Officials in counties where voters have approved taxes to support 4-H and extension services are worried they might end up paying for other counties’ programs.

“There are counties such as Deschutes that have local taxing districts or are putting general fund money into their 4-H programs,” said Deschutes County Administrator Dave Kanner. “If you regionalize it, I think there’s a legitimate concern about disparate funding of extension/4-H services.”

Oregon State University Extension Service provides agricultural expertise on the ground in all 36 Oregon counties for ranchers, gardeners, food preservers and kids raising livestock. State money generally pays for faculty, experts on small farms and other subjects, while counties pay for office space, supplies and administrative employees.

Kanner said he has not seen any plan to specifically take money from counties with extension tax districts, but he is worried that Oregon could be headed that way.

A group of Oregon State University extension faculty made recommendations earlier this year for how the service can cut administrative costs, raise revenue, move more information online, and better assess the public’s needs. The proposal came in response to a long-term decline in revenue, which sharpened over the summer due to state budget cuts. Kanner is concerned that regionalizing the extension service could lead to more mingling of money and ultimately result in Deschutes County taxpayers’ money funding programs in other counties.

Scott Reed, OSU’s vice provost for university outreach and engagement, and director of the OSU Extension Service, said he understands concerns voiced by Kanner and other officials. Faculty members already provide educational programs across county lines, and the extension service will ensure the staff’s time is shared equitably under any new structure, Reed said.

“What we hope to be able to do is design a system where expertise is shared, but counties get full value for their contribution to the extension service,” Reed said.

Funding the service

Sixty percent of the extension service’s funding comes from the state’s general fund budget, so the services faced the same 9 percent cut that Gov. Ted Kulongoski proposed three months ago for state agencies supported by taxes.

Following the May cuts, the extension service’s annual budget is approximately $30 million, which includes about $20 million from the state, $3.7 million in federal money and $6.2 million in local county-level funds, Reed said.

A group of county officials and OSU staff is assessing the OSU faculty recommendations, and the next meeting is Sept. 14. OSU extension tentatively plans to begin implementing the final recommendations between 2011 and 2013, the extension’s Regional Director Doug Hart wrote in an e-mail.

Crook County Judge Mike McCabe said Monday that he, too, is concerned that regionalization could take money away from Crook County’s extension services.

“There’s going to be a pretty big pushback in Crook if that happens,” McCabe said.

Crook County has a permanent tax rate to support extension services, and in the budget year that ended in June, the tax raised $201,457, said Treasurer and Tax Collector Kathy Gray.

McCabe also said that the university should not be adding faculty at its Corvallis campus when the extension service is reducing staff.

“We need them out here in the country,” McCabe said. His father was a sheep rancher with an eighth-grade education, but the elder McCabe “tried to listen to the extension agent as best he could,” McCabe said. And with the economy still down, many people working in agriculture need help from the extension service more than ever as they try to increase production.

Deschutes County’s permanent tax rate for 4-H and extension services, which voters approved in 1982, is expected to raise $373,000 this fiscal year, Deschutes County Financial and Budget Analyst Teri Maerki wrote in an e-mail.

So far, the extension service has avoided layoffs statewide by leaving positions unfilled when employees retire or leave for other reasons, Reed said.

Stretched thin

“We have unfilled positions and vacancies, and work that used to be done by extension faculty that we can no longer afford to place out in Oregon’s offices,” Reed said. “One consequence of that is that we’re asking our people to cover bigger geographic areas. In some cases, we have faculty covering five or more counties.”

OSU Extension Service has reduced staff over the past decade by the equivalent of more than 30 full-time employees, or about 15 percent of the work force, according to a March OSU faculty report on the extension web site. “Traditional state and federal funding is not sufficient to sustain the level of staffing currently in place,” according to the report.

Reed said he is still waiting to find out whether the next state revenue forecast will lead to more budget cuts, to determine whether the extension service will have to lay off employees.

Laura Cleland, communications manager at the Association of Oregon Counties, said the county official and OSU faculty task force have met several times, and had spirited discussions.

“What the task force is all about is looking at a long-term change in how extension functions in Oregon,” Cleland said. “They do seem to be settling on at least one or two (OSU faculty) in each county, then drawing regionally on expertise.”

Currently, the Deschutes County extension office in Redmond has five extension faculty funded with state money and grants, said Dana Martin, the extension’s Deschutes County staff chairwoman who also works on the Central Oregon Small Farms program.

Martin and other extension employees in Crook and Jefferson counties said they have not been informed whether there will be specific cuts to their offices.

Crook County Extension Office Staff Chairman Tim Deboodt said the offices have started looking for alternative revenue sources, such as grants, and are bracing themselves for deeper cuts than the ones that have been announced. One thing is likely, Deboodt said, for those agents delivering programs, they will become more regional and start covering more territory with fewer people.

“We’ll get smaller and more specialized and cover larger and larger portions of the state,” Deboodt said.

The extension service has made a big impact on some local businesses.

Jim Fields has farmed for 28 years and runs a successful community-supported agriculture program from his five-acre farm in Bend. Fields started his farm after taking a 1988 master gardening class with the extension service.

“That gave me the foundation to start my small farm,” Fields said. “I’ve found it invaluable.”