The Daily Inter Lake

The Bush administration's intention to revisit a plan to sell off select tracts of Forest Service lands to fund a program that reimburses counties and schools is drawing the same heat that it did last year.

The administration's Forest Service budget for 2008 once again includes a plan to sell up to $800 million in federal lands to pay for the Secure Rural Schools Act.

Last year, a similar proposal was widely criticized to the point where it was scrapped by Congress.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was predicting a similar outcome this year.

"We're going to find a way to fund the Secure Schools program without selling even one acre of public land," he said in a press release Monday. "Auctioning off our outdoor heritage is not the way to do this. Our public lands in the West are sacrosanct. The President can count on a fight in Congress."

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey scheduled a press conference today to explain the proposal. He held several similar events last year as part of an effort to sell the program.

Last year's plan was billed as an effort to sell mostly isolated tracts of national forest land that no longer played a role in the Forest Service mission. But it involved dozens of tracts in Northwest Montana, enough to raise considerable opposition.

According to Baucus, the latest proposal calls on the Forest Service to sell $800 million worth of public lands, with about half of that revenue going to fund the Secure Rural Schools program for four years, and the other half going to "conservation programs" and administrative expenses.

Baucus says that $400 million is about 25 percent of what's needed to fund the program for four years at current levels.

The Wilderness Society was among the groups that lashed out at the latest proposal.

"It's a sad commentary that the administration would completely ignore the overwhelming opposition that this misguided plan created last year by releasing a nearly identical proposal to sell the country's public lands to help remedy their poor fiscal decisions," said Michael Francis, the organization's national forest program director.

"A number of proposals were introduced in the last Congress to provide funding for rural counties without selling our valuable public lands," he continued.

Baucus was among lawmakers who proposed alternative means of funding the county payments program. Those proposals were debated into the final days of last year's Congress, but none were approved.

County and school organizations across the country are concerned about having to account for reduced funding starting this year.

Montana counties and schools are collectively projected to lose $14.3 million a year. Flathead County will lose $1.5 million and Lincoln County will lose $5.9 million. The funding accounts for more than 18 percent of Flathead County's road budget.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com