LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A program that makes payments to schools based on lost national forest revenue has passed the US House of Representatives.
The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015 passed the House on Thursday in a bipartisan vote of 392-37.
The funding for the Secure Rural Schools and Self-Determination Act was included as a trailer to the bill on Wednesday, Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg told the boards of the Upper Lake High and Upper Lake Elementary school districts during a joint meeting that night.
The districts receive a sizable portion of the funds that come to the county from the program.
“It's a bipartisan bill,” Falkenberg said.
Lake County's two representatives in the House, John Garamendi and Congressman Mike Thompson, voted for the bill.
In a statement on the bill, Garamendi said Lake's neighboring counties of Colusa and Glenn also benefit from the program.
The US Senate still has to take action on the bill, which President Barack Obama has pledged to sign.
Congress enacted the Secure Rural Schools and Self-Determination Act in 2000 to provide funding for rural counties and school districts to replace lost revenue as a result of dwindling forest receipts, according to a report from the Rural County Representatives of California, or RCRC.
RCRC said the program initially provided California's forest counties $60 million annually. Half of the revenue went to counties for schools, the other half for roads.
Since it was first enacted, Congress has reauthorized the program several times, but RCRC's report explained that, with each reauthorization, the funding amounts have dropped.
The United States Forest Service reported that the program expired Sept. 30, after the one-year reauthorization Congress approved in October 2013 ran out.
Under the most recent one-year reauthorization, RCRC said the total amount of funding for California was $38 million.
Garamendi's office told Lake County News that Lake County received $441,066.56 in the last round of Secure Rural Schools payments in 2013. That amount is down by a third from the nearly $600,000 the county received in 2012, as Lake County News has reported.
In January, the Lake County Board of Supervisors urged Congress to reauthorize the bill, the county share of which – averaging about $250,000 – is used for county roads.
The remainder goes to local school districts, primarily the Upper Lake districts, located at the gateway to the Mendocino National Forest.
Because there was no reauthorization for the program in 2014, the US Forest Service released payments to forested counties in January under the “25 Percent Receipts Rule.”
That amount was determined under a 1908 act requiring the US Forest Service to share with states 25 percent of gross receipts from timber sales, grazing, minerals, recreation, and other land use fees on national forests to benefit public schools and public roads in the counties in which the forests are situated.
RCRC said that funding mechanism has resulted in a near 75-percent reduction in monies received compared to what the Secure Rural Schools Program would have paid counties.
The Secure Rural Schools extension the House of Representatives approved Thursday is estimated to provide California counties and schools nearly $27.3 million in 2014 and $25.9 million in 2015, according to RCRC.
Falkenberg told the Upper Lake school boards that the Lake County Office of Education has been holding the Secure Rural Schools funds for a year, which is why schools locally have continued to receive the money, despite the lack of a 2014 reauthorization.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
House approves two-year extension of Secure Rural Schools Program; Senate action pending
- Elizabeth Larson
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