The financial trainwreck confronting the Josephine County is not the fault of our Board of Comissioners. Nor is it the fault of our new Sheriff suddenly asking for more money. It is a situation rooted in the history and tradition of our land and nation. It may not be the final act in the play, but it is certainly a dramatic climax.

When the pilgrims arrived in this land, they found a vast, unbroken forest extending from the eastern seaboard to the Mississippi River. (Read Cooper's leather-stocking tales for a description.) What you might call a common purpose from that inception has been the objective to clear the trees and render the land arable for agriculture. From the Atlantic to the Great Stoney Mountains (as the Rockies used to be called), that purpose has been accomplished and the United States is today one of the three bread baskets of the world.

That accomplishment came as a result of conscious national policy. It was effected primarily through the Homestead Act. Under the act, settlers were given sections of government land in exchange for doing specific improvements to that land. Basically that boiled down to a) clear the land, b) build a home, and c) sow the land.

During the Civil War, we came to appreciate the strategic importance of railroads. As a consequence the nation, in addition to the Homestead Act, embarked upon a policy of land grants for the construction of railroads. As a company completed a section of railroad, they earned grants of sections of land extending laterally from the right of way. One such grant, undertaken in 1866, was for the construction of the Oregon and California Railroad: a line planned to connect Sacramento and Portland. Under the grant, one company built the line from Sacramento to the Oregon line and a second company built the line from Portland to the State line. They met near Ashland.

A peculiarity of the O&C grant was the provisio that the granted parcels of land be sold to settlers for homestead purposes (Selling, incidently, at the same rate as land under the Homestead Act.). In this regard, it is clear that Congress was following the same philosophy as undertaken in the Homestead Act. It was Congress' intent that the land was to be cleared, settled, and rendered arable.

For the most part, the plan went as intended. Whole towns were laid out, platted, and sold in parcels. Grants Pass and Medford are where they are because that's where the railroad wanted a station. A topographical analysis of the map of the present day O&C lands demonstrates what went wrong. Up the entire length of the Willamette Valley, the O&C lands were disposed of according to plan. Also, too, in the Rogue Valley. Today, there are no flat land O&C lands. Rather, they are in the mountains. Nearly perpendicular, rugged, and totally unsuitable for settlement and agriculture. The land involved presents a challenge just to road building.

The original O&C Railroad went bankrupt when it reached the mountains and found itself unable to sell land to finance further construction. Ultimately, it was taken over by the better funded Southern Pacific RR and the road was completed. Then the economy turned to the railroad's advantage. Miles of worthless land became very valuable, although not to settlers. Rather, the timber which previously had been a nuisance to be cleared, became valuable as such and the railroad sold the land to investors, in violation of the grant provisos.

The entire history of the O&C is a story of conflict, incidental fraud, conspiracy, and crooked politics. Finally Teddy Roosevelt had enough and the government undertook criminal actions in a Statewide scandal. Congress moved to take back the unsold lands by way of civil action in 1916. Title to lands that had been on the county tax rolls in the name of the railroad was suddenly in question and the railroad stopped paying its taxes, threatening many counties with bankruptcy.

In response, Congress paid the unpaid accrued taxes and started county welfare by paying the counties "payments in lieu of taxes."

After three trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, title finally revested to the United States. A complex system of timber sales and revenue sharing was adopted whereby Congress recovered the costs of buying the land back from the railroads, associated expenses, and recouped taxes paid on the lands, and the counties received payments in lieu of taxes. The system suffered fits and starts and it was decades before the government recovered its money. Payments to the counties were never consistent or regular and counties continually staggered in and out of the threat of bankruptcy. 

Finally, in 1937, Congress established the O&C Lands Act of 1937, establishing permanent timber production as the primary utilization for the O&C lands, with provision for 50-50 revenue sharing with the counties. Administration of the lands was given to the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management rather than to Teddy Roosevelt's Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. This signaled an important change in national policy.

The management of the re-vested lands at the hands of the Forest Service had been in accord with the traditional objective of eradication and clearing of the trees. The Forest Service had been bent on clearing land as fast as possible.

In the meantime, a concern for conservation had arisen in Interior. The BLM proposed a radical new idea called "sustained yield" timber harvesting which means simply, "Don't cut more than you replant and don't cut faster than you can grow."

In the political tussle in Washington, the conservationists won out and sustained yield became the practice. After initially dealing with a host of competing interests (Agriculture vs. Interior, monopolist landed loggers vs. independents, right of way issues, and demands for war production) the BLM finally got sustained yield working after the war. It worked so well that today we have more timber than when we started and for 11 years (1970-1981) Josephine County did not need to collect any taxes from anybody.

In the late seventies however, the conservationists were replaced by a new breed, the environmentalists, as the driving political force. A concept of preservation was urged over that of conservation. Just as conservation had replaced eradication, preservation became the order of the day.

In the early 1990s several things happened which changed the game and established our present jeopardy. In 1990, the owl, rightfully or wrongly, was added to the endangered species list and the new environmental groups used the Endangered Species Act to forestall timber harvesting on the O&C, on the National Forests, in California, Oregon and Washington. In 1992 a new administration came to power in Washington in large measure owing to the support of the environmentalist bloc. In 1992 Clinton and Gore implemented a new Northwest Forest Management Plan which established 80% of the lands of the O&C as "ecological reserves" for the benefit of the owl. Timber sales dwindled nearly out of existence and once again the counties were thrust back under the threat of bankruptcy. To forestall the uproar in all the western states, Congress enacted a series of "safety-net" payments. Congress paid the counties the equivalent of what would have been their timber receipts out of general tax revenues of the United States. Welfare, if you will.

Congress made these payments in a number of ways. As for revenues from Forest Service lands, payments were made under the Forest Service Act, giving counties 25% of the timber sales receipts for the dedicated purpose of use for schools and roads. Payments are made regarding traditional BLM land under the Payment in Lieu of Taxes Act again providing for 25% payment for schools and roads. Under the O&C Act, payment is 50% of the receipts for payment into the county's general fund with no dedicated use restriction. 

In 2000, payment under all these schemes was lumped together in the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. Again, this is welfare funded by the general taxes of the United States. This act expired in June of 2006 and the last payment, funding a large part of the 2006-2007 budget has been received. The act has not been renewed and today we once again confront the bankruptcy crisis.