COEUR d'ALENE - The U.S. Forest Service issued a press release Thursday detailing the dramatic funding cuts Idaho's rural counties will realize in the Secure Rural Schools program this year.

The agency sent letters telling governors in 41 states how much money they are losing after Congress ended subsidies that were established by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, in 2000.

The Secure Rural Schools and Communities Self-Determination Act has appropriated money for 746 counties containing federal timber land since 2000.

The subsidy was created to replace the dwindling funding that was provided to these counties under the Twenty-Five Percent Fund Act of 1908, which was a commitment Congress made to rural forest counties when it decided to set aside 193 million acres of forest lands for the National Forest System.

Last year the SRS program split a little more than $300 million to the 41 states receiving the money. Idaho received $28,312,943 of that money and disbursed that to counties with federal forest lands within their borders.

This year the Forest Service said it will only be distributing $50 million nationwide and Idaho will receive less than 10 percent of its previous funding - $2,031,639.

With no reauthorization of the SRS program, the forest service must default back to the Twenty-Five Percent Act, which requires the agency to pay timber counties 25 percent of the receipts collected from the national forests in each of the 41 states.

Seven-year rolling averages of receipts from national forests are required to calculate the 25 percent payments for the benefit of public schools and public roads.

The 25 percent money cannot be used for anything else, but the SRS funding could.

When logging was cut by 90 percent on federal forests in the Northwest to protect the spotted owl and salmon, Congress started approving the subsidies.

As logging cutbacks spread around the country to protect fish, wildlife and clean water, Sen. Wyden and Sen. Craig sponsored the Secure Rural Schools bill, which expanded the subsidies.

Lindsay Nothern, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said Friday the SRS funding fell victim to politics when Congress passed a stop-gap funding bill at the end of the session.

"The debate was in the House, and they wanted to get more logging done," he said, adding it refused to reauthorize SRS. "Our office feels strongly that SRS should be reauthorized."

The House attached a one-year extension to a bill increasing logging on national forests, but that bill gained no traction in the Senate because of a veto threat from the White House.

"This drop unfortunately shows the fallout from House Republicans' puzzling decision at the end of 2014 to reject my efforts to fund and pass Secure Rural Schools payments for one more year," Wyden posted on his blog Friday. "These payments are an essential lifeline for rural Oregonians who need to fund their roads and law enforcement as well as their schools."

The subsidy issue is expected to come up again this year, and Idaho's congressional delegation is working with Oregon's congressional delegation to find a permanent remedy to the SRS issue.

"The issue is trying to find the offsets to fund the program," Nothern said. "And we think more oil and gas drilling would generate the offsets we need."

Sen. Jim Risch issued a statement Friday supporting the reauthorization.

"As always, I am committed to the reauthorization of Secure Rural Schools. I would prefer a longer-term fix to provide more certainty to the counties that rely on this funding, but we need a solution very soon," the senator wrote. "I have always pushed for active forest management and will continue to do so, but until the timber revenues from our National Forests increase and refill the 25-percent fund, the federal government must maintain this lifeline to our rural schools and counties."

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he has a commitment from House Speaker John Boehner to try to renew Secure Rural Schools for one year sometime in the first quarter of this year. But Republicans also are expected to try again to boost logging on national forests.

"I think we should do both," Nothern said. "We should increase timber harvests on federal lands and seek a more permanent solution to SRS funding."