PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County prosecuting attorney’s office is evaluating whether the county has grounds to sue the state over a breach of contract related to timberland management.
That argument, made by retired politician Jim Buck of Joyce, contends that the state has violated its fiduciary responsibility to Clallam County by not managing the county’s land, held in trust by the state, with undivided loyalty to the county.
If the prosecuting attorney’s office determines the argument does have legal merit, it likely would be taken up by the county’s Revenue Advisory Committee (RAC) for a discussion on next steps, Commissioner Mark Ozias said during a December RAC meeting.
This situation began in the 1930s, when Washington counties transferred land to the state.
That land was known as county forest board trust land, Buck said, and is currently called state forest transfer land.
The terms of that transfer stated the land was to be held in trust by the State Forest Board, now the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The DNR would reforest the land and ensure it is “logged, protected and cared for,” Buck said, quoting session laws, in ways that economically benefit its beneficiary county.
That also means the DNR must act with undivided loyalty in the interests of the county, and the county should be consulted on the land’s management, Buck said.
Clallam County deeded its first parcel of 26,351 acres to the state on May 8, 1936, according to a Port Angeles Evening News story published on that day.
“[The land is] held in trust by the state and developed under the direction of the State Forest Board with an ultimate goal of bringing it back to productivity on a sustained yield basis,” L.T. Webster, field assistant to the state forestry supervisor, said in the story.
Throughout the next few decades, Clallam County deeded a total of between 86,000 and 93,000 acres to the state, to be held in trust. Buck has found the deeds for a little more than 86,610 acres while the DNR’s fact sheet states there is a little more than 93,000 acres of state forest transfer land in Clallam.
One of the purposes of the program was to generate sustainable revenue for the county.
“Revenue from the timber grown on these lands will go a long way, if not completely, toward paying the cost of our county government at that future time,” 1936 Clallam County chairman Arnold Levy said in the newspaper story.
However, over the past several decades, many of the state forest transfer lands have been permanently deferred from harvest and revenue generation through a number of policies.
Those include automatic protection for many old-growth forests, protection of marbled murrelet and northern spotted owl habitats and occasional protection of “legacy,” or older-growth, forests.
These policies have resulted in a little more than 44,000 of the county’s trust lands being deferred from harvest, RAC chair Connie Beauvais said during a Port Angeles Business Association meeting in November. Unless replacement timber is found, the state, county and junior taxing districts all lose out on that revenue.
“I love trees,” Beauvais said. “But these are working forests that we need to maintain for our taxing districts.”
In addition to managing county trust land, the DNR also owns and manages state land for the undivided interest of the state, Buck said.
However, in setting aside so much county land, Buck said the state has been treating the county land as if it was one and the same with the state land. That has resulted in the DNR’s loyalty being divided between the state and the county, he added, barring it from fulfilling its common law duty to manage the trust land with undivided interest for the county.
Buck said that could be the grounds for a lawsuit.
“We need to start to question who we are, what we agreed to in 1935, and whether that agreement is being carried out to this day,” Buck said. “Elected representatives need to start thinking about legal action against the state of Washington, which has been breaching its authority.”
The DNR also holds thousands of acres from other counties in trust. Many of those counties, especially those that generate a significant portion of their income from timber revenue, are economically struggling from deferred timber harvests.
“This issue is much larger than just this county,” Commissioner Randy Johnson said during a December RAC meeting.
If Buck’s argument is verified by the prosecuting attorney’s office and the county decides to move forward with a lawsuit, Johnson said other counties might be interested in joining.
The first step, however, is a review of the argument and its legal strength. Once that happens, the next steps can be evaluated.
“We’re just at the very beginning stages [of this issue],” Johnson said. “I don’t know what direction we’re going to go.”
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
