Bailout bill also bails out county road fund
By CHRIS PETERSON / Hungry Horse News
The $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill passed last week by Congress included about $111 million for Montana as well, a measure put in the spending plan by Montana Sen. Max Baucus.
The cash comes in the form of a four-year reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools Act, a measure that pays counties like Flathead money in lieu of taxes for Forest Service lands.
It's estimated that Flathead County will get about $8.3 million over the period, including about $2.4 million this year alone. The money is used for rural schools and for roads. The funding will help this year's budget, county administrator Mike Pence said. He said the county had left the funding in its recently adopted budget, hoping Congress would get something passed in the 11th hour " and it did that. But if it hadn't, then the budget would have had a significant hole.
The money isn't all for roads. The county usually gets about $900,000 annually for roads, and another $1.3 million in payments in lieu of taxes. The PILT money can be used in any fund, but in previous years, about $500,000 a year is allocated toward county roads.
Montana" Congressional delegation over the past year had tried to reauthorize the bill on several fronts, but to no avail.
The bailout bill failed once in the House and then lawmakers sweetened the pot to get it passed a second time. Part of that sweetening included the additional cash for western states with a lot of federal land, like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon.
'secure Rural Schools is such a vital program. This is going to be a boost for many rural communities, right when they need it," Baucus said. "Unfortunately, Montana is not immune from the crisis on Wall Street, but I"m committed to continuing to create good paying jobs and make sure folks have access to the services they deserve."
Baucus" Secure Rural Schools provision reauthorizes the program for 4 years and includes a funding formula change that could as much as double payments to Montana counties that qualify. In 2006, the Bush Administration had proposed selling off as many as 300,000 acres of public land to renew the program, a move that Baucus and other western U.S. Senators successfully blocked.
But the bailout plan, even with the road funding in place, wasn't popular with other Montana lawmakers.
Sen. Jon Tester voted against the bill as did Congressman Denny Rehberg, road money or not.
The bulk of the bailout bill, of course, centered on shoring up bad debt created by a mortgage crisis in the country, as banks and other financial firms face failure from making bad loans.
"Congress needed to get this right the second time, and get it right quickly." Instead, we faced resistance to any alternatives at every level. This plan was presented by the President and House leadership as take-it-or-leave-it and as a result we got a crisis management response instead of a comprehensive, workable long-and short-term solution," Rehberg said. "We needed a solution that created stability, liquidity and confidence, and we needed a framework for reform. That was not done in this legislation.
'the relaxation in lending standards was the cause of the housing price bubble in the first place." The blame should be placed squarely on the doorstep of the federal government and the political activists working with it. Unless these lending standards are changed, today's bailout crisis will only be the first with more to come."
"After reading this legislation carefully, asking tough questions, and hearing from thousands of Montanans, I have decided this bailout proposal doesn't deserve my vote," Tester said last week. "I don't believe it's tough enough to protect American taxpayers and small businesses. It doesn't require the common sense regulations needed to prevent this mess from happening again. It doesn't go far enough in stripping golden parachutes from the bad actors on Wall Street. And it passes too much debt on to our kids and our grandkids."