Rep. Greg Walden introduced a bill last week that would reauthorize a federal timber subsidy program providing counties with money for roads and schools, said Walden’s spokesman Andrew Whelan.

The bill, also introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, would extend for seven years a county payments program that began in 2000 but expired in 2006, Whelan said Friday.

Known as the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, the program replaced timber receipts that once helped to pay for schools and roads.

Counties have used that money to help finance schools and roads.

Out of Oregon’s 36 counties, 33 received more than $270 million combined last year from the program. Deschutes County got about $3.5 million, Crook County received $2.4 million and Jefferson County got $550,000, county officials said.

”They depend on this money,” Whelan said. ”Having these programs lost is unacceptable.”

Before the 2000 law, Whelan said Oregon counties were receiving money from older laws requiring the government to share 25 percent of U.S. Forest Service receipts for timber. Those laws also specified that the government share 50 percent of Bureau of Land Management receipts with counties in any state that has federal land from which timber is cut.

But in the 1990s, Whelan said federal timber sales fell by more than 70 percent nationally. As a result, money shared with rural counties throughout the country dropped, cutting school and transportation funding.

Despite the new bill introduced last week, local county officials were not holding their breath.

”We’re not going to count our chickens until the bill actually passes,” Crook County Judge Scott Cooper said. ”There’s a lack of ability to get the job done.”

Deschutes County Administrator Dave Kanner said he has decided not to even include timber payments in the budget.

”I have no idea whether or not this will be reauthorized,” Kanner said Friday. ”I plan to prepare a budget that assumes it will not.”

Jefferson County Commissioner John Hatfield remained optimistic.

”We’re hoping it goes through,” Hatfield said. ”We’re not as dependent on it as some of the other counties, but it’s a substantial amount.”