So, the advice to Oregon counties that must get along without fat federal timber payments is that they should raise taxes. They needed a state task force to come up with advice like that?

If it was easy or even possible to raise county property taxes 30 percent or so, commissioners in the affected counties would have done it long ago. They would have asked the voters to approve local-option levies, and the voters would have said yes.

Now that the end of the timber payments is an almost certain fact, the cost of changes in federal forest policy of the last 20 years is becoming evident. But as often happens, the cost is borne not by those who imposed it.

When the spotted-owl wars were heating up and federal timber management was cut way back, a few members of Congress such as Denny Smith from Oregon's 5th District warned about the job losses and economic damage that locking up the forests would entail. They were ignored.

The county payments masked the damage for a long time. But now it is plain to see. Maybe counties can ask the Sierra Club and other defenders of the spotted owl to make up for the damage their advocacy brought about. (hh)