million, with Montgomery County coming in second at $1.2 million. Hot Spring County, which received a 25 percent payment, received $549.
Newton County started getting money under the 2008 reauthorization of the rural schools act, according to Forest Service documents. The county received its largest allocation of Title III money in 2008, when it received, $60,664, but the amount declined each year.
The last allocation Slape received was $43,538.84 for in 2011.
Slape originally planned to use auction money toward equipping a new jail, which is under construction, he said. Now he is looking for grants to help equip the jail.
Slape said if the Forest Service money doesn’t come through, he’ll have to ask the county for more money or consider layoffs.
“I’m trying to head that off, but it could get there,” Slape said.
JOBS CONTINUE
Montgomery CountyJudge Alvin Black said he was pleased to learn of the amendment and is hopeful it will become law so he doesn’t have to lay-off a three-man maintenance crew.
“It does look good at this point or better than it has,” Black said. “I had not laid my guys off yet. I was hoping something like this would get out.”
Black said the three-man maintenance crew costs about $130,000 annually and has been paid for with the roughly $200,000 in Title II money the county historically has received. He said the county might find money to cover some of the maintenance work planned as Title II projects, but doesn’t have the money to keep the maintenance crew without the appropriation.
He said he’d all but given up on the appropriation until he had a chance to meet with the Arkansas congressional delegation last week while in Washington for the National Association of Counties Conference. Members of the delegation were confident about the amendment and its potential to become law, he said.
“I felt a little better after I met with all of them than when I went in,” he said. “I had been feeling discouraged.”
Boozman had hoped the Forest Service would be able to find a way to fund the 14 counties but hadn’t heard back for more than a month, so he supported the amendment, said his spokesman Sara Lasure.
“This provides funding to counties and schools as compensation for the amount of tax-exempt federal land,” Boozman said through Lasure. “This is a matter of fundamental fairness. Property owners have to pay taxes and the federal government should do its fair share as a property owner.” To contact this reporter:
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/19/2012