Bad timing, Ted

Ted Kulongoski sometimes has exceptionally poor timing.

Take, for instance, the Oregon governor’s proposal earlier this year to make things even tougher for the state’s beleaguered private forest owners.

Fortunately, the landowners who testified before the Legislature, including some from Baker County, were more persuasive than the governor.

Kulongoski, faced with an overextended state budget, wanted to require landowners to pay 55 percent of the annual fire protection budget of the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Now, property owners and the state each pay 50 percent of the bill.

Now, 5 percent is a relatively minor amount.

The situation is especially dire for many landowners in Northeastern Oregon, due to an unfortunate confluence of circumstances:

• Log prices are dismal, with no significant improvement looming.

• Fire protection costs, meanwhile, have risen over the past two years (although the rate is likely to drop slightly in 2010).

• Forests in our region are less valuable, and generate less income less often, because trees grow much slower here than in the wetter, more temperate forests west of the Cascades.

Considering the situation, Kulongoski’s proposal seemed particularly cruel.

Fortunately, not only did the Legislature reject the governor’s proposal, but the Department of Forestry is considering ways to cut costs for eastside forest owners.

Among the possible tactics is reducing landowners’ share from the current 50 percent, State Forester Marvin Brown said.

There’s much more at stake in this matter than the value of private property, too.

We’re worried that if owners can barely afford their annual fire protection fees, then they won’t be able to properly manage their land.

And neglected forests are much more susceptible to insects, disease and wildfire.

The bottom line here is that by raising fees on forest owners now, the state probably would make more likely the very fires that those fees are supposed to prevent.

That’s a bad deal, and certainly not worth the extra 5 percent the governor wanted landowners to pay.