BELLEFONTE – U.S. Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson and a bipartisan group of 30 members of Congress sent a letter yesterday to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Management and Budget questioning why the Obama Administration is retroactively subjecting Secure Rural Schools (SRS) payments, which were made to counties in January based on fiscal year 2012 revenues, to the fiscal year 2013 sequester.
Due to the continued inability of the federal government to manage National Forest lands and provide local communities with a meaningful share of revenues from timber receipts, Congress has approved SRS payments to provide rural counties with funds for teachers, schools, police officers, emergency services and infrastructure. The SRS program was most recently extended through fiscal year 2012 as part of the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” that was signed into law by President Obama on July 6, 2012.
The Department of Agriculture distributed $323 million to 41 states in accordance with that law in January of this year. The Obama Administration is now requesting repayment of $17.9 million in SRS and 25 percent fund payments that have already been disbursed to states.
In the letter, the members request that the repayment be halted and ask for a detailed explanation of the legal authority for demanding repayment of fiscal year 12 funds that have already been paid out by the federal government.
“Though the Forest Service was aware of the pending automatic spending reductions for many months, and the sequester took effect on March 1, the agency made no mention of an impact on SRS payments until March 20. For the Administration to announce three months after the disbursement of these payments that they are subject to the sequester, and that states will receive a bill for repayment of funds already distributed to counties, appears to be an obvious attempt by President Obama’s Administration to make the sequester as painful as possible,” wrote the members in the letter.
Thompson further stated, “Using sequestration to mask the administration’s burdensome and restrictive land use policies, which have blocked natural resource production on federal lands at the expense of our local economies, is unacceptable.”
“If the Forest Service allowed for adequate amounts of sustainable timber harvesting, our National Forests could actually be garnering a profit for the Treasury,” Thompson added. “Instead, the administration is stealing from rural America and using the guise of sequestration as the rationale for questionable, if not unlawful, actions.”