Anatomy of a Financial Crisis

Jackson County has 892 full-time and 149 part-time employees. The total budget for Jackson County in 2005-2006 was $278,341,664.

The central “issue” that faces (and has been facing) Jackson County is the loss of federal O&C dollars. O&C receipts are a subsidy that Congress created in 1937 to compensate Jackson and 17 other Oregon counties for lost tax revenue when the federal government repossessed 2.5 million acres of land from the Oregon & California Railroad.

For decades, O&C funds were so plentiful the County was able to provide many services without relying entirely on property taxes. With the decreasing timber cut and the increasing value of multi-use forest, the County has experienced a dramatic loss of general revenue fund dollars from O&C receipts. This is the money that we use to subsidize many county services like law enforcement, health & human services, juvenile justice, libraries, and roads.

Congress came to the aid of the O&C counties in 1993 by creating a temporary 10-year "safety net" of guaranteed funding to help stabilize the counties while they searched for alternative funding. That process has been ongoing, but alas, has yielded few results.

The safety net expired on June 30, 2004. Our congressional delegation has managed to backfill some of the lost dollars, but not all by a long way.

Safety net funds are guaranteed by the Federal Government, but they also have been declining 3 percent each year since 1994 – an annual reduction of $300,000-$400,000. At the same time, State programs are also declining. So we’re in a financial crisis.

Some sort of federal support is necessary for Jackson County to survive, as a large percent of County land is public. The County can't tax public lands and it must provide access and support services (roads, law enforcement, search and rescue) to these lands, which include National Forests and recreation areas.

Another strain on the County's dwindling resources is the area's growing population, which requires additional resources to keep services at current levels. In the past 15 years, county population has risen dramatically.