Oregon counties nearing budget crisis

Jackson County, which sits just north of the California state line and is surrounded by the Cascade and Siskiyou mountains, plans to shut down its 15 libraries in early April and lay off about 80 people. Coos County, a popular recreation destination on the southern coast, announced that it would lay off 100 workers, about 25% of the county employees, this spring.

"A lot of these counties were just barely hanging on anyway," says Gil Riddell, a policy manager for the Assn. of Oregon Counties.

The cuts come against the backdrop of efforts in Oregon over the past two decades to move from an economy based on timber, fishing and agriculture to one centered on manufacturing, marketing and the high-tech industry.

Most of this growth has been in the Portland area; rural Oregon economies haven't seen much of it.

And because of the general state of the Oregon economy, Riddell says, many counties that got money under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act actually are worse off than they were before the law passed.

"The state of Oregon in 2001-2003 experienced the largest loss in general budget funds since the Great Depression. We had the highest unemployment numbers in the country," he says.

Reps. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) have introduced a bill that would extend payments under the act for seven years. There also is a move to attach a one- to three-year extension to spending bills expected to come before Congress next month.

DeFazio says the rural funding program is absolutely crucial: "Hundreds of counties and schools across America rely on these funds, and the federal government has a moral, almost a contractual, obligation to them." Seventy members of the House have signed on as cosponsors of the stand-alone bill.

Lane County Commissioner Bill Dwyer thinks an extension of the program is a longshot.

Officials there can wait till May, he said, and then the layoffs and cuts will begin.

"If our chances were slim to none in the last Congress," Dwyer says, "now they are slim to almost none."

But not because federal lawmakers don't see a need to help the rural areas, Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson says.

"There really isn't any organized opposition," he says. "When the safety net passed, those were the budget-surplus years.

"Now we have deficits -- huge amounts of spending for the war, for Katrina, lots of other priorities. New funds have to be found for the program, and that isn't easy."

Robertson says that getting some kind of funding extension passed is everyone's priority right now.

Unlike most officials in Oregon, he's at least somewhat optimistic.

"People wonder what I'm smoking," he says, "that I can continue to voice some optimism.

"I have to believe that no one is willing to say: 'We can't create the funds; get over it' -- because here in Oregon, we can't get over it."

lynn.marshall@latimes.com