Curry County leaders are pursuing a Good Neighbor Authority agreement with the U.S. Forest Service after their earlier proposal for a long-term timber lease was rejected.
Over the summer, Curry County Commissioner Patrick Hollinger proposed a 25-year lease of national forest land to the U.S. Forest Service. The draft lease, which cited President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for increased timber harvesting, would have facilitated logging on 80,000 acres of federal land in hopes of bringing revenue to the cash-strapped county.
The Forest Service shot down the idea. At a board meeting last week, commissioners said it was all part of their plan.
Commissioner Jay Trost wrote in an email on Sep. 4 that the lease was a tactic to “open the door to discussions” and give Curry County “a seat at the land management table.” At a recent board meeting, he said the GNA agreement was “essentially the initial intention.”
It remains unclear why this strategy was necessary. Good Neighbor Authority agreements allow states, tribes and local governments to partner with the Forest Service on projects such as wildfire mitigation and habitat restoration.
At the meeting on Sep. 3, Hollinger read out bullet points of the potential GNA agreement with the Forest Service, including that it would provide for restoration work, “facilitate sustainable forest service timber sales” and “generate revenue for Curry County.”
While GNA agreements allow counties to invest revenue from timber sales into forest restoration work, they do not allow counties to keep logging revenue for general use, like funding the county’s sheriff department or reducing taxes.
“Counties and Tribes are not authorized to collect or retain revenue generated from the sale of timber under a good neighbor agreement,” according to the law.
A spokesperson from the USDA said timber harvests can be part of GNA restoration projects. Partners can keep a portion of the receipts from timber sales, but the money can only be used for very specific purposes.
“By law, those receipts must be used to cover project costs or reinvested in additional restoration work under the agreement,” according to the USDA spokesperson.
Hollinger, who is spearheading the county’s effort, has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Trost said he would not be able to specify how the proposed GNA agreement differs from the draft lease. But Hollinger’s summary of the agreement mirrors the language of the lease without including acreage figures.
During the Sep. 3 meeting, Trost said the 80,000-acre figure came from casual speculation he had made during an earlier meeting. Rather, the acreage number comes directly from the draft lease commissioners discussed with the Forest Service.
“The purpose of this Agreement is to facilitate a cooperative, sustainable timber harvesting program on approximately 80,000 acres of National Forest System lands within Curry County,” according to the document.
Hollinger discussed both the lease and GNA agreement at meetings in early August. In that meeting, he called the county’s future arrangement with the Forest Service “one of a kind” and a “model contract for many other counties and states to use going forward.”
Good Neighbor Authority agreements exist in Oregon between the Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Currently, no counties in Oregon have a GNA agreement.
In some counties with limited capacity, according to a spokesperson with the Oregon Department of Forestry, it may make sense to partner with the state forestry department under an existing GNA agreement. Curry County has reached out to ODF about a potential partnership.
In early August board meetings, commissioners said an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service was a couple of months away.
