Officials with a tiny school district nestled in northwest Oregon’s Clatsop State Forest have paid tens of thousands of dollars to fight new state limits on logging and are prepared to “bet the farm” to support its lawsuit against the state, the Capital Chronicle has learned.
The Jewell School District has paid $148,000 and owes $3,000 more to lawyer John DiLorenzo for his work on its lawsuit that was filed in March, according to records obtained by the Capital Chronicle. Jewell’s superintendent, Cory Pederson, said the cost was justified.
The Jewell School District in the Clatsop State Forest predicts it could lose millions in revenue if a plan to scale back logging on Oregon's western state forests is implemented.
Courtesy of Oregon Department of Forestry
“Whatever the district pays in fees will be well worth the chance to avoid what will otherwise be a catastrophic loss to Jewell and the local community,” Pederson said. “This is truly a ‘bet the farm’ issue for our district.”
DiLorenzo, who’s part of the David Wright Tremaine law firm, which has offices in Portland and New York, also defended his $955 per hour fee.
“You could hire a lawyer who doesn’t know anything about the area, even if it’s a lower rate, who spends three times as much time on it,” DiLorenzo said. “I’m used to working out of my New York office, and I tell you that rate certainly isn’t high in New York.”
The suit, filed in Clatsop County Circuit Court against the Oregon Department of Forestry, state forester Cal Mukumoto and state forest chief Mike Wilson, claims the logging limits in the Western State Forests Habitat Conservation Plan will drastically reduce revenue for the school district, forcing it to cut staff and services. For decades, the district has used logging revenue and not state money to fund its school budget, pumping it up beyond what other Oregon districts get from the state on a per-pupil basis.
DiLorenzo and district leaders would like to see the state scrap the conservation plan and restore previous timber harvests, allowing it to maintain its current funding.
“This litigation is one of the very few options the district has left to avoid a disastrous loss of revenues which will be the result of the Department of Forestry’s new harvest policies,” Pederson said in an email.
But Gov. Tina Kotek’s office and the Oregon Department of Education have said the state would ensure the district meets its state-mandated per-pupil funding requirement. Projections of how much money the district would actually lose year-over-year as logging is scaled back is still unknown.
Betting the forest
The Western State Forests Habitat Conservation Plan, once approved by federal agencies, would regulate logging and conservation on about 630,000 acres of state forests for the next 70 years, including the Clatsop State Forest, to protect 17 threatened or endangered species.
The cost to the school district is unclear. According to Pederson, the district could lose up to $3 million in the first year of the plan and more in the years following. DiLorenzo previously said the habitat plan would scale back logging 35% on the Clatsop State Forest, which would scale back school funding 35%.
Representatives of the Oregon Department of Forestry and Kotek’s office told the Capital Chronicle via email they do not have any projections yet to show potential funding losses for individual school districts. Anca Matica, a Kotek spokesperson, said in an email that the plan is projected to decrease annual timber revenue to Oregon’s 14 timber counties by about 23%, and that any school district that loses funding because of this would be compensated under the state education funding equalization formula. The formula, which takes into account enrollment along with student needs for language services, serving students with disabilities and poverty, is used to fund all other schools in Oregon.
Using logging revenues, Jewell School District has a current $4.3 million budget to pay for the district’s single K-12 school, which has 124 students, 15 teachers, six education assistants, a counselor and two administrators, according to the most recent data from the Oregon Department of Education.
The $4.3 million budget is about $680,000 more than the district would get under the state education funding equalization formula. Without the timber revenues, Jewell would have to operate on about $3.6 million, according to the Oregon Department of Education, or 17% less than it has now. The education department is prepared to supply the district with enough money to ensure it has $3.6 million to operate, Oregon Department of Education spokesperson said, but DiLorenzo said that it would be unacceptable for the district to accept less money than it currently receives from timber.
“You know, if you talk about an endangered species, I think one endangered species are adequately educated children, and we’re failing miserably,” DiLorenzo said. “We’re underfunding education, and Jewell is one of those few districts that is able to meet the state’s quality education funding models. We don’t want that to go away.”
Paying the bills
Besides DiLorenzo, two other David Wright Tremaine lawyers also are working on the case. According to the district’s contract with the law firm, it is paying Aaron Stuckey $825 an hour and Chris Swift $650 per hour. DiLorenzo, who handled the records request, initially declined to release itemized billing records to the Capital Chronicle, citing attorney-client privilege. After the Capital Chronicle appealed to the Clatsop County District Attorney, DiLorenzo agreed to share the amounts that had been billed and paid so far.
The district does not have a ceiling for spending on the case, Pederson said.
The district has a $20 million investment fund that is pegged for future capital improvements, with about $12 of that for infrastructure, Pederson said. He did not say what the other $8 million is for.
“We maintain this fund because, unlike most other school districts, we question whether our timber-employment reliant community will ever be able to authorize or afford future bond measures if the community is adversely impacted by significantly decreased harvest levels forecasted as a result of the department’s policies,” he said.
If the case goes to trial, Pederson said he is prepared to ask other school districts in western Oregon to help defray the costs.
The court recently held a hearing on the state’s motion to dismiss that the judge has yet to rule on.
Pederson said that despite the district’s financial concerns underlying the case, it needs to pay for DiLorenzo because of his expertise. .
“Mr. DiLorenzo and his firm have significant experience and familiarity dealing with this topic,” he said.
DiLorenzo, who unsuccessfully sued the state for over $1 billion in 2019 for not allowing enough logging in state forests, said he feels confident in the case he has with Jewell School District.
“I think we can ultimately prevail in this case,” he said.
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