A tiny school district in Northwest Oregon surrounded by state forestland will get its day in court against the Oregon Department of Forestry over a conservation plan that would reduce logging to protect threatened and endangered species, and potentially lead to less school funding.
The Jewell School District, a single school serving 115 students in Clatsop County, first sued the forestry department more than two years ago after the Board of Forestry approved the Western Oregon State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan. The plan scales back logging an average of 20% on 630,000 thousand acres of western state forests for the next 70 years to protect watersheds and 17 threatened or endangered species. In the Clatsop State Forest, logging must be reduced roughly 35% over 70 years.
Jewell School District, which currently receives enough money from state logging revenue from the Clatsop State Forest that it does not qualify for money from the Oregon state school fund, alleged the forestry department’s plan would cause itself, and the school, serious financial harm.
A Clatsop County Circuit Court judge dismissed the case about six months later.
But on Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal and sent the case back to the circuit court for oral arguments and a trial that has yet to be scheduled.
District Superintendent Cory Pederson did not immediately respond to a call and email Thursday morning requesting comment on the developments. Joy Krawczyk, a spokesperson for the forestry department, said they do not comment on pending litigation.
John DiLorenzo, a lawyer for Portland-based law firm Davis Wright Tremaine who is representing the district, said in an email that he is hopeful the same court that dismissed the case two years ago will rule in favor of the district at trial.
DiLorenzo is perhaps most well known for unsuccessfully suing the state on behalf of several timber-dependent counties for over $1 billion in 2019, for not allowing what they claimed was enough logging in state forests. The Capital Chronicle reported in 2024 that the Jewell School district, despite arguing budget woes in the case, had spent roughly $150,000 on DiLorenzo, who charged at the time $955 per hour. DiLorenzo on Thursday said he could not immediately share how much the district had paid for his services since without permission from his firm.
DiLorenzo was clear in 2024 that the aim of the case is to overturn the Western Oregon State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan.
“I’m hardly one to obfuscate the truth,” he told the Capital Chronicle. “What we are up to is putting a maximum amount of pressure on the Department of Forestry to do what we think it should have done from a policy perspective, which is to increase harvest revenues above and beyond what this particular habitat conservation plan is going to result in.”
The case
Clatsop County is one of 13 timber-heavy counties that have received a portion of revenue from timber harvests on state forests within county boundaries for about the past 80 years. That money goes to transportation infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and public services, including schools.
Jewell leaders and DiLorenzo argue that reducing state timber harvests will cause financial harm to the Oregon Department of Forestry and the school.
DiLorenzo is hinging the case on an interpretation of a 2010 administrative rule that orders the Oregon Department of Forestry to manage state forest logging levels to adequately fund itself. Timber revenue now covers about 98% of the department’s operating and administrative costs for managing state forests, and the suit alleges that the harvest levels proposed in the new habitat conservation plan fail to do that.
The Clatsop County Circuit Court judge that dismissed the case in 2024 did so in part because, he said, it’s not within his power to order the Forestry Department to log more to make its budget whole. To begin, he wrote, the forestry department could make all kinds of budgetary decisions to raise revenue or reduce spending that would not require increased logging. Second, it might raise revenue by logging in a different state forest, thereby meeting its funding needs in a way that brings no relief to Jewell School District.
DiLorenzo appealed the case, and the state appeals panel ruled that the circuit court has the power to make the department prove it can comply with the 2010 rule, and that the district has a financial interest in that compliance.
“There is no question that the department is not complying with its ‘balanced budget rule,’ DiLorenzo said. “The remedy is to order the state forester to increase harvest levels to the point that the department can break even and the local districts can receive what they were entitled to.”
One perhaps unforeseen hiccup in his case: The 2010 rule is expected to expire this summer, when federal natural resource agencies are slated to approve Oregon’s western forests habitat plan, and the state forestry board is on track to officially adopt new forest management rules associated with it.
DiLorenzo said he doubts federal officials under the Trump administration will sign off on Oregon’s plan, though scientists and staff at the federal agencies have been reviewing the plan for more than a year.
“They may, in fact, reject it outright,” DiLorenzo said.
Money for school
Since the habitat conservation plan was approved by the state forestry board two years ago and logging has been scaled back to reflect it, Jewell School District went from a $4.3 million annual operating budget covered entirely with timber revenue from state forest harvests, to a $3.6 million annual operating budget, still funded entirely with timber revenue, a drop of about 17%.
But that figure is exactly what the state would allocate Jewell if it didn’t have all that timber revenue, which Jewell has historically received at a level so high that the Oregon Department of Education doesn’t actually send the district any state school fund dollars.
Under the state education funding equalization formula – which takes into account enrollment along with student needs for language services, disability, poverty and more – Jewell would have to operate on about $3.6 million or less, according to the education department. Department officials have repeatedly said they are prepared to supply the district with enough funding to ensure it has roughly $3.6 million if timber levels ever provide less revenue than that, but DiLorenzo and district leaders have said that is unacceptable.
There’s at least one type of logging operation that’s getting away with sending nothing to Jewell School District or to the state school fund, which is seeded almost entirely with income tax revenue and money from the corporate activities tax.
That’s the Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, that own roughly half of all forested land in Clatsop County, according to data and maps from the nonprofit Coast Range Association. Those trusts, owned by multinational corporations like Greenwood Resources and Weyerhaeuser, pay no income or corporate taxes to the state or county under Oregon law.