North Olympic Peninsula road departments will suffer if a federal subsidy isn’t renewed, officials said.
Congress hasn’t reauthorized the Secure Rural Schools program for county road funds, which compensates western timber counties for low harvests.
Jefferson County stands to lose $400,000 this year if the program isn’t reauthorized.
Although the lack of the fund hurts, the Clallam County road department wasn’t expecting a cent this year.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday that the U.S. Forest Service is sending more than $50 million to 746 timber counties in February.
That compares to about $300 million paid out last fiscal year under the Secure Rural Schools subsidy program.
Forest Service payments to Washington counties are dropping from $21.5 million to $2.1 million.
And although Peninsula counties may get some of the money, none is authorized for roads.
Secure Rural Schools provided more than $1 million to the Clallam County Road Fund in 2006 and 2007.
That fell to $776,000 in 2010, $425,000 in 2011 and 2012 and $428,000 in 2013.
There was no reauthorization for the road fund in 2014 and nothing projected for this year, officials said.
“A half a million bucks is a half a million bucks,” Clallam County Engineer Ross Tyler said.
“That’s quite a few miles of chip seal. It just reduces our ability to hold a fund balance out into the future, since we’re already programing six years out.”
The Clallam County Road Department did not budget any Secure Rural Schools funding in 2014 because “we have never put money into our budget that we don’t have in our hands,” Tyler said.
“We don’t have any strong feeling that we’ll get it in ‘15 or ‘16,” he added.
“We adjusted by essentially knocking projects completely off the list.”
Clallam County also has a non-roads special revenue fund that received $10,073 from Secure Rural Schools last year to go along with about $9,000 that wasn’t spent the previous year.
“It isn’t a huge deal for us because of the strict limitations on how that money is used,” Jim Jones, Clallam County administrator, said Tuesday.
“So we’re OK. It won’t alter our budget because we budget it based on actual revenues that we have,” he said.
In Jefferson County, the program provided about $1.3 million to the Jefferson County Road Fund five or six years ago.
County Administrator Philip Morley said that represented a “significant part of our income for capital road repairs and improvements.”
“Last year that had dwindled to about $400,000, and this year will drop to $0 if Congress does not reauthorize and fund Secure Rural Schools,” Morley said in an email.
Secure Rural Schools was adopted after the spotted owl and other species were listed as endangered or threatened, reducing timber harvest from U.S. Forest Service lands, Morley said.
“Storms in December created significant emergency repair costs for us, and we also have major routine capital needs to replace worn out culverts, paint and repair bridges and other structures, repave and widen roads, and more. But we do not have adequate funding to pay for that without SRS,” he said.
In this state, Secure Rural Schools really doesn’t affect schools because the state reduces a district’s portion dollar-for-dollar, Jones said.
“So it really doesn’t affect the schools themselves,” Jones said. “But it affects the general state budget because that’s money they don’t get. But for us, it’s gotten smaller and smaller.”
Jones could not predict whether the funding would be reauthorized this year.
“For six years in a row it has been re-renewed for one year at a time,” he said.
“I’ve heard discussion that they’ll put it together with several other things, but until they actually do — and it won’t happen until August or September — we won’t really know.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
