A new report from the Rural Engagement and Vitality Center looked at the economies of Eastern Oregon counties and how decisions made by the U.S. Forest Service would affect them. Out of all the areas east of the Cascades, Grant County would face the biggest impacts because of its reliance on the agency. Peter Maille is a professor of economics at Eastern Oregon University and one of the authors of the report. Jim Hamsher is the Grant County Commissioner. They both join us to share the role the federal agency plays in Eastern Oregon communities.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out loud. I’m Dave Miller. No county east of the Cascades is more affected by the decisions of the U.S. Forest Service than Grant County. At the same time, Grant is one of the region’s least economically resilient counties. These are two of the findings in a new report put out by researchers at Eastern Oregon University and some of their regional partners. Peter Maille is a professor of economics at EOU and one of the authors of this report. Jim Hamsher is a Grant County Commissioner. They both join me now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Peter Maille: Hello, Dave.
Jim Hamsher: Good afternoon.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. Peter Maille, first. What was the big idea behind this study?
Maille: The Forest Service, a number of years ago, put together a plan for the national forests in this region and that is a huge outlay of time and money, and in the end it didn’t fly. Too many residents in these counties said this plan does not account for the differences between counties, of which they’re big ones. So they held that plan, they stopped the process, and they engaged us to do a county level look at this region. So, does that answer the question?
Miller: It does. But I’m curious, Jim Hamsher, from your perspective in Grant County, what were the specific critiques in the most recent draft update? And this was in 2019.
Hamsher: We had a lot of access problems with the plan. We pulled it back. We’re trying to get some desired conditions in there, but with our socioeconomic deal, it really didn’t address these outlying counties much at all. So this is a much better comprehensive look.
Miller: What exactly did the Forest Service, Peter Maille, ask you to look into? I mean, they said we’ve gotten this feedback. We didn’t take a granular enough look at the differences in these big counties, in a big part of both Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington. What did they ask you to do?
Maille: Good question. They’re interested in knowing how these counties differ, relative to each other. Were they vulnerable to changes in Forest Service management? Where vulnerability could be. After a lot of discussion, we settled on the idea that a given county is vulnerable to the extent that its economy is resilient. How well can it resist an economic shock or recover from one? And also how exposed is that county, because we had to stay focused on the Forest Service. So obviously a county with little or no connection to the Forest Service wouldn’t be very vulnerable to changes in Forest Service management. While one like Grant County that has a lot of forest land, has income coming from forest land, they would be more ‘exposed’.
Miller: I wanna go back to the resilience question. Is economic resilience essentially synonymous with economic diversification?
Maille: Not really. I would say diversification is one measure. And for example, there are some very strong economies that are really focused. They’re not really diverse. And then there’s other economies that have done very well because they’re diverse. So when it came to our look, diversity is part of it. Diversity is part of our measure.
This is a good example because it gets at some of the trickiness with looking at a given county. You could have an economy with 10,000 workers and if they’re spread evenly between a number of different sectors, they would be considered diverse, economically diverse. Unfortunately, that measure, though, would say that an economy with instead of 10,000 - like 100 or 1,000 - if they were spread evenly, it would be considered a diverse economy. So we complemented the standard diversity measure with another measure; simply the number of firms, to account for the fact that some counties have many firms and others have just a few firms and the intuition being that those would be more vulnerable, less resilient.
Miller: And on the map that you put out, which in some ways crystallizes so much of the overall findings of this report, Grant was the second least economically resilient county among these 14 counties and Wheeler County was the least resilient. So what’s special or important about these two counties in terms of their lack of resilience?
Maille: Good question again. It’s basically two steps; one has to do with the resources that a county has to bring to bear, in terms of say, human capital, social capital, average levels of education, income levels, poverty rates and also natural capital, forest land, agricultural land, irrigation, water for irrigation. And then also how easy is it for a county to convert that wealth, that potential wealth into actual wealth? That’s where Wheeler and Grant, when it comes to how connected they are to the greater outside economy, they’re relatively isolated.
Those measures are, for example, interstate highways, freight railroad. How close are you to a metro area? There are seven or eight measures that we used to characterize how isolated a county is. Those counties are somewhat limited in terms of the natural capital, human capital. But then their conversion factor. How easy is it for them to access markets and make use of the resources they have is tough. They face some barriers there. That’s what leads us to give them that low resilience rating.
Miller: Jim Hamsher, how much did what Peter Maille is talking about here - and more broadly, what he and the team put in the report - was something that you already knew, as opposed to things that you actually learned?
Hamsher: I think a lot of that we already knew here, with our location and really our county is a long way from a freeway. I think my town is about 64 miles, it’s not on a major thoroughfare. And one of the issues is, our economy is based a lot on agriculture and the timber industry and we get some tourism through the summer, but very little in the winter months and very little traffic. In our county over 62% is federal forest ground. So it hurts us as far as, we have to make sure we get our Pell dollars to support our county and our services. We have a lot of governmental jobs through the Forest Service. So it’s really impacted and tied to the forest here.
Miller: How would you describe the county’s current relationship with the Forest Service? And I should say again, it’s an especially important question given that this report has found that no county in Eastern Oregon is more reliant on the decisions made by this federal agency than your county. So what is the relationship like right now?
Hamsher: I think really that the relationship between the county and the Forest Service is probably better now than it’s been in years and years.
Miller: Why is that?
Hamsher: I think the work that we’ve done on the BIC, through the Blues Intergovernmental Council, and we have a great forest supervisor at this time has really helped.
Miller: What is actually coming from this group of local or regional or federal officials as the BIC, the Blues Intergovernmental Council, because often various folks can come together and talk, but it doesn’t really add up to policy changes. So what do you see as the results of these conversations?
Hamsher: We’re just gonna have another public engagement tonight to try to get some more public feedback on desired conditions because none of these are set in stone. And we’re hoping that when they finally roll out their new forest plan, that they’ll have a workable plan that will help everybody. And have a lot less of the negative results than the last plan had when they rolled out.
Miller: Peter Maille, I don’t get the sense that it’s your job to be an advisor at this point to the Forest Service or to local or county governments in terms of next steps. But I am curious, given that you’ve done this work and this analysis, what it suggests to you in terms of the way the Forest Service could or should approach its forest plan?
Maille: I pretty much agree with what Mr. Hamsher said. They commissioned our study, which to me indicates that they really do want to account for the sentiments of the residents in these counties. The extent to which they find some flexibility when they implement the next version of their plan and those activities. For the Forest Service, that can be tough because they have a lot of rules and they don’t always have a lot of flexibility, not their fault. It’s not the folks that live out here. They have the way they do things and there’s not always flexibility. To the extent that they can figure out where they might need some additional flexibility and how these plans are implemented, how contracts are let, or whatever, that’s a county by county discussion. But to the extent that they have some flexibility, they can find some, that would be very helpful, I think.
Miller: Jim Hamsher, do you have a sense for timing right now? The last time the forest service put out a final plan for the three national forests that we’re talking about here - that collectively make up the Blue Mountains Forest - was 1990. I’ve read that these plans are supposed to be updated every 15 years. So we’re more than 17 years late right now. When are we actually going to have a finalized plan?
Hamsher: I’m hoping in the next few years because it’s a very lengthy process and a lot of the stuff that they rolled out in the old plan, they’ve got new science, they’ve got different ideas. They’ve got a lot more county involvement in this. And I’m really hoping that when they finally do roll it out, it’s a plan that can really meet not only our needs for our economy here, but for everyone here. We’ve got a lot of issues here in this forest and many of the forests in the Blues. So I think they’re on the right track. But that will remain to be seen when they finally do roll it out.
Miller: Jim Hamsher and Peter Maille, thanks very much.
Maille: You’re very welcome.
Hamsher: Thank you.
Miller: Jim Hamsher is one of the members of the Grant County Commission. Peter Maille is a professor of economics at Eastern Oregon University. They joined us to talk about this new study which, among other things, found just how reliant Grant County is, the most reliant county in Eastern Oregon on money that comes from U.S. Forest Service contracts.
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