Oregon Public Broadcasting

It’s a good news, bad news situation for more than 100 county officials meeting in Eugene this week.

The good news is that in August, the federal government agreed to spend a billion dollars to help balance rural county budgets over the next four years.

The bad news is that the so-called county payments program is almost guaranteed to end in 2012, and counties are being forced to face that. Ethan Lindsey reports.

Near the local train station in downtown Eugene, sits the Lane County Jail.

Captain Doug Hooley, the head of Lane County corrections, says his jail sits right in the path of devastation  with the loss of ‘county payments’.

County payments date back to the Clinton Administration's Northwest Forest Plan.

Clinton created timber payments as a federal subsidy to help rural counties in the Northwest make up for revenue lost by reduced logging.

With the subsidy set to expire this year, Lane County drew up its annual budget as if the timber money wouldn’t come through.

Doug Hooley: “We drastically downsized the jail. That’s because in the corrections budget alone, we lost about $7 million out of a $29 million budget. One of my first jobs was to sit down about 40 deputies across the desk from me, like you are now, and tell them that ‘you are out of a job.’”

With the timber payments money, Hooley says he could house more than 1000 inmates.

But today, Hooley oversees less than 350 inmates.

Doug Hooley: “We’re releasing people that should scare citizens in Lane County. I know my family is at risk, along with everyone else. I carry that home with me at night. I think about the pedophiles and the domestic violence people that have assaulted their wife and left them for dead. Very, very serious crimes that we are having to turn out on the street now.”

In August, as Hooley was choosing which inmates to release early, Congress was debating the Wall Street bailout package.

Congress added four more years of timber payments to that bailout bill, as a sweetener to win Northwest votes.

And that bought time, says the Governor's deputy chief of staff, Tim Nesbitt.

Tim Nesbitt: “We have time now to prepare for and plan for better scenarios, but absent any other action at the county level, state level, federal level, that’s what many of these counties would have faced.”

Nesbitt met with other rural officials at the Association of Oregon Counties conference in Eugene.

Scott Cooper is the Crook County judge – meaning he serves as both the county commissioner and administrator.

He says Lane County’s decision to slash its budget was the prudent thing to do.

Scott Cooper: “I think there has been an element of denial for several years, as people have said, they can’t do this to us, it’s just too big. We’ll just say its not going to happen. And it was happening, and a number of counties, mine included, did go out there and say, alright, we’re going to assume these are going to end and we’re going to rebuild our budgets. But for some of those counties, that isn’t possible, they will cease to exist if these payments, or some substitute for them, go away.”

Josephine County, in the southwestern part of the state, is one of the places at risk of just going away.

Dwight Ellis is a Josephine County Commissioner. He points out that without federal timber payments, his county’s budget would total $3 million.

It costs him $4 million just to keep his jail open. He says forget 2012 when the timber payments phase out.

Ellis says his county will be broke by 2010.

Dwight Ellis: “We won’t have a criminal justice system after 2 years. It’s broken now, but its dead in two year. I’m not going to say bankruptcy, I don’t think Josephine County is ever going to go bankrupt, but it may mean we combine with another county or a region or something like that to maintain ourselves.”

Merging counties was just one of the ideas debated at the conference of counties.

Yet another possibility would be to ask the feds to use a market-based system to reward counties for keeping forests healthy.

Finally, Josephine County Commissioner Ellis wants to sue the federal government. In effect, go to court for the right to cut down trees.

Back at the Lane County jail, captain Doug Hooley isn’t worried about all that.

He says the Lane County commissioners haven’t even decided if the jail will share in any of the recouped timber money this year.

But even if the jail does get some extra money in 2008, Hooley could have to cut back again in 2012.