Schools Demand Continuance of Old Taxpayer Scam
28th June 2024
“Rural schools in California already struggle with declining enrollment, staffing shortages and wildfires,” says Carolyn Jones, writing for Calmatters, a left-leaning policy web site. “Now they’re facing the possible loss of money they’ve relied on for more than a century.” What Jones doesn’t say is that the counties have been scamming federal taxpayers for that money for decades and they’d naturally rather continue the scam than have to raise the money locally.
Federal lands aren’t taxable by state or local governments. When Congress began setting aside national forests, it decided to make it up to local governments by giving them 25 percent of any revenues the forests earned. In some places, the counties got 50 percent. Congress specified that national forest payments to counties had to be spent on roads and schools.
When Congress passed this law, it never imagined that national forest revenues would someday be well in excess of a billion dollars a year. By the 1970s, many counties, particularly those in Washington, Oregon, northern California, Idaho, and a few other places were getting far more money in 25-percent funds than they would have gotten if they had been able to collect property taxes.