10/20/08 A Roundabout Financial Boost

A Roundabout Financial Boost. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A lot of people are still standing with their backs against the wall after the financial crisis of a few weeks ago. With many financial institutions forever changed and some completely gone, it will take some time to fully recover even though the President has announced his recovery plan. The financial rescue plan didn't only help Wall Street. It also helped rural schools in 700 counties. Congress included funding for struggling rural schools in the recent financial rescue plan. The money will help schools that took a financial hit from cutbacks to federal timber sales. JONES: The act that originally set up the fund expired in 2006 but with the rescue package it's now funded for the next four years and it will serve 700 counties in 39 states. American Farm Bureau rural issues specialist Elizabeth Jones says originally counties with U.S. forest service lands got funding from sales of timber on federal forest land to offset the reduction in taxable land, but that was severely cut back in the 1990s. JONES: In these counties that are affected, it's really a sigh of relief. Some schools were looking at having to lay off teachers. Some counties were looking at having to lay off county employees. So it's a very big help to those counties that are economically distressed. The 3.3 billion dollars also funds libraries and other services in rural areas. JONES: It had been something that had bounced around congress now for the past two years. It just never seemed to make it to the threshold to either get passed independently or get attached to other education measures. So we're very glad that it's there. Jones explains why the Secure Rural Schools & Community Self Determination Reauthorization Act was needed. JONES: That is money that is intended to offset loss in timber revenues in counties that depended on this timber revenue to fund their schools districts and this extension will go through 2011. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.