[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 22122]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    COUNTY PAYMENTS BILL, H.R. 2389

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, on Friday the Senate passed H.R. 2389, the 
``Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 1999.'' 
I have paid close attention to the bill because it has significant 
implications for the State of California. H.R. 2389 is important to my 
State because it provides substantial and desperately-needed revenue to 
rural counties to be used for schools, roads, and other beneficial 
purposes. The bill also, however, creates unprecedented opportunities 
for local stakeholders to play a role in decision-making on Federal 
lands. It is this latter feature of the bill that has the potential to 
have a negative impact on the health of our forests.
  I am deeply disappointed at the version of the bill that was just 
passed. For months I worked closely with my Senate colleagues to 
negotiate a compromise proposal that included safeguards to help ensure 
that the bill would not lead to increased exploitation of our federal 
timber resources. This earlier version of the bill (S. 1608), which 
passed the Senate by unanimous consent, benefitted greatly from changes 
that clarified the appropriate role of local communities in Federal 
land management decisions and directed local projects funded under this 
bill towards environmentally beneficial activities rather than 
commodity production. Unfortunately, many improvements that I fought 
for in the Senate-passed bill have either been discarded or weakened in 
H.R. 2389.
  I pledge to monitor closely implementation of this Act to see if it 
results in local projects that involve unsustainable logging, salvage, 
and other types of environmentally damaging activities. I hope this 
does not materialize, but if it does, I will seek to make improvements 
to the Act.

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