Brunell: Our schools need money from state timber sales

Our state’s founders felt so strongly about adequately funding public education, they established the Common School Trust. It encompasses more than 1.8 million acres and its purpose is to continue to offset school construction costs with money from log sales and shoreline and agriculture leases.

While other states have squandered their federally allocated lands, Washington has not. In fact, our elected officials wisely added trust lands beginning when Washington entered the Union in 1889.

The largest annexations occurred during the Great Depression when the state took over the management of logged-over and abandoned lands. The state set up county trusts so counties where the lands are located had a funding source.

Today, proceeds from those trust lands not only help pay for public K-12 school construction, but fund our state colleges and universities, counties and prisons. Even the $7 million used to complete our state Capitol building in 1928 came from logging in Capitol Forest just west of Olympia.

“Compromising the health of our forests by not maintaining harvests on state trust lands would mean dramatic reductions in jobs and timber for Washington mills and rural communities,” Jim McEntire, former Clallam County commissioner, recently wrote in the Seattle Times.

Washington is the nation’s second-largest timber producer, supporting 106,000 jobs and generating $5.2 billion in wages in rural communities.

In 1984, the state Supreme Court (Skamania v. State of Washington) reasserted the Department of Natural Resources is obligated to follow the common law duties of a trustee which includes generating revenue, managing trust assets prudently and “acting with undivided loyalty to the trust beneficiaries.”

As a practical matter, it is highly improbable the Legislature would replace timber receipts with a higher business and occupation (gross receipts) tax on our state’s businesses or even enact a first-ever state capital gains tax, as Franz suggested.

The governor and lawmakers will continue to be hard-pressed to scrape together the funding just to operate our public K-12 education system as directed by the state Supreme Court under the McCleary decision.

The court continues to fine the Legislature $100,000 a day because it has not come up with the money it feels our schools need to comply with the law. On Oct. 10, justices announced they will give the 2017 Legislature an opportunity to address the issue before considering additional sanctions.

Making up $313 million in revenue coming from timber sales and aquatic leases is just not in the cards. As a political matter, raising taxes has consequences.

Meanwhile, DNR continues to fulfill its obligations, which is to earn money for the trusts.

Don Brunell, retired as president of the Association of Washington Business, is a business analyst, writer, and columnist. He lives in Vancouver and can be contacted at TheBrunells@msn.com.