“Failing to reauthorize SRS (Secure Rural Schools) funding would devastate our schools, our jobs,” U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, said during a news conference in front of a small rural school in Skamania County on Thursday, Feb. 20.
With the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon’s Vista House and Larch Mountain making up the scenery in view of the Mount Pleasant School in western Skamania County, Gluesenkamp Perez and Skamania County leaders spoke to reporters about the urgency and necessity of reauthorizing the SRS program. The SRS program was co-authored by Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden in 2000.
The program applies to rural communities throughout the country, with many communities in the Washington’s Third Congressional District eligible for the funds.
Earlier in the month, Gluesenkamp Perez joined a bipartisan effort to reintroduce the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act. The effort follows two letters by the congresswoman urging House Leadership to immediately prioritize an extension of the funding program, according to a news release from the office of Gluesenkamp Perez.
Failing to reauthorize the SRS funding would devastate schools, jobs, trades programs in high schools and more, the congresswoman said. The SRS program provides states with millions of dollars in funding to disperse to counties.
In Skamania County, and many others across the country, along with smaller taxing districts, timber harvesting is a key way to provide funds for schools and other beneficiaries. In Clark County, the hotly contested Dabbler Timber Sale may see funds cut for the Battle Ground Public Schools District and other beneficiaries from the sale if litigation against the harvest prevails. Gluesenkamp Perez and other Skamania County leaders highlighted the importance of the SRS program as timber harvesting dwindles.
“The sad truth is that we are now past the January deadline to extend this program and keep payment on track,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “In Skamania County, only 1.8% of our land base can generate the revenue for vital public services and that’s due to the abundance of tax-exempt federal land. I come from a line of folks who worked in the woods and I know how important our harvest rates are to preventing wildfire, which was one of the largest emitters of CO2 in our state last year. To keeping small businesses and family businesses operating and viable, you know, if you’re worried about consolidation of timberland, stalling these sales, putting us in a hole, that’s not the way to create an efficient, competitive market where family businesses can compete.”
Gluesenkamp Perez added that the dwindling timber harvests, and other lack of funding sources for rural communities has taken a toll on the region.
“As a result of all these blows compounding damage to our economy, we’ve seen a loss of jobs, we’ve seen a loss of wealth in our community, we’ve seen a loss of families and to small businesses our communities have been stopped from exercising this self sufficiency due to interminable litigation and federal inaction,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Part of that deal with SRS is that these federal funds would backfill our budget shortfalls that we have been prevented from generating ourselves due to the timber revenue declines. It’s also the fundamental American principle that your ZIP code should not determine the caliber of education you receive, and help folks who choose to stay and fight and be loyal and get bruised on the same land they were born on.”
Skamania County Sheriff Summer Scheyer, hired by the department in 2002, explained her lifelong connection to logging communities that have seen reduced or eliminated harvest activity, as well as the present state of the unpredictability of SRS funding.
“I want nothing more than our county to regain our independence. The responsible timber harvest, however, relying on an unpredictable handout from the federal government for our county to survive has been a forced hand we have been made to accept,” Scheyer said, adding that without SRS funds, the future of Skamania County, specifically public safety, is “bleak.”
Already in 2025, the Skamania County Sheriff's Office was forced to cut two patrol deputy positions due to the lack of SRS funds.
“Personnel cuts are not foreign to the sheriff’s office,” Scheyer said. “Over the past 15 years, due to the continued reduction in SRS funds, the sheriff’s office was forced to cut animal control, a narcotics detective, detective sergeant, chief criminal deputy, telecommunicators, corrections officers and patrol deputies. If SRS funds are not re-appropriated, public safety in Skamania County will not be sustainable as we currently operate. Further personnel cuts will be required.”
Community leaders at the news conference said the present lack of timber harvesting in Skamania County is a reality across rural, forested America, where SRS steps in to fill gaps in school and service budgets.
“I was no stranger to the decimation of the timber industry as I was born and raised in a small logging town ripped to shreds by the economic disaster known as the spotted owl propaganda,” Scheyer said of growing up in Eatonville, which she said has since recovered over time. “Skamania County has not. Unlike my hometown of Eatonville, Skamania County is held hostage by a federal stranglehold known as the United States Forest Service. Eighty percent of Skamania County is comprised of federally managed land, and although President Roosevelt’s vision of multi-use land was well-intentioned, special interest groups who believe Skamania County should be preserved as their convenient playground void of logging have destroyed the financial independence of a once thriving community.”
School board members at the news conference told of the impact the present lack of SRS funds has on the small Mount Pleasant School District and others in the county.
“We are committed to doing everything we can to make cuts furthest from the classroom,” said Liz Wilber, Mount Pleasant School Board member. “But without SRS funds, we will be left to cover budget deficits with levy dollars and reserves.”
