Commissioners urge land management study

MINERAL COUNTY – Mineral County Commissioners passed a resolution at their weekly meeting last week urging state law makers to begin to study the feasibility of transferring control of federal land in the county to the state and possibly the county.

Resolution 2-27-15 urges the governor and the state legislature to “objectively study, plan and pursue reassigning ownership and management responsibilities of the federally controlled public lands in Mineral County, Montana to state and local authorities.” Commissioner Duane Simons said he hoped the measure would garner support from neighboring counties that are in a similar position as Mineral County.

Simons said, because of the questions surrounding whether Congress would approve Secure Rural Schools (SRS) funding that offsets the lack of revenue from logging in Mineral County, it was his opinion that control of the land in the county could be the only thing that saves the area from a dire financial situation in the future.

“We have fought every year to get that (SRS) renewed,” Simons said. “This year, it wasn’t renewed and that is going to impact Mineral County very hard. I don’t think the counties should suffer if they are over 50 percent federally owned. Why can’t the counties manage part of that?”

Last year, SRS funding supplied Mineral County with approximately $1.2 million for schools, roads and other basic public services. This year, Simons said the county only received a little over $60,000.

“Imagine if that was your checkbook,” Simons said. “You go from $1.2 million to $65,000. What do you do? Where do make those budget cuts if something isn’t replaced?”

Simons said they do have at least one ally at the state level. He said Senator Jennifer Fielder has been working on behalf of studying a land transfer from federal control to state and local control. He said simply studying the idea of a transfer was all they were asking for at this point.

“There hasn’t been a study done in Montana,” Simons said. “Folks in Mineral County want to look at it. Without having a study, how do you know? We wanted to show some support for Fielder with this resolution. It will be distributed to other counties to see if they want to sign on to it. This really impacts Mineral County.”

Simons said, while there has been consistent work done regarding land management issues in the area and there is a timber sale in the works, one project every few years wasn’t going to sustain the county financially if SRS continues to be up in the air.

“We do have Cedar Thom but one sale every eight years isn’t going to cut it,” Simons said. “Collaboration is fine but it has to go faster than every eight years. If we only have one sale every eight years, every mill in the state will be gone except one or two. The need is out there. Our forests are dead and dying and nothing is being done about it. It’s just business as usual so we put forth this resolution. We need to get this study looked at.”

Simons said a copy of the resolution would be sent to Governor Bullock who has not been in support of a study in the past.