Feds should modernize payments to forest communities, groups say
“It’s not all about timber production anymore,” said Mark Haggerty, a researcher at Headwaters Economics who focuses on rural counties and their relationship with federal public lands and local economic development trends.
Haggerty spends much of his time comparing U. S. Forest Service Timber Cut and Sold Reports with Gross Receipts from Commercial Activities. “The first thing to point out on gross receipts is that this revenue earned by the Forest Service for activities on public lands. That’s what becomes the basis for the revenue-sharing payments back to local governments,” Haggerty said.
Haggerty supports of a different approach to addressing the challenges of county payments from commercial activity revenue: creation of a National Resources Trust. The trust would stabilize payment and eliminate the challenge of annual appropriations through Congressional budgeting.
The trust “gets to the idea of using resources to generate wealth. And you can think about wealth in a variety of different ways, not just in the way of creating annual receipts to fund local governments. It could, in theory, if it were to pass, create a real opportunity for communities and federal land managers to work together to re-think the way we’re valuing public land resources, timing extractions, considering market prices, all of that,” Haggerty said.