United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-484

November 1999

Lake

Mendocino

Del Norte

Humboldt

Coos

Curry

Clallam

Jefferson

Grays Harbor

Glenn

Shasta

Siskiyou

Trinity

Benton

Clatsop

Douglas

Josephine

Lane

Lincoln

Tillamook

Pacific

Columbia

Jackson

Linn

Polk

Yamhill

Marion

Cowlitz

Lewis

Wahkiakum

Mason

Tehama

Clackamas

Klamath

Clark

Pierce

Whatcom

Skamania

Snohomish

Skagit

Deschutes

Hood River

Jefferson

Wasco

Kittitas

Klickitat

Crook

Chelan

Okanogan Ferry Stevens

Pend Oreille

Northwest Forest Plan:

Outcomes and Lessons

Learned From the Northwest

Economic Adjustment

Initiative
Technical Editors

HARRIET H. CHRISTENSEN is a research social scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 4043 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105.

TERRY L. RAETTIG is an economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, stationed at Olympic National Forest, 1835 Black Lake Blvd. SW., Olympia,

WA 98512.

PAUL SOMMERS is senior research fellow and executive director, Northwest Policy Center, Daniel

J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, Box 353060, Seattle, WA 98105-3060.

Papers were provided in camera-ready form for printing by technical editors, who are therefore

responsible for the content and accuracy. Opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the

position of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Any use of trade, firm, or corporation names in this publication is for the information and convenience of the reader. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the U.S.

Department of Agriculture of any product or service to the exclusion of others that may be suitable.

i
Proceedings, Northwest Forest Plan: Outcomes and Lessons Learned

From the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

Portland, Oregon

July 29th through 30th, 1997

Harriet H. Christensen, Terry L. Raettig and Paul Sommers, Technical Editors

SPONSORS

Center for Urban Studies, Portland State University, Portland, OR.

USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR.

USDA Forest Service, State and Private Forestry Regions 5 & 6, San Francisco, CA., and Portland, OR.

Northwest Policy Center, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, Seattle, WA.

University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

USDI Bureau of Land Management, Portland, OR.

USDA Rural Development, Washington, D.C., and Portland, OR.

Western Rural Development Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration, Portland, OR.

Published by:

U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service

Pacific Northwest Research Station

Portland, OR

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-484

November 1999

In cooperation with: Northwest Policy Center, Institute for Public Policy and Management, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

ii
ABSTRACT

Christensen, Harriet H.; Raettig, Terry L.; Sommers, Paul., tech. eds. 1999. Northwest Forest Plan:

 outcomes and lessons learned from the Northwest economic adjustment initiative: Proceedings of

 a forum; 1997 July 29-30; Portland, OR. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-484. Portland, OR: U.S.

 Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 103 p. In

 cooperation with: Northwest Policy Center, Institute for Public Policy and Management, University of

 Washington.

This monograph is an examination of the experience in the Pacific Northwest implementing the Northwest

Forest Plan, Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI). First, a brief description of the NWEAI background and framework, and a socioeconomic overview of the region prior to the NWEAI provide the

setting. Next, accounts of the NWEAI experience in each of the three states in the region; a chapter on the

NWEAI impact on people and communities’ and a review of field level efforts to implement business, local

government, and ecosystem management projects build a comprehensive picture of the NWEAI programs

through the eyes of the managers and community development practitioners who conceived and implemented the site specific projects. A synthesis of NWEAI related research work begins the final section on

what had been learned from the NWEAI experience and questions still remaining. This monograph ends

with an overview of key community and economic development issues in the region that have been addressed by the NWEAI and the potential of the innovative NWEAI model as a guide for other resource

related economic development and mitigation efforts.

Keywords: Northwest Forest Plan, Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, Pacific Northwest, community development, economic development.

iii
CONTENTS

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Background and Framework.................................p. 1

Terry L. Raettig and Harriet H. Christensen

Socioeconomic Overview: The Situation in 1993..................................................................................p. 10

Richard H. Phillips Jr.

The Washington Perspective...................................................................................................................p. 19

Karin Berkholtz

The Oregon Perspective...........................................................................................................................p. 29

Bill Campbell

The California Perspective......................................................................................................................p. 33

Mark Stanley

People and Communities..........................................................................................................................p. 40

Janet Anderson-Tyler and Elizabeth Ellis

Implementing the Initiative: On the Ground.........................................................................................p. 48

Anne S. Berblinger, Karl Denison, and Elizabeth Ellis

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative:Lessons Learned and Questions Remaining.........p. 59

Ellen Donoghue, Harriet H. Christensen, and Ron Saranich

Research on the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Outcomes and Process.......................p. 65

Paul Sommers

What We Have Accomplished and Learned: What's Next?.................................................................p. 76

Anne S. Berblinger

Extending the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative to other Regions: Utilizing the

Initiative and the Institutions...................................................................................................................p. 83

Harriet H. Christensen and Terry L. Raettig

Appendix A: List of Forum Participants.................................................................................................p. 97

iv
FOREWORD

 This monograph contains the invited papers and

individual and panel presentations, at a forum

entitled "The Northwest Economic Adjustment

Initiative: Have the Hopes Been Realized?, which

was held at Portland State University, Portland, OR,

from July 29 through 30, 1997. The overall purpose

of the forum was to: (a) describe the nature, extent,

funding and history of the Northwest Economic

Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI), (b) describe the

current state of research and monitoring related to

the NWEAI, (c) share successful and innovative

strategies, techniques and projects in the implementation of the NWEAI, and (d) identify a research

agenda to further knowledge in the area.

Many individuals participated in this forum to better

understand the NWEAI (see Appendix A.) The

participants included a broad array of agency and

organization managers, economic development

specialists, researchers, and community representatives directly responsible for administering the

NWEAI as well as implementing the NWEAI

economic and community development projects in

the field. Background was provided by those who

had been involved in the political processes that

conceived and formulated the Northwest Economic

Adjustment Initiative.

Many people are to be thanked for their contribution

to this forum. The program steering committee, in

particular, provided the initial conceptualizing for

the forum. Members of the steering committee

included: Bob Rheiner, Mark Stanley, Janet Anderson-Tyler, Scott Duff, Eric Herbst, Paul Sommers,

Anne Berblinger, Chris Christensen, Karen

Berkholz, and Dean Judd. Terry Raettig, of the U.S.

Department of Agriculture Forest Service Pacific

Northwest Research Station, organized and guided

development of the forum as its overall coordinator.

We would also like to thank the organizers at the

Center for Urban Studies, Portland State University,

and for the assistance we experienced at Harrison

Hall. Most of all, we thank the special contributions

by the session presenters and moderators and we

hope the following monograph captures the spirit

and substance experienced at the forum.

Technical Editors.

v
Chapter 1--The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Background and Framework

Terry L. Raettig

Harriet H. Christensen

AUTHORS

TERRY L. RAETTIG is an economist, Social and Economic Values Program, Pacific Northwest Research Station, stationed at Olympic National Forest, 1835 Black Lake Blvd. SW., Olympia, WA 98512.

HARRIET H. CHRISTENSEN is a research social scientist with the Social and Economic Values Program, Pacific Northwest Research Station, stationed at Seattle Forestry Sciences Lab, 4043 Roosevelt Way

NE, Seattle, WA 98105.

1
ABSTRACT

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI) is the economic development component

of the Northwest Forest Plan. This chapter describes the Federal policy background that was the

basis for the creation of the NWEAI and the principles and objectives that guided the development of

the NWEAI. A concise description of the agencies

and institutions that provide the operational framework of the NWEAI partnership is included. The

purposes and objectives of the papers that follow in

this monograph are stated.

Keywords: Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, policy background, principles, objectives,

institutions.

THE NORTHWEST ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT INITIATIVE: BACKGROUND AND

FRAMEWORK

Court actions, policy changes and controversy

brought the timber sale programs of the USDA

Forest Service and the USDI Bureau of Land

Management, the two largest Federal land management agencies in the Pacific Northwest, to a standstill by 1991. The Northwest Forest Plan, released

on July 1, 1993, was a response to this crisis in

public land management in the Pacific Northwest

(Christensen and others 1995, Clinton and Gore

1993, USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of

Land Management 1994). The Northwest Forest

Plan is a regional plan for implementation of ecosystem management and addresses three primary

issues: forest management, economic development

and agency coordination (Tuchmann and others

1996).

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI) is the economic development component

of the Northwest Forest Plan. The NWEAI was

designed to focus economic development and

mitigation of impacts from reduced timber harvest

in the region (western Oregon, western Washington

and northwest California outside the major metropolitan areas), (see fig. 1) through four categories of

assistance: workers and families, business and

industry, communities and infrastructure, and

ecosystem investment. Federal funding for the

NWEAI in the region would total 1.2 billion dollars

over a five year period.

By July 1997 almost four years of funding and

implementation of the NWEAI had been completed.

The NWEAI (and the Northwest Forest Plan) have

been designed with an emphasis on innovative

policy and a feedback-learning loop, or “adaptive

nagement” ( ROD 1994).

2
Policy Background

The issue of management of Federal forest lands

and old-growth had reached an impasse involving

the Executive Branch, Congress and the Federal

Courts by the time of the Forest Conference in 1993

(Tuchmann and others 1996). The innovative

institutions and actions outlined in the Northwest

Forest Plan and the NWEAI are largely administrative actions. Congressional approval and legislation

is, however, required for agency and program

funding and certain other actions such as the repeal

of tax credits for raw log exports. The Cabinet

Secretaries and agency heads concerned with the

timber issue in the Pacific Northwest signed an

interagency memorandum of understanding (MOU

1993) that would define responsibilities and coordination between the Federal agencies. An additional

memorandum of understanding (Federal-State MOU

1993) was signed by the Governors of California,

Oregon, and Washington, a representative of the

local communities in each state and a Federal

representative to define the relationship between the

Federal, tribal, state, and local entities.

To understand the innovative nature of the NWEAI

as it has been conceived, designed and implemented

in the Pacific Northwest, it is first necessary to

examine the operation of Federal, community,

economic and employment development programs

in the region before the emergence of the timber

issue. As an indication of the complexity of the

situation prior to the timber crisis, specific authority

and missions for job retraining, community development, economic development, and ecosystem

restoration activities that were related to the

NWEAI objectives were vested in a diverse array of

programs in no less than eight Federal agencies and

five Cabinet Departments (see fig. 2).

Each agency and each program within an agency's

authority had specific rules and requirements based

on legislative and administrative direction. Cooperation between agencies occurred, particularly

within a cabinet department, but was not the central

operating tenet. Within the broad array of rural

development programs there was no common basis

for assembling and considering proposals from

client communities and organizations or addressing

barriers to effective implementation. State Rural

Development Councils provided a mechanism of

communication between rural development practitioners but did not provide the operating framework

ultimately constructed for the NWEAI.

NWEAI Principles

The NWEAI was designed on a set of principles that

provided part of the basis for innovative economic

development policy (Tuchmann and others 1996).

These principles are as follows:

• [the NWEAI] should have long-term

favorable effects and be implemented in a

farsighted, strategic manner.

• be implemented quickly and in a manner

consistent with national policy.

• be region-specific and tailor the assistance to

many different kinds of effects associated with

forest policy changes.

• deliver assistance based on geographic

rather than conventional programmatic criteria.

• incorporate a high degree of state and local

3
participation and leadership in providing assistance.

NWEAI Objectives

The NWEAI objectives (Tuchmann and others

1996) further define the innovative nature of the

economic assistance initiative. These objectives

are:

• provide immediate relief for distressed timber

communities and emphasize the need for immediate

response.

• create an environment for long-term economic

development consistent with and respectful of the

character of the communities and their natural

resources.

• develop new mechanisms for delivering

assistance.

• emphasize the equal partnership of the states and

the critical local governments.

• emphasize the use of performance-based funding

(outcomes based on creating new opportunities and

sustainable jobs) over traditional funding based on

programmatic eligibility.

NWEAI Framework

The Northwest Forest Plan and the NWEAI

recognize that coordination between the various

Federal, tribal, state, and, local governments,

agencies and entities is a significant issue. The

NWEAI addresses the coordination issue in a direct

and innovative manner. Coordination between the

Federal funding agencies, and with other nonFederal partners in the region is achieved through

NWEAI Committees (Tuchmann and others 1996) (

see fig. 3) that are designed in accordance with the

NWEAI principles and objectives. The NWEAI

committees and their functions are as listed:

• the Multi-Agency Command (MAC) is a

Washington, DC committee and includes

representatives from the Federal Agencies, Cabinet

Departments and Presidential policy advisors. The

MAC provides policy and oversight for the NWEAI.

• the Regional Community Economic

Revitalization Team (RCERT) is based in the

Pacific Northwest and is made up of representatives

of the Federal funding agencies as well as those

tribal, state, and local government entities involved

in implementing the NWEAI. The RCERT has

specifically designated coordination and

implementation responsibilities including the

assurance of equitable funding within the NWEAI

region, monitoring service delivery and

accomplishment, and providing for process

improvements.

• the State Community Economic Revitalization

Team (SCERT) is based in each of the three states

in the Northwest Forest Plan Region. SCERT

members include representatives of the Federal

funding agencies in each State, and tribal, state, and

local government officials involved in the NWEAI

process. Each state was permitted discretion in the

representation on the SCERT and Oregon and

Washington also chose to have members of the

general public on their SCERT. The SCERTs

coordinate NWEAI activities within the respective

state, communicate local issues to the RCERT and

participate in monitoring and process improvement

activities.

The Community Economic Revitalization Teams

(CERTs) do more than provide for coordination

between the various entities involved in the

NWEAI. The CERTs also provide the basis for

community empowerment that is a key part of the

4
NWEAI strategy. Community-focused economic

development enables the NWEAI to capture a

community's flexibility and creativity, its ability to

recognize its problems and concentrate on solutions

instead of service delivery, and its commitment to

its members (Osborne and Gaebler 1992).

The CERTs also anchor the focus of the NWEAI on

outcomes rather than inputs. By creating an

organization that maintains a vision of the results

and outcomes the stage is also set for adaptive

learning. Adaptive management and learning is a

critical part of the Northwest Forest Plan, and

depends on an extensive monitoring component.

The NWEAI explicitly provides for learning from

successes and correcting (and not repeating) policy

and administrative failures through the CERT

process.

The chapters that follow document the collaborative

experience of those who have been most intimately

involved in the NWEAI in the Pacific Northwest.

Key background and contextual information, first

person perspectives of the NWEAI experience at the

regional, state, Tribal, and community level, and

documented research-based learning are provided.

The NWEAI is examined in terms of the potential of

the model as a innovative basis for focused

economic and community development in the future

within and outside the region.

REFERENCES

Christensen, Harriet; Richardson, Catherine;

Raettig, Terry; McGinnis, Wendy. 1995.

Forest-based communities, economic

revitalization, and ecosystem management: the

story of experimental institutions and

strategies in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. In:

Proceedings, forestry and rural development in

industrialized countries, IUFRO Working

Party, Section 6.11.02, International Union of

Forestry Research Organizations XXth World

Congress; 1995 August 6-12; Tampere,

Finland: IUFRO.

Clinton, William J.; Gore, Albert. 1994. The

forest plan for a sustainable economy and a

sustainable environment. Washington, DC:

Office of the President. 9 p.

[Federal-State MOU 1993] Federal-state

memorandum of understanding for economic

adjustment and community assistance. 1993.

On file at USDA Forest Service Region 6. State

and Private Forestry, 333 SW First Street,

Portland, OR 97204.

[MOU 1993] Memorandum of understanding for

forestry and economic development. 1993. On

file at the Regional Ecosystem Office, 333 SW

First Avenue, Portland, OR 97204.

Osborne, David; Gaebler, Ted. 1992. Reinventing

government: How the entrepreneurial spirit is

transforming the public sector. Reading, Mass:

Addison-Wesley Publishing. 405 p.

[ROD 1994] Record of decision for amendments to

Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management

planning documents within the range of the

northern spotted owl. 1994. Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture; U.S. Department of

the Interior [and others].

Tuchmann, E. Thomas; Connaughton, Kent P.;

Freedman, Lisa E.; Moriwaki, Clarence B.

1996. The Northwest Forest Plan: A report to the

President and Congress. Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Pacific Northwest Research Station. 253 p.

5
USDA Forest Service; USDI Bureau of Land

Management. 1994a. Final supplemental

environmental impact statement on management

of habitat for late-successional and old- growth

related species within the range of the northern

spotted owl. Portland, OR. 2 vols. 1 map.

6
Figure 1. Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative region.

7
8

Figure 2. Organization chart for Federal agencies in the Northwest Forest Plan.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Forestry and Economic Assistance.
Figure 3--Interagency cooperative structure for the Northwest Forest Plan.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Forestry and Economic Assistance

9
Chapter 2--Socioeconomic Overview: The Situation in 1993

Richard H. Phillips Jr.

AUTHOR

RICHARD H. PHILLIPS JR. is regional economist, Pacific Northwest Region, U.S. Department of

Agriculture Forest Service, P.O. Box 3623, Portland, OR 97208-3623.

10
ABSTRACT

 This chapter presents a summary of important

social, economic and natural resource variables in

the Pacific Northwest in the years leading up to the

1993 Forest Conference. The setting is provided for

the Northwest Forest Plan and the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative. Information on population and population change, employment and

employment changes, timber harvest levels and

changes, and timber employment and changes is

included.

Keywords: Social and economic conditions, timber

harvest, timber employment, Forest Conference,

Pacific Northwest.

INTRODUCTION

The date is April 1993 and President Clinton has

returned to Portland to hold the Forest Conference

and address the timber crisis in the Pacific Northwest. The stage has been set, and we find a battle

waging between two formidable opponents. These

sparring partners are symbolized either by the

northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) or by the

timber worker (Peterson 1990). It is a fight to the

death because the conflict is characterized as jobs

versus the environment. This may be an exaggerated description but it does cut directly to the heart

and importance of the issue. Change is rampant in

the Pacific Northwest and the management of

Federal public land is both a gauge to measure the

change as well as a cause of the change.

This paper supplies a brief description about key

conditions in the Pacific Northwest to provide a

backdrop of events that led up to the Forest Conference, the President’s Plan, and the Northwest

Economic Adjustment Initiative. It is a broad view

with much of the information describing the entire

northern spotted owl region. However, it is important to note what is true at the scale of the entire

region is not necessarily true for smaller areas of the

region, communities, or individuals. Averaged

conditions hide many important differences.

The northern spotted owl region (see fig. 1) includes

counties in western Washington and Oregon and

northwest California. Metropolitan and

nonmetropolitan counties (Butler and Beale 1994)

are also identified since much of the information

presented is classified by these two groupings. For

this analysis, two metropolitan counties, Shasta, CA

and Benton, OR, are included in the

nonmetropolitan category. This was done because

of their important rural characteristics and to facilitate data collection.

POPULATION AND POPULATION CHANGE

The population and how it has changed by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties are displayed

in figure 2. Three quarters of region’s population

lives in metropolitan counties, but these counties

comprise only 23 percent of the owl region land

area shown in figure 1. The metropolitan population growth has averaged 2.4 percent annually

during the twenty-year period ending in 1993. The

nonmetropolitan component has averaged 1.9

percent during the same time period. Although the

nonmetropolitan population growth rate is less than

the metropolitan rate in the owl region, it almost

doubles national population growth rates.

EMPLOYMENT AND EMPLOYMENT

CHANGE

Eighty percent of the region’s workforce shown in

figure 3 is employed in metropolitan counties.

Average annual employment growth rates for the

metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties, between 1988 and 1993, were 2.6 percent and 2.0

11
percent respectively. Similar to the population rates

of change, the nonmetropolitan counties double

national rates for employment growth. It appears

the owl region is doing quite well in relation to the

rest of the country.

The increase in people and jobs locally and nationally has in turn brought larger and more varied

demands on the region’s resources resulting in

larger impacts on these resources and greater conflicts over their use. These changes have in turn

caused significant social and political shifts in how

the Federal public lands are perceived and managed.

Changes in Federal land management activities have

resulted in some people and communities receiving

positive benefits while others do not. Although the

region is doing quite well, the people and communities closely tied to Federal lands and resources for

their economic and/or cultural livelihoods are often

negatively impacted. Those associated with logging

and wood products manufacturing were bearing a

disproportionate share of the economic and social

costs related to implementing existing laws, such as

the Endangered Species Act, and due to changes in

Federal land management. The following discussion looks at why wood workers and communities

with historic links to Federal lands may need additional help to mitigate these impacts.

TIMBER HARVEST LEVELS AND CHANGE

The level of timber harvest in the owl region has

always been variable. It follows national and

regional economic trends, especially housing booms

and busts, and shifts in log availability. Figure 4

displays two important periods affecting timber

harvesting on all forest lands. Shown are market

slumps in the early 1980s, and the slump from 1989

through the early 1990s. Timber harvest from

Federal lands during the early 1990s was also

reduced because of new forest and district plans,

court injunctions, and shifts Federal land management policy.

It should be noted timber harvest has recently

decreased on non-federal lands, and the magnitude

of the Federal timber harvest decrease in the

nonmetropolitan area more than doubles the decrease in the metropolitan area. In other words, log

supplies are lower, and the nonmetropolitan counties are bearing the largest share of the decrease.

In figure 5, federal timber sales and volume under

contract are added to the information displayed in

figure 4. The metropolitan and nonmetropolitan

federal timber harvest amounts are also aggregated.

Volume under contract is federal timber that has

been sold and awarded but which remains in the

forest. Federal timber sales and volume under

contract are included to show how the effects of key

court injunctions and Federal land management

changes in the region were masked.

From 1978 through 1988, Federal timber sales were

somewhat constant and averaged between 5.4 and

6.3 billion board feet. The first major drop in 1989

coincided with the first of Judge Dwyer’s regional

timber sale injunctions. New federal spotted owl

management plans were also playing a role. In

1990, the primary cause of the increase in Federal

timber sales was Section 318 passed by Congress to

neutralize Judge Dwyer’s injunction. This law

required the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land

Management to sell enjoined timber sales. The

northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened

species also during this year. In 1991, Section 318

was not reenacted. During this year, a new injunction on auctioning or awarding timber sales was

established which remained in force until the Northwest Forest Plan was finalized. The timber harvest

on non-federal lands was relatively constant and

generally followed market conditions.

Volume under contract grew dramatically in the

early 1980s as market conditions declined and

12
purchasers held on to expensive Federal timber

bought in the late 1970s. The large buildup remained in effect until buy-out legislation was

enacted in 1986 preventing widespread default on

Federal timber sale contracts. With the exception of

1990, timber sales have been less than timber

harvest lowering the volume under contract to 2.5

billion board feet by 1993.

The poor housing market and volume under contract

reserves masked much of the immediate effects of

the timber sale injunctions and changes in Federal

forest management during the early 1990s. There

was an adequate supply of timber in the region.

However, some mills were closing due to localized

timber supply conditions, changes in manufacturing

technology, and poor market prices.

The depletion of the volume under contract reserves

made the effects of the reductions in Federal timber

supplies observable. In the communities where

historic harvesting and wood products manufacturing utilized proportionally greater amounts of

Federal timber, larger negative impacts from the

reduced Federal timber supply were incurred.

TIMBER EMPLOYMENT LEVELS AND

CHANGE

It was previously noted that 80 percent of the

region’s workforce was employed in metropolitan

counties. Figure 6 shows more than one half of the

wood products employment was in the

nonmetropolitan counties indicating a high level of

specialization in this sector for these counties.

Between 1988 and 1993, nonmetropolitan timber

employment decreased by 28 percent and metropolitan timber employment decreased by 16 percent.

The declines felt in the wood products industry were

greater in the nonmetropolitan counties, and the

effects of these declines were more strongly felt.

Displaced workers in the nonmetropolitan counties

had fewer opportunities to change jobs and remain

in the same community.

Several components of the wood products manufacturing sector are displayed in figure 7. Within this

sector, the top employers are logging and primary

wood products manufacturing which include sawmills and plywood mills. The majority of the

employment in these industries is also located in

nonmetropolitan counties. The decline in logging

and primary wood products manufacturing employment between 1988 and 1993 was 27 percent in

metropolitan counties and 32 percent in

nonmetropolitan counties. Metropolitan counties

slightly gained in millwork employment while

nonmetropolitan counties declined. Secondary

wood products manufacturing such as millwork was

not offsetting losses in logging and solid wood

products manufacturing especially in the

nonmetropolitan counties.

CONCLUSION

The Pacific Northwest has a regional economy that

is doing very well especially when compared to

national average. The region shows better population, employment, and nonfarm labor income

growth rates. However, the timber industry once

considered the backbone of the Pacific Northwest

and many forest-based communities is in transition.

The industry, and the people and communities

linked to it, are being negatively affected by changes

in Federal land management activities. The question is whether targeted assistance with an economic

adjustment initiative is able to mitigate these impacts on the people and communities.

13
REFERENCES

Butler, Margaret A.; Beale, Calvin L. 1994.

Rural-urban continuum codes for metropolitan

and nonmetropolitan counties, 1993. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. 43 p.

California State Department of Finance, Census

Data Center. Sacramento. CA. [No further

reference information available].

California State Employment Development

Department, Labor Market Information

Division. Sacramento, CA. [No further reference

information available].

Oregon State Center for Population Research

and Census. Portland State University, Portland, OR. [No further reference information

available].

Oregon State Department of Forestry. Timber

harvest report. Salem, OR. Various years.

Oregon State Employment Department,

Workforce Analysis Section. Salem, OR. [No

further reference information available].

Peterson, Roger Tory. 1990. Western Birds. 3rd

ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

 p. 204.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the

Census. 1992. Census of population and housing, 1990: [Summary tape file 3A on machine

readable data files and technical documentation

files (Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho)].

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. 1995. Regional economic

information system 1969-1995. [Machine

readable data files and technical documentation

files]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional

Economic Information System.

Washington State Department of Natural Resources. Timber harvest report. Olympia, WA.

Various years. [No further reference

informationavailable].

Washington State Office of Financial Management, Estimation and Forecasting Unit.

Olympia, WA. [No further reference information available].

Washington State Employment and Security

Department, Labor Market and Economic

Analysis Branch. Olympia, WA. [No further

reference information available.

14
15
16
17
18
Chapter 3-The Washington Perspective

Karin Berkholtz

AUTHOR

KARIN BERKHOLTZ is the WACERT Manager with the Washington Department of Community,

Trade, and Economic Development, P.O. Box 4300, Olympia, WA 98504-8300.

19
ABSTRACT

The Washington Community Economic Revitalization Team (WACERT) is the Washington component of the NWEAI (Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative). The WACERT developed eligibility criteria that defined its service area within

Washington. WACERT has developed project

proposal forms, offered training agency staff and

communities, made improvements in the project

development process and created a lead agency

approach that contribute to a one government

approach. Further challenges and opportunities

remain for WACERT in the continued implementation of the NWEAI.

Keywords: Washington Community Economic

Revitalization Team, eligibility criteria, project

proposals, lead agency.

INTRODUCTION

The forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern

California form a region providing a wide range of

resources and services valued across the United

States. In the late 1980s and early 1990s tension

between the demands for timber harvests and

increased environmental protection mounted. These

conflicting mandates came to a head in 1991 and

1992; an injunction prevented the U.S. Forest

Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from proceeding with any new timber

sales in the range of the northern spotted owl.

These legal actions crashed through the rural,

natural resources areas of Washington state. The

poverty rate in rural areas rose to 50 percent higher

than the urban regions. Over 20,000 direct and

indirect jobs were lost. In Skamania county, the job

loss represented a 31.9 percent reduction of the

labor force.

In 1991, the Washington state legislature enacted a

comprehensive set of state programs geared towards

providing assistance to dislocated workers, impacted communities and businesses. That effort

continues to this day, coordinated by the Governor’s

Timber Team, now the Governor’s Rural Community Assistance Team (GRCAT). Principles of the

effort include the following:

• targeting activities and dollars to those

communities and individuals in need (see fig. 1).

• utilizing a participatory process to guide

activities and dollars according to locally determined

priorities.

• maximizing the impact of the state presence

and leveraging other state, federal and private

resources through collaboration and coordination.

• utilizing strategic problem-solving approaches

to find the best solutions to problems.

In 1992, the Team was a new way of doing business

in state government – a new model. In 1993, the

Clinton Administration grasped the concepts as a

model for delivery of federal assistance, the

Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI.)

WACERT

The Washington Community Economic

Revitalization Team (WACERT) is a component of

the NWEAI. The goals of WACERT are to:

1) respond to locally defined needs with a system

that is flexible and innovative, and 2) enable

affected workers and families, businesses,

communities and tribes which have depended on

20
forest products based economies to regain or

improve their economic and social well being. The

first WACERT meeting took place in December

1993. WACERT acted to adopt eligibility criteria

developed by the Governor’s Timber Team.

GRCAT Eligibility Criteria1

The GRCAT eligibility criteria are as follows:

Population

Poverty Rate

Unemployment Rate

Lumber and Wood Products

Location Quotient

Finfish location quotient2

The application of these criteria meant that

WACERT determined its service area (see fig. 1)

was greater than the spotted owl region defined in

the record of decision for the Forest Plan. The

WACERT took this action to promote consistency

in service delivery between state and federal

programs and to promote the bottom-up project

planning and implementation advocated in the

NWEAI.

The WACERT communicated this information in

writing and through six community forums. Later in

the year WACERT conducted a video conference

with down links to each of the 20 designated

eligible counties. While the perception was that

WACERTS were doing a good job at

communicating to constituents, the lesson learned

was that communication is the largest and most

elusive task facing an administrator. By the end of

the year WACERT was sending monthly updates to

congressional representatives and periodic mailings

to all eligible jurisdictions.

Through the GRCAT Economic Development

Subcommittee, WACERT pioneered a two page

project proposal form. The project proposal is the

first step towards a one government approach to

service delivery and is the decision aiding tool for

the WACERT. The project proposal helps the

WACERT learn about an economic diversification

strategy and the project or projects designed to help

achieve that strategy. It helps the WACERT gauge

what planning efforts, feasibility, design and

engineering work are complete, and what fund

raising efforts have taken place to date for a project.

The project proposal provides information on short

and long term benefits of the project to the

jurisdiction and surrounding area. The project

proponent identifies local measures of success on

the project proposal, as well as special

circumstances that make the project compelling.

WACERT Practices, Goals, and Lessons Learned

The first deadline for project proposals to the

WACERT was February 1, 1994. Over 600

proposals were submitted from eligible jurisdictions

across the state. The WACERT utilized the lead

agency approach defined in the implementation plan

of the NWEAI. At the end of the fiscal year, the

WACERT received feedback that this approach did

not result in funding of high priority local projects

and that the process used was unclear. The lesson

learned was to be more precise in defining

methodology.

___________________________________

1

GRCAT criteria reviewed each biennium; for Federal fiscal

year 1994, Chelan and Yakima counties were eligible. Yakima

was removed from eligibility in 1995 while rural Clark county

was added to the list of Rural Natural Resource Areas. In 1997,

Clark county was rendered ineligible.

2 Added as GRCAT eligibility criteria in 1995 due to closure of

coastal salmon fishing season.

21
For the 1995 Federal fiscal year, WACERT

changed its practices. It developed a method of

operation that details principles and policies of

WACERT in a manner consistent with the

Northwest Forest Plan. It deviated from the

standards of the implementation plan by developing

the WACERT process (see fig. 2) for project

development. This includes numeric prioritization

of projects and assigning scoping agents to projects

rather than scoping agencies. This served to

personalize the NWEAI and build accountability

into the process. The outcomes of these

improvements were that more projects received

better technical assistance and support. Another

outcome is that assistance was given to high priority

projects that were ready to go.

The WACERT continued these methods through the

1996 Federal fiscal year and offered training to state

and federal staff in project scoping and to

communities in project development. This same

year WACERT began using technical teams to

provide assistance to complex projects requiring

multiple agency participation and solutions.

At the same time, improvements to the project

development process were taking place, policy

initiatives between federal agencies were underway.

In 1996, the USDA Rural Development, Forest

Service and the Economic Development

Administration laid the groundwork for the next

phase of partnerships. The agencies signed an

interagency agreement that allows, on jointly funded

projects, for one agency to take lead agency status.

This means the following:

• Partner agencies transfer project funds to the

lead agency, creating one project funding pool.

• The three agencies adopt and/or develop one

set of project conditions.

• The three agencies agree that the lead

agency will oversee project implementation,

establish implementation requirements, and be

responsible for fiscal oversight.

• The three agencies agree up front to one set

of rules and regulations.

• The local client submits one report to the

lead agency.

• The local client submits reimbursement

requests to one agency.

• The lead agency takes the responsibility of

communicating with and disseminating project

information to the partner agencies.

If problems arise, the lead agency is responsible for

coordination with partner

agencies.

The end result is a more streamlined, less

burdensome process. This creates a one

government approach, and allows for a seamless

delivery system of partnering with local

communities to meet and address local priority

needs (see fig. 3).

In Federal fiscal year 1997, the WACERT

recognized that the really hard work was about to

begin. Jurisdictions with the greatest capacity to

structure good projects were the ones that received

assistance during the first era of the NWEAI. The

WACERT recognized that the time had come to

work harder to ensure that the most rural

communities were given the tools to develop and

implement projects. To that end, WACERT

designated seven special emphasis areas. These

areas would be the targets of technical assistance in

Federal fiscal year 1998. The lesson learned

through this exercise was that the job of

22
restructuring rural natural resource economies takes

as many years to accomplish as it took to create

those economies.

Given that one of the goals of the NWEAI is the

marrying of economic development with ecosystem

considerations, WACERT attempted various ways

of bringing the two sides together. One way was to

designate WACERT liaisons to the province teams.

The success of this venture was mixed, in part due

to changes to the WACERT member roster, and in

part to insufficient communications between the

province teams and the WACERT. The WACERT

also held meetings in the adaptive management

areas. This was valuable for information sharing,

but working together has yet to be achieved. The

lesson learned is: Never give up. In Federal fiscal

year 1999, WACERT plans on holding joint

meetings with the province teams.

Another lesson learned is that there are other ways

of achieving the marriage between ecosystem

enhancement and economic development. One

example of this is the Forestry Training Center in

Forks, Washington. Another example is the

partnership between the federal Jobs in the Woods

programs and the Washington state Jobs for the

Environment Program. Through this collaboration,

state and federal agencies were able to partner

across watersheds, cluster contracts to offer longer

term employment and achieve goals for habitat

restoration. A final example of a successful

partnership between the two components of the

Northwest Forest Plan is the Watershed Restoration/

Resource Joint Apprenticeship Program. This

program is a state Labor and Industries approved

apprenticeship program. To date, five workers have

achieved the competency standards for this

classification. This classification is an example of

the “Eco-worker” envisioned by the Clinton

Administration.

The Future

Challenges and opportunities remain for the coming

years. Examples are as follows:

Work in terms of workers and families-- Timber

impact areas ranging from Grays Harbor to

Okanogan County continue to experience economic

dislocations. These workers need assistance with

retraining and job placement. The WorkFirst

program and welfare reform carry major

implications for rural areas in Washington state.

The WACERT, through its monthly meetings in

rural areas and its ties to other policy arenas in state

government, can help identify issues and needs as

well as a framework for discussion and resolution of

some future challenges.

Work in terms of communities and

infrastructure-- Many infrastructure investments,

such as upgrades to the wastewater treatment

facility in Ilwaco are enough to bring communities

into compliance with current regulations. Enabling

communities to pursue strategies for economic

development and job creation requires additional

infrastructure investments. The WACERT needs to

work with regulatory and funding agencies to ensure

alignment of resources from the project planning

phase through project implementation.

Work in terms of business and industry-- The goal

in many rural areas is the retention of existing

commercial and industrial businesses. Key issues

include: business assistance,

access to capital, identifying and capturing trade

leads, and Internet access. WACERT has provided

some support to business and industry projects.

Given that business growth in rural areas lags

behind that in urban areas, WACERT should be an

information forum to ensure that rural businesses

have a voice in setting policies that affect them.

23
Work in terms of habitat-- Successful

implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan

requires a high level of coordination and

cooperation among agencies to conserve fish,

wildlife, and plants, including those federally listed

or endangered species by preserving and restoring

the forest ecosystems on which they depend. Given

potential listings of salmonid species, and eastside

ecosystem issues, work in this area has just begun.

It is the hope of WACERT that the Locke

administration coordinates emerging initiatives with

ongoing and successful efforts of the Northwest

Forest Plan ecosystem projects.

The challenge to the Federal government and the

state of Washington is to renew its commitment to

the principles of the NWEAI, and to pursue its goals

with vigor.

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT WACERT

Website: Http://www.wa.gov/governor/wacert

Service Area: 20 counties, tribal governments and

other eligible jurisdictions located therein.

Membership: 10 Federal and 3 state agencies; 4

county and 4 city representatives, 2 economic

development council representatives, 1 public port

representative, 5 tribal government representatives,

3 not-for-profits, organized labor, and 1 private

lender.

Partnerships: 12 Federal and 5 state agencies; all

eligible counties, cities, tribes, economic

development councils, public ports, and not-forprofit entities.

Special Features: Training sessions for staff and

communities, goals and performance measurement

system implementation, the WACERT Awards,

special emphasis areas.

Publications: Annual Reports (94 to 97); County by

county project updates (94 to 97); Success stories

for Federal fiscal year 1994 and Federal fiscal year

1995.

24
Figure 1: GRACT eligible counties in Washington

25
Figure 2: -The WACERT Process

26
Figure 3: WACERT policies resulted in increased partnership between Federal and state funding

programs, a primary objective of the NWEAI, as demonstrated by the number of projects with multiple

funding sources. In Federal fiscal year 1994, eight projects were funded with multiple sources. In

Federal fiscal year 1995, that figure increased to 15. In Federal fiscal year 1996 multiple funding

sources made 23 projects possible. Federal fiscal year 1997 saw multiple funding sources on 29

projects.

27
Figure 3 continued. Notes on and descriptions of various projects up for NWEAI funding

in Washington state.

28
Chapter 4 The Oregon Perspective

Bill Campbell

AUTHOR

BILL CAMPBELL is Manager, Rural Development Office with the Oregon Economic Development

Department, 775 Summer St. NE, Salem, OR 97310.

29
ABSTRACT

The Oregon Community Economic Revitalization

Team for the Northwest Economic Adjustment

Initiative (NWEAI) is patterned on the Oregon

Rural Development Council that preceded the

Northwest Forest Plan. The team and the council

meet jointly in Oregon rural communities and are in

the third year of alignment, at the time of this

forum. The team and the council are part of the

statewide effort to optimize assistance to Oregon

communities experiencing distress.

Keywords: Oregon Rural Development Council,

Oregon Community Economic Revitalization Team,

economic assistance.

THE OREGON PERSPECTIVE

Similar Goals, Different Approaches

The formation and implementation of the Oregon

Rural Development Council (ORDC) preceded the

implementation of the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI), the economic recovery

element of the Northwest Forest Plan, and the

formation of the State Community Economic

Revitalization Team (CERT) by three years. Both

initiatives are a collaborative effort with the state of

Oregon as memorialized within existing Memorandums of Understanding.

The CERT patterned its approach and implementation of the NWEAI upon the operational model

developed earlier by the Council. During the first

two years of the NWEAI both organizations conducted meetings throughout rural Oregon. Many of

the participating partners were different, but the

majority of Federal and state partners were the

same. The meetings were convened within rural

communities throughout the state and were focused

 upon locally identified needs and issues. This

approach provided a focus upon rural communities;

the ORDC had statewide focus, while the CERT

focus was principally upon those communities

within the western and central areas of the state

indicated as distressed due to a decline in timber

harvests, mill closures, and job losses.

In implementing the strategic measures of the

NWEAI, the CERT developed a consensus-based

project prioritization process that was focused upon

specific funding needs to alleviate conditions of

economic distress in four key areas: Workers and

Families; Business and Industry, Community and

Infrastructure, and Ecosystem Investment. The

resources of the collaborating Federal partners were

focused on these activity areas. However, the

ORDC is not focused upon projects or project

funding but on the identification and resolution of

barriers and impediments to the overall health and

well being of rural communities.

Collaboration and Cooperation

In 1994, a series of information discussions were

held regarding the possible alignment of integration

of the two organizations. In 1995 scheduling of

concurrent meetings around the state began. During

that year a series of five forums were held jointly

by the ORDC and the CERT to identify and discuss

alignment related issues to further the two

organization’s cooperative and collaborative efforts.

This process identified the following reasons for

alignment:

1) The ORDC and CERT represent Presidential

initiatives at work in Oregon through formal agreements between the Federal government and the

state.

2) The ORDC and CERT meet with communities throughout the state to identify issues, needs,

30
and opportunities in order to assist with resolution

of impediments to community health and economic

well-being.

3) The dialogue with Oregon communities,

networking with locally based community

organizations, a cooperative approach to provide

consistency in the provision of technical assistance,

and project funding focused upon locally

determined priorities represents a building block in

Oregon’s future economic foundation.

4) Neither the ORDC or CERT administers

public funds, but enhances coordination of problem

solvingactivities between Federal, state, Tribal,

cities, counties, and private sector partners.

5) The ORDC and CERT are committed to

providing assistance to rural communities

experiencing distress in the identification of local

needs and opportunities, the development of

strategic plans for economic recovery, the nurturing

of local response teams and action committees, the

removal of barriers impeding success, and the

encouragement of each community to implement its

plan for community health, economic sustenance,

and planned growth management.

6) The ORDC, by consensus of the partnership,

will be the enduring organization.

A Partnership Develops

The outcome of this combined effort resulted in the

development of an aligned strategic plan to focus

the activities of the ORDC and the CERT during

1996. Beginning in January 1996 the organizations

began convening monthly meetings using a

coordinated agenda, and a total of four regional

forums were convened throughout the state. The

regional forums shifted focus from the project and

barriers orientation of the CERT, to the broader

At the time of this forum, the ORDC and the CERT

are engaged in the third year of alignment and

continue to meet jointly with rural communities

throughout the state. We continue to carefully listen

to our local partners, to gain greater understanding

and insights into their issues and challenges, and to

continue to evolve responsive techniques that

emphasize sound community planning and

outcomes. The Governor’s office, through the

Community Solutions Team (comprised of the

directors of the departments of Land Conservation

and Development, Transportation, Environmental

Quality, Housing and Community Services, and

Economic Development) have developed quality

development objectives for Oregon communities.

The objectives provide guidance in the development

of healthy and sustainable communities. Oregon’s

present focus, as directed by the Oregon legislature

and the Governor’s office, is to optimize assistance

to Oregon’s rural communities, with an emphasis

upon assistance to those communities experiencing

distress. The ORDC and the CERT are engaged in

this statewide effort and will continue to work

within the Principles of Partnership established in

1995 through a joint effort of the Governor’s Office,

partnership agencies, and local governments.

The alignment of the Oregon Rural Development

Council and the State Community Economic

Revitalization Team is one aspect of the joint efforts

of collaborating agencies to improve and change

needs and issues identification of the ORDC. The

process embraced the emerging Healthy Community

concept being introduced through Governor

Kitzaber’s Community Solutions Team. The team

project notification process, based upon the

prioritization of projects through a locally focused

consensus model, was expanded to include all

counties and communities within the state. The

process enables funding partners to focus scarce

resources on locally identified, high priority needs.

31
the way that the business of Government is

conducted. The two organizations continue to

focus efforts on problem solving rather than

program management. The effort and partnership

continues...

32
Chapter 5--The California Perspective

Mark Stanley

AUTHOR

MARK STANLEY is California Community Economic Revitalization Team Chair and is with the California

Department of Forestry, 2840 Mt. Danaher Rd., Camino, CA 95709.

33
INTRODUCTION

California is not the same as Oregon and

Washington. What most people think they hear is

that we in California are “different”. That is not

what we are saying. We just have a different

perspective on the President’s Forest Plan in

California than that of the other two states for a

number of reasons.

CALIFORNIA’S DIFFERENCES

One of those reasons is people. We have over 30

million people in California and the overwhelming

majority of those people live in areas not directly

impacted by the Forest Plan. The geography of

California is different from the geography of Oregon

and Washington. Although Oregon and Washington

have large population centers in Portland and

Seattle, neither San Francisco nor Los Angeles are

even close to the impacted areas. Only nine of

California’s 58 counties were designated as being

directly impacted by the plan. They are all in the

northwestern part of the state, away from the

population centers and voters. The closest most

people in California get to the timber industry is

going to the local Home Depot to buy a two by four,

but most people don’t realize where that two by four

originates. The basic economies of the three states

are also different as was pointed out in the Forest

Ecosystem Management Assessment Team

(FEMAT) document. In California less that five

percent of the economy is comprised of timber

sectors. Tourism, high tech, entertainment, and

many other sectors overshadow the timber industry.

The timber industry is an important component of

the economy but it gets lost in everything else. It is

not dispersed throughout the state as is the timber

industry in Washington and Oregon. For the

majority of California’s residents, forests are what

you see on television or drive to for recreation.

However, in those nine impacted counties timber

was and still is the mainstay of the economy.

Finally, the politics are different in California than

in Oregon and Washington. I am not talking about

how liberal or conservative California is. What I

am talking about is that the administration that is in

place in California is Republican, while President

Clinton, whose administration developed the Forest

Plan, is a Democrat. This made the climate for

implementing the plan quite different in California

than in either of the other two states.

IN THE BEGINNING

While the CERT’s started officially in December of

1993, the foundation for the California CERT

started long before. In April, 1993 a number of

county supervisors got together and enlisted the

involvement of all of the eight (and later nine)

county supervisors from the affected counties. They

started meeting together with Terry Gorton,

Assistant Secretary of the California Resources

California is different from both Oregon and

Washington in that California’s population centers

are located far away from the impacted part of the

State. The formation, operation and linkages of the

California Community Economic Revitalization

Team (CERT) are documented in this paper. The

CERT’s role in California has been to provide staff

support and Coordination between the counties, and

the Federal and State agencies for the 1364 proposals

that have been submitted. Future plans for the CERT

and research needs related to the NWEAI are also

included in this paper.

Keywords: California Community Economic

Revitalization Team, Northwest Forest Plan, projects,

research needs.

ABSTRACT

34
Agency for Forestry and Rural Economic

Development. Terry was the first chair of the

CERT, and I worked for Terry beginning in August,

1993 on the CERT and other forestry related

matters. The County Supervisors have always and

still are the backbone of our CERT. Both Oregon

and Washington have some local representation on

their CERT but we have a county supervisor from

each county on our CERT team. We all believe that

they represent the people and communities that have

been directly impacted and they were elected to

represent home constituents. The County

Supervisors should have a say in what direction the

CERT should take to try to get relief to the impacted

people and communities.

HOW IT WORKS IN CALIFORNIA

State CERTs work (as indicated by both Bill Scott

of the Oregon CERT and Karin Berkholtz of the

Washington CERT) because of the flexibility we

have and, most importantly, because of the people.

The people are the ones that make the CERT work.

Most of the Federal and state representatives on the

CERT have a one person shop. When we first

called for proposals in November for 1993, we did

not expect the large volume that we received the

following month. We received nearly 600 proposals

that first month. Each agency reviewed each

proposal. You can imagine the agency folks having

to review each and every CERT proposal for its'

potential, as well as continuing to do their previous

workload for the remainder of their territory (which

in many cases was the entire state). This took a

great deal of time and commitment from our Federal

and state partners. This is where the flexibility

came in. While the Ecosystem side of the plan was

getting advice form the Provincial Advisory

Committees (PACs), which are Federal Advisory

Committee Act (FACA) chartered committees, the

CERTs are not. State CERTs cannot advise the

Federal members what to do. The CERTs are

information sharing, networking and coordination

bodies only. But that also enables us to make

changes in how we do things quickly. We talked to

Oregon and Washington to find out how they were

doing the evaluations and tracking and incorporated

some of their techniques into our CERT. Each state

CERT operates a little differently but there are more

similarities than differences. In both Oregon and

Washington the CERTS have much more of a state

financial commitment for staff and resources than in

California. In California two people from the

Resources Agency operate the CERT. The

coordinator, Janel Tarczy, and myself are the staff.

Her salary and operating expenses are now provided

through a grant from the Forest Service (initially

funds were provided by a U.S. Department of

Commerce, Economic Development Administration

grant). In my case I also have another full time job

with the Department of Forestry. I don’t think this

is the case in either Oregon or Washington. Oregon

and Washington also had a Rural Development

Council in place when the Northwest Forest Plan

started.

OTHER CONNECTIONS

Another difference between the California CERT

and the Oregon and Washington CERTs is

connection to the ecosystem side of the Plan. At the

beginning of this process we all felt that we needed

to keep the economic and ecosystem sides separate.

We in California were not in agreement with the

Northwest Forest Plan and therefore did want a

direct link to implementing it on Federal lands. But

it became very obvious that there needed to be a

link to the resource side in order to help the

communities that had been impacted. The idea was

to put displaced workers back to work in the woods

doing restoration. Since all that funding was

controlled through the U.S. Forest Service and

Bureau of Land Management, and that was going to

35
be directed by the Provincial Advisory Committees

(PACs), we saw a need for a link between the CERT

and the three PACs in California. First, we tried to

make sure that the county supervisors from the

CERT applied for seats on the PACs. Secondly, we

proposed to each one of the PACs that they form a

subcommittee of five people to work with a

subcommittee from the CERT to give the PACs

some advice on the economic concerns of the

counties and to better coordinate between the two

groups. Also, myself and Mark Weetley from the

California Resources Agency, occupy the single

state seat on each one of the PAC’s. I also represent

the Governor’s office on the Intergovernmental

Advisory Committee (IAC). Figure one is a

diagram of the organizational structure that we

developed and each PAC and the California CERT

agreed to. This link has worked but not as well as

we had hoped in the beginning. We are continuing

to try to make better connections between the two

groups.

 THE STATE’S ROLE IN THE CERT

You have heard from both Oregon and Washington

representatives as to what their involvement and

role is in their respective CERTs. As I said before,

we have not had the fiscal resources to bring to the

table in California that either of the other two states

have had. Our role in California had been to

provide staff support and to help provide better

communication and coordination between the

counties and the agencies, both state and Federal.

We are the ones that call the meetings, staff the

meetings, do the minutes, track the projects and

troubleshoot the problems. We have had very little

turnover at the state level. Terry Gorton, who left

state service, was there since the beginning; I have

also been there since the beginning (prior to the

formation of the CERT) and will continue till the

end. We have had several coordinators that have

played a key role in this CERT organization

working in the Resources Agency but the direction

has come from Terry and myself. The California

Resources Agency has also been one of the links to

accessing additional resources. Early on it was

obvious that there was a lack of human

infrastructure at the county-level, and there was no

one person present to help people with the proposal

process. The Governor committed one million

dollars from his discretionary funds to fund a

community coordinator in each of the nine counties.

This came at a time when we had a number of major

defense base closures but the Governor was

convinced that this was a high priority. The

community coordinators have proven to be an

extremely valuable resource to both the CERT and,

more importantly, to the counties where they work.

Delivery of the funding to the impacted

communities has been very important in trying to

diversify those impacted counties, communities, and

people but the process that we all have gone through

has also proven to be very valuable. As indicated

before we asked the counties to submit project

proposals on a short three page proposal form called

a concept proposal. This proposal would give the

potential funds, an idea of what the project was, the

amount needed, and the number of people that

would be employed. From these concept proposals

the agencies would then ask for more detailed

applications if the proposal was a project that they

could, or in conjunction with another agency, fund.

There was tremendous diversity in the first 600

proposals received in December, 1993. We had

proposals ranging from very complete and detailed

projects that were already on the drawing board and

were ready to go, to very primitive concepts. One of

the proposals received was hand written and went

something like this: “We have a great idea to

employ lots of people and make lots of money. We

need 13 million dollars for the project. We can’t

tell you what the project is because it is a secret.

36
Just send us the money and trust us.” I do not

believe that this proposal got funded.

We did change the process using ideas from the

other states, and probably the best change was the

addition of the community coordinators to work

with people submitting proposals. Some of the

changes worked and some did not but we continue

to refine the process to provide better service for the

communities we are trying to assist. The

community coordinators put on workshops with the

representatives from the funding agencies and

helped to develop projects that were more realistic

and had a better chance of getting funded. Since the

approximately 600 proposals submitted the first

month we have received another 760 for a total of

1,364 proposals. The new proposals are better than

the first proposals and some of those first ones have

been rewritten or developed to make them better

proposals. We have much better communications

between the agencies and the counties. The CERT

has assisted in delivering over $78,000,000 from

CERT-funded projects and an additional

$140,000,000 in CERT counties from non-CERT

projects.

The process is, in the long term, as important as the

funding of individual projects since the process will

outlive the Northwest Forest Plan dollars funded

through the CERT . The proportion of the project

proposals that has been funded has increased over

time (see fig. 2). The community coordinators and

leaders in the communities have been working hard

to learn the process and what makes a project that is

likely to be funded. This is in large part, due to the

ability of the coordinators knowing the requirements

of the programs that could potentially fund projects.

This will also carry over to projects after the special

CERT funding is no longer available.

FUTURE ACTIONS

Because everyone who has been involved with the

CERT process feels that it has been very beneficial,

we want to, and have been working since the

beginning, to putting things in place that will outlive

the CERT. The CERT was originally set up for

three years and has been extended to five years. We

in California have always been planning to go out of

business as a CERT. But we have also been

planning to continue those things that were

developed as a function of the CERT that need to

continue. The communications and networking

between agencies and the link to the counties in

need of assistance are CERT processes we don’t

want to loose.

We have benefited from increased communication

and started using a communications system called

Team California Online (TCO). This is an

electronic network through the California Trade and

Commerce Agency that connects all economic

development people in the state, not just those in the

nine CERT counties. While we have our own

forum to discuss privately CERT issues, we are also

connected to the rest of the Economic Development

community. TCO was not funded by the CERT and

is therefore not dependent on the CERT for its

continued existence.

We saw a need to train present and future

community leaders in leadership skills to provide

leadership in their own communities. We had a

leadership-training workshop in 1995 where each

county brought 30 members of the county who will

help lead their communities into the future. At the

workshop, we had speakers from around the country

and gave each participant a workbook of tools to

help them in their leadership role. The workshop

also gave the county teams a place to start working

on a county plan for the future. We are committed

to find ways for the counties and the agencies to

37
continue to meet together even if there is no official

CERT to orchestrate that interaction.

WHAT WE NEED FROM THE RESEARCH

COMMUNITY

There are a number of things that we need the

research community to step up and do. One of the

purposes of this forum is to stimulate researchers to

find out how well the CERT process has works. We

need to find out:

Were the economic impact predictions in the

Northwest Forest Plan correct? This Forest Plan and

the planning process may serve as a model of how

things will be done in the future. We must know if

the projects were based on predictors that were

correct. If we do not test to see if the rationale was

correct then we cannot modify the process to more

accurately predict impacts next time this type of

model is used.

What were the actual economic impacts? Were they

greater than expected or less? Was the type of

impact that was expected actually realized? These

have to be quantified at the local level, not at the

state or county level. Many of the counties have one

or two population centers that skew the statistics

that are gathered on a county or state level. While

those statistics may show that the county is

recovering in fact it might only be the population

center that is recovering and not those communities

that experienced devastating economic effects and

the real impact of the changing forest management

policies.

Which economic diversification tactics worked and

which ones did not work? This is a very important

question that needs to be answered. We want to

replicate those things that did work and modify

those that did not. The last thing that I would wish

on the next group that tries to do a similar task is to

make the same mistakes that we did if there is

information out there to keep from making those

tactical errors. The intent in these initiatives to get

the assistance to the affected people as soon as

possible and each wrong road you go down uses not

only precious energy but also time.

Our group and following groups need to know what

factors to track from the beginning to see if we are

going down the right road. We have all said we

should have started measuring the effectiveness

from the beginning to see how things were working.

One reason we didn’t measure effectiveness was

that we were all too busy helping, and secondly, we

did not know what, how and what scale to measure

it in. We need your help in determining those

factors.

Importantly, we need quick research results and

your creativity in looking at nontraditional factors to

monitor. We need approximate results early on, to

see if what we are doing is working or not. We

don’t have three to five years to wait to see if what

we are doing is effective. By that time it will be too

late for the people and communities that we are

trying to help. We need to know early on if

something is not working, with the understanding

that the level of accuracy of the information is low.

We need indicators that show if we are on the right

track or if we need to change to another path.

Finally we need your creativity to get out of the box

of “this is the way we have always done it or

measured it.” We need to look at new ways of

evaluating what we are doing including the scale of

information that we are going to track. These need

to be collected starting now so that there will be

baseline information for the next community hit by

changing forest management policies or some other

event that impacts a community.

38
Figure 1--Northwest Forest Plan Community Economic Revitalization Team (CERT)

and Provincial Advisory Committee (PAC) interaction and coordination in California.

39

Figure 2--Percent of project proposals submitted to the California CERT that were

funded, by year
Chapter 6 People and Communities

Janet Anderson-Tyler

Elizabeth Ellis

AUTHORS

JANET ANDERSON-TYLER is located at the USDA Forest Service, Fire and Aviation Program,

 201 14th Street SW at Independence Ave SW, Washington, D.C., 20250.

ELIZABETH ELLIS is a Social Science Associate, USDA Forest Service, Olympic National Forest

Headquarters, Social and Economic Values Program, 1835 Black Lake Blvd., Olympia, Washington.

98512.

40
ABSTRACT

A variety of successful Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI) projects from four counties in three states are examined and explained in

detail. How communities were able to implement

these projects is investigated, including addressing

the key organizations, players and relationships.

Possible room for improvement within the NWEAI

process is discussed, as are concerns for the future

of many communities.

Keywords: Siskiyou County, Linn County, Clallam

County, Pacific County, economic diversification,

Fairchild Medical Center, rural communities, Sweet

Home Economic Development Group, Oregon

Jamboree, Coastal Resource Science Center, Natural Biopolymer, infrastructure development, Makah

Indian Reservation, Neah Harbor, Oregon Native

American and Entrepreneurial Network.

SISKIYOU COUNTY, CA.

Overview: Background and History

Located about 70 miles north of Redding and about

70 miles south of Medford, Oregon, Siskiyou county

is the northernmost county in the state of California.

Small communities that are not easily accessible

characterize the county; most are not near Interstate

Five and are difficult to provide services to.

The size of Siskiyou county is approximately 6,300

square miles and two thirds of this is publicly

owned land. The population is approximately

44,000 citizens.

Since 1990 Siskiyou county has been suffering from

a lack of timber and work. The lowest unemployment rate the county has experienced is 11 percent.

The highest unemployment rate, normally experienced during the winter months, is 16 percent.

Of the nine California counties eligible for the

Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI) Program, Siskiyou county has been

recognized as one of the most successful counties in

regards to utilizing the NWEAI programs. Several

factors in the county expedited the Northwest

Economic Adjustment Initiative.

The Siskiyou County Economic Development

Council and county business leaders conducted a

countywide economic assessment five years prior to

the NWEAI. This assessment showed that timber

harvest, production and employment would not

continue to support Siskiyou county as the major

industry. The end result was a plan of potential

economic projects that supported economic development and diversification compatible with the

county’s existing timber and agricultural industries.

When the NWEAI went into effect, it could easily

be implemented because the necessary interagency

relationships had already been formed. Facilitated

by this interagency representation, numerous

projects were developed and submitted. One such

project involves the south Weed interchange area.

Community of Weed

The community of Weed, California consists of

approximately 3,000 citizens. Weed is located in

the middle of Siskiyou county, near the Interstate

Five Corridor. This area had developable land, but

no water capacity or sewer capacity.

Great Northern, a community based organization,

had already been working on developing Weed

41
when the NWEAI was passed. The community of

Weed was well prepared for handling the NWEAI

process, resulting in the installation of water and

sewer.

Five new businesses have since entered the community of Weed and two original businesses have

expanded. A total of 169 people are now employed

due to this project. A second project in this same

community will allow for the Crystal Geyser water

bottling plant to move into the south Weed area.

This will create an additional 150 jobs.

The median annual income in the community of

Weed, at the time of this forum, was $40,000. This

was an improvement when compared with the mill

workers wages of $7.50 to $8.00 an hour. The state

of California has ranked the community of Weed

third on its list of developable property off of

Interstate Five.

The success outlined here was made possible financially through grant and loan packages funded by

the state of California Office of Rural Development, U.S. Economic Development Administration,

and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Fairchild Medical Center

Siskiyou county successfully used the NWEAI to

assist in building a new hospital in the

town of Eureka. The county had only two hospitals

to serve its 6,300 square miles; one of these hospitals was built in 1926 and asbestos had been detected in the building. The community responded to

the economic opportunity offered through the

NWEAI by organizing several local fund-raisers.

The community succeeded in securing a $2 million

challenge grant from the McConnell Foundation, a

local foundation covering both Shasta and Siskiyou

counties.

The community went to the state of California

Office of Rural Development for assistance, but the

funds were not available. Instead of giving up on

the project, the Office of Rural Development contacted its counterpart offices in Washington and

Oregon, asking for unobligated funds. Washington

and Oregon granted a total of $8.5 million dollars

for this project.

The hospital opened in the summer of 1997 as a 30-

bed, state of the art facility, focusing on outpatient

services. It can be seen as an example of coordination and collaboration among the agencies involved

in the NWEAI process.

Common Ground and Future Issues

The participants in the planning process have seen

their experience as a positive one.

Not only was Siskiyou county well prepared for its

involvement in the NWEAI process, the participants

saw the value in meeting with state and federal

partners to discuss common issues and search for

integrated support.

Siskiyou county realized that in addition to strong

interagency relationships and community resources,

a large amount of time and efficient coordination

were also necessary to build local capacity.

Siskiyou county is still behind schedule in establishing effective economic opportunities for many of its

more remote communities and tribes, with only one

year left to the NWEAI process, at the time of this

forum. Concerns over assistance for the future,

funding for technical assistance, and funding for

capacity building are strong in Siskiyou county.

42
LINN COUNTY, OREGON

Overview

The town of Sweet Home, Oregon is located 30

miles to the south, southeast of Albany. The population is approximately 7500 citizens. The economy

of Sweet Home has always relied primarily on the

timber industry. Sweet Home experienced a major

recession in the 1980s and by the late 1980s the

economy still had not fully recovered. When the

controversy over the northern spotted owl began and

regulations started taking effect, Sweet Home and

Linn county felt the effects. By 1993, mill employment in Linn county was down to 3,600 jobs compared to 5,840 jobs in 1979.

Strategic Planning

The decline in the timber economy stimulated the

Oregon Economic Development Department and

Oregon communities to work together on developing a strategic plan to help prepare for the major

shifts ahead. Sweet Home formed the Sweet Home

Economic Development Group (SHEDG) in order

to deal with diversifying the economy and help their

community handle the changes. The Rural Development Initiative funded and implemented a Rural

Futures Forum to help develop leadership in state

timber communities in Oregon.

The northern spotted owl--The listing of the

northern spotted owl was the test for many of these

programs and their plans. Following the listing of

the northern spotted owl, many communities experienced despair, job loss, and saw a population reduction of approximately 4,000 as families left Linn

county. Linn county had approximately an 80-85

percent reduction in public timber, following the

listing of the owl. It was time to test the strategic

planning the numerous groups had worked on

earlier. As part of the

NWEAI, a statewide Community Economic Revitalization Team (CERT) was established.

Projects for Recovery

The Oregon jamboree--The Sweet Home Economic Development Group, with the assistance of

the Oregon Economic Development Department

and the Rural Development Initiative, has for six

years been sponsoring the Oregon jamboree. This

three-day event draws up to 10,000 people per day,

offering country music, showcases, and various

talents.

Encouraging economic diversification--The Sweet

Home Economic Development Group, working

through the NWEAI, has assisted in putting in a

water line to the eastern portion of the city limits,

which in turn resulted in the establishment of a

KOA campground, owned and run by two ex-timber

families. Other projects include assisting economic

diversity by attracting different businesses to the

area, such as Invest-a-Cast, a manufacturer of

titanium golf clubs, and Smurfit, a manufacturer of

building materials and newsprint.

 The Sweet Home Economic Development Group

has also encouraged the Federally

funded Jobs in the Woods program, which is working on watershed restoration and flood damage

repair in the Sweet Home community area. The

SHEDG also works with local contractors in employing graduates from the Jobs in the Woods

program.

The NWEAI Process

What worked--One of the greatest benefits of the

NWEAI process was the requirement that grant

proposals come from a community supported

43
strategic plan. This planning process brought

together diverse elements of the community; as a

group they sorted out community goals, objectives,

projects, and priorities. Another strength in the

NWEAI process was the consultation and commitment provided by the program managers for the

NWEAI in all state, Federal and local agencies.

Whether it was the Oregon Economic Development

Department or the Linn county Business Development Center, the assistance and encouragement was

present. Finally, of utmost importance was the

assistance provided to rural communities, not just

urban and metro areas.

Room for improvement--The NWEAI Process

could have been improved in the areas of communication, estimation of impacted counties, project

ranking, and expected funding. Communication

difficulties were experienced on the local level in

regards to grants programs. Grant managers from

different agencies often had difficulty establishing

ground rules when brought into one program. On the

federal level, Linn county felt it was possible to

improve communication on the part of the Multi

Agency Command (MAC). The procedure for

estimating the number of impacted counties in

Oregon could have been improved. The initial

count was four and was later expanded to seven, and

finally to include all western Oregon counties.

Eastern Oregon was not included and they are just

now beginning to feel the impacts of a declining

timber industry.

Many communities found a loophole when submitting projects for priority ranking. Some communities submitted projects to the CERT, going through

the ranking process, while others submitted their

projects directly to alternative agencies for funding,

bypassing the ranking process. Linn county sees

room for improvement in this area. Another funding

issue is based upon the difference between what was

expected for new funding and what was actually

allocated.

The Future

The future for Linn county involves more than just

the NWEAI process. The future involves a change

in thinking. For example, Linn County has relied on

the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land

Management to handle many of its traditional

outdoor heavy labor work, such as tree planting and

road restoration. Now, with Jobs in the Woods,

Linn county needs to support its dislocated timber

workers by switching to private contractors to

handle this resource work.

Linn county will continue to need outside leadership

to assist in providing expertise, support, opportunities, and training; this assistance will be essential in

keeping community spirit and momentum going

during this recovery process. Support from local

watershed councils is seen as a potential link which

will need to be formed in Linn county, as it will

bring communities, the private work force and

natural resources management together to address

watershed management while generating jobs. The

final concern for Linn county is funding for the

future, including funding and incentives for private

land restoration.

PACIFIC COUNTY, WASHINGTON

Overview

Pacific county is located in the southwest portion of

Washington State. The county has relied primarily

on timber, agriculture, and fishing for most of its

existence. The Pacific county economy saw a

reduction in both its commercial and charter fishing

industries in the 1970s. In 1994, salmon restrictions

resulted in the closure of most of Pacific county’s

salmon fishing areas, with the exception of Willapa

44
Bay. In 1996, two seafood processors shut down

and 150 jobs went with them.

Pacific county saw reductions in the timber

economy, as well. The county once had 50 mills; by

the late 1980s two mills remained in the city of

Raymond. Pacific county had lost 60 percent of its

workforce in the wood products industry.

Taking Action

Pacific county had not had a lot of positive experiences with state and Federal agencies. Pacific

county officials were therefore very skeptical about

the NWEAI; they assumed some type of regulations

would be associated.

Pacific county officials were impressed and surprised when Federal and state representatives did

not force regulations upon the county, but instead

were willing to sit and listen to the proposed

projects the county had in mind. Instead of telling

Pacific county how they should implement the

projects, they explained how they could help implement the projects. One of the projects was a community assessment project. With the assistance of

the U.S. Forest Service, funding was obtained. This

funding allowed for

hiring of professionals who helped the county

identify assets, liabilities, and potential directions

for the community to take.

Projects

The boatyard--The City of Ilwaco had a boatyard at

the port that was the only positive economic part of

the port left. The boatyard’s discharge permit was

up for renewal. One of the requirements, which

needed to be met before the Washington State

Department of Ecology would allow for renewal,

was installation of a water collection system in the

area where the boats are pressure washed. The U.S.

Forest Service, Office of Rural Development assisted in financing the water collection system. The

permit was renewed and business has continued.

The coastal resource science center--An earlier

project was the Coastal Resource Science Center.

It was realized by the citizens of Pacific county in

the 1980s the salmon fishing industry would not last

forever. One idea that would benefit all would be a

way to coordinate all natural resource industries in

the area, to use valid scientific methods to find ways

natural resource industries can work together.

Included in this idea would be the establishment of

a database of information about the natural resources in the Pacific county area, even outside the

area. The Coastal Resource Science Center will

provide information to the public about the natural

resources available in this area. The idea for the

Coastal Resource Science Center was born early,

but only recently has it started to become reality

with help from the Washington State Department of

Ecology, the Pacific County Economic Development Council, and the U. S. Forest Service.

City of Raymond

The city of Raymond in Pacific county is a natural

resources-based town. The reductions in timber and

fishing industries have contributed to reducing

population size from 55,000 to 3,000 citizens.

Numerous mills once existed in Raymond, now

there are two. The community of Raymond reacted

with frustration to their predicament, but soon

realized economic diversification was necessary for

the community to survive. After going through a

period of focusing on what the community did not

have, the community of Raymond switched gears

and started to realize what it did have. Raymond

recognized their location as being in one of the most

naturally productive and pristine areas in the world.

The community decided to sell this concept, and

working with various eco-trusts and The Nature

45
Conservancy, formed the Willapa Alliance.

Portions of downtown Raymond once had an abandoned, industrial appearance. The city is now

working to install a public waterfront, maritime

museum, public market, a theater,

parking, and artwork to make the city more attractive. The city of Raymond has also had continuing

problems with their sewage plant, built in 1983.

The NWEAI process encouraged the creation of the

North Pacific county infrastructure planning committee, as well as gave them the financial opportunity to investigate new ways of managing their

wastewater and solid waste issues.

Natural biopolymer---Kitasen is a by-product of

crab and shrimp shells. It is found in various dietary

supplements, products for rheumatoid arthritis, and

shampoos. It is manufactured in Raymond by the

parent company, Natural Biopolymer. As of July

1997, there were 36 employees; production had

doubled and demand still could not be met. The

company received a $175,000 Community Economic Revitalization Board grant to help fund a new

building in order to expand facilities.

Another company is interested in Kitasen. This

company is also located in Raymond and currently

specializes in producing cleaning supplies for pools

and spas. The company is also interested in getting

into the production of Kitasen. As both companies

expand, their wastewater needs will increase. That

brings the north Pacific county infrastructure committee back into the picture. Work has been continuing on this issue, with all parties involved.

Reflections and The Future

The partnerships which evolved from the NWEAI

experience were beneficial for the city of Raymond,

and Pacific county as a whole. The process was seen

as flexible and educational. Some concerns centered around the Federal Jobs in the Woods and the

state funded Jobs for the Environment program.

Both are watershed/environmental restoration

programs that hire dislocated natural resource

workers. The question was asked as to whether

workers are being set up for failure in these programs. That is, are jobs available after the training?

CLALLAM COUNTY, WASHINGTON

Overview: Makah Indian Reservation

Clallam county is located on the tip of the Olympic

Peninsula in Washington state, just below the Strait

of Juan de Fuca. The Makah Indian Reservation is

located on the northwest tip of Clallam county,

where Neah Bay and Cape Flattery are found. Neah

Bay is located at the northwestern tip of the continental United States.

The Makah Indians have relied heavily on the

fishing industry, primarily salmon, to support their

economy. The timber industry has played a secondary role, but has been an important factor in the

Makah Indian economy. The Makah Indian Reservation has seen both a steady decline in the supply

of salmon and increasing regulations surrounding its

timber harvesting methods due to the northern

spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. Both of these

factors have hit the Makah economy hard.

As of July 1997, unemployment on the Makah

Indian reservation is about 50 percent during fishing

seasons. During the off season, it can hit nearly 60

percent.

As of July 1997, the population living on the Makah

Indian Reservation is estimated at 1,800 but the

overall enrollment is approximately 50,000+ residents.

46
The Makah Indian Reservation realized they needed

to establish economic goals. These goals included

economic development, maximization of resources,

preservation of culture and improved quality of life.

One way to meet these goals was to create jobs for

the future that provided economic self-sufficiency.

This meant economic diversification.

Makah Marina

Neah Bay is subject to severe winter storms, due to

its location on the northwestern tip of the United

States. Up to six fishing boats a year are damaged

in this area. For many years, the Makah Tribal

Council had asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assist in developing a safe harbor and a

marina for winter protection. In 1991, the Army

Corps of Engineers finally agreed to assist in sharing some of the costs.

The breakwater facility--The first project was

construction of a breakwater facility, a barrier to

protect harbors from the impact of waves. The

Makah Tribe needed to raise 20 percent of the costs

for this 4 million dollar facility. By constructing the

breakwater facility themselves, the Makah Tribe

would save over 1 million dollars.

The Makah Tribal Council introduced the project

into the Washington County Economic Revitalization Team (WACERT) process and by June 1995

had over 11 different state and Federal sources

forming a funding package. This funding included

help in both the planning and construction phases.

The breakwater facility was completed by December 1995 and the marina completed by May 1997.

This was the realization of a 30 year dream. Because of the safety provided by the breakwater

facility, the fishing vessel fleet has expanded from

seven to 150 vessels and two fish processing plants

are now able to operate year round.

One of the economic development goals was improved quality of life, that can be met by providing

year round employment found in economic diversification. Spin-off businesses have taken hold on the

marina, such as vessel repair and supplies, tourism,

charters, restaurants and shore-side services. The

community has felt the rejuvenation of the economy

and there has been a great sense of optimism for the

future.

ONABEN

The Makah Tribal Council and the Makah Small

Business Development Program signed a memorandum of agreement with the Oregon Native American Business and Entrepreneurial Network

(ONABEN). The purpose of ONABEN is to assist

tribal members begin successful businesses on their

reservations by helping them develop business

ideas, find start up capital, and create viable business plans. ONABEN’s work with the Makah and

other Washington tribes is funded in part through

grants obtained through the Washington CERT

process with NWEAI dollars.

Education and entrepreneurs--ONABEN has

opened up an office on the Reservation and offers to

the Makah community the Native Employment

Works Program (NEW). The NEW Program provides information on how to obtain and complete a

GED and college courses at the nearby Northwest

Indian College. The NEW Program also provides

the opportunity to enter The Basics Program, which

helps with skill and career assessment, and/or

development of a business idea. One goal behind

ONABEN is to keep money circulating within the

reservation by encouraging the development of

locally owned businesses. ONABEN has noticed

many continued needs within the Makah Indian

Reservation and by working closely with the Makah

Tribal Council and the community, hopes to get

their program off the ground.

47
Chapter 7 Implementing the Initiative: On the Ground

Anne S. Berblinger

Karl Denison

Elizabeth Ellis

AUTHORS

ANNE S. BERBLINGER is an Economic Development Representative, Economic Development

Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, One World Trade Center, Portland, Oregon, 97204.

KARL DENISON is the Washington State Rural Assistance Coordinator, USDA Forest Service, Olympic

National Forest Headquarters, 1835 Black Lake Blvd. SW, Olympia, WA. 98512.

ELIZABETH ELLIS is a Social Science Associate, USDA Forest Service, Olympic National Forest

Headquarters, Social and Economic Values Program, 1835 Black Lake Blvd., Olympia, Washington.

98512.

48
ABSTRACT

This paper documents a variety of ways the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI)

provided assistance. The NWEAI worked with local

governments and businesses, creating ways to

implement community projects, create jobs, and

retrain dislocated workers. For communities, the

NWEAI provided both encouragement, resources

for economic, community development planning,

and infrastructure. Business aide provided entrepreneurs access to management assistance, valuable

information and capital. This chapter examines

programs that provided these types of assistance, or

were formed with NWEAI assistance, including the

USDA Rural Development Administration, the

Oregon Native American Business and Entrepreneur

Network, and the Coos, Curry, and Douglas Counties Business Development Corporation.

This chapter also provides information on programs

which directed NWEAI funds towards ecosystem

investment and/or workers and their families. One

of the unique programs developed through the

NWEAI was the Federally-funded Jobs in the

Woods, an effort to retrain dislocated timber and

mill workers in the skills needed to perform ecosystem restoration. Washington state's Jobs for the

Environment program and Oregon's Rogue Valley

Ecosystem Workforce are discussed. The establishment of the Siskiyou Training and Employment

Program (STEP) and the Forks Forestry Training

Program are provided. STEP and Forks Forestry

Training programs provide different types of training related to forest management. It is explained

how the programs work, including curriculum,

benefits to communities, and employment opportunities for program graduates.

Keywords: ONABEN, Grand Ronde, Warm

Springs, Klamath, SBA, Native American, entrepreneurs, RDA, Rural Enterprise, Roseburg, commercial lenders, marketing, CCD, strategic planning

process, One Stop Process, Coos County Business

Incubator, Skamainia, technical assistance. Jobs For

The Environment, Jobs in the Woods, ColumbiaPacific Resource Conservation and Development,

Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy, restoration, sustainability, STEP, JTPA, ecosystem management, Siskiyou County, commercial thinning,

silvicultural training

BUSINESS ASSISTANCE

Business Assistance: ONABEN

Creation--The Oregon Native American Business

and Entrepreneur Network (ONABEN) was created

in 1992 when representatives from four Oregon

tribes realized that the Native American rate of

participation in private ownership was well below

the norm. In the state of Oregon, the rate for all

races was around sixty whereas for Native Americans it was around nine. These four Oregon tribes,

the Klamath, Warm Springs, Siletz and Grand

Ronde, saw no connection being made between the

Native American Community and the Small Business Development Center Network, which helps

communities in Oregon create small businesses.

The result was a lack of access to technical knowledge, of actual market accessibility, and of access

to credit for existing and potential Indian businesses. These are major impediments to any entrepreneur. ONABEN is a solution to this problem,

designed as an integrated program to help Native

Americans create new businesses. A two class

program was created; the first class lasts ten weeks,

teaching students how to create a bankable business

plan. After successful completion, the second class,

the capitol access program, provides access to a

micro-lending fund. The student may apply for

loans through the Small Business Administrations

49
7A Program and/or a SeaFirst Bank’s umbrella

utilization program, classified as preferred lending

status.

Guiding vision--The guiding vision for ONABEN

has been to create quality service oriented businesses within the Native American communities

that can compete with those outside the communities. Dollars brought into the communities will

remain and

 recirculate within the Native American community.

ONABEN believes that by creating successful

businesses within the Native American community,

successful role models are being provided for the

Indian children. Children will see success as an

expectation in life, not just an aspiration.

Track record--In the first year of operation,

ONABEN worked with approximately 100 entrepreneurs and assisted in starting 25 businesses. In the

second year of operation, ONABEN worked with 90

businesses, again starting 25 businesses. ONABEN

anticipates helping to start 75 businesses in its third

year of operation (1997) and projects to have helped

start a total of 300 businesses by the end of 1998.

Location and assistance--The headquarters for

ONABEN are located in the state of Oregon, with

primary sites in Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and

Klamath. The Small Business Administration has

been the primary underwriter for these sites, and the

Rural Business Cooperative Service, located both in

Siletz and Umatilla. The individual sites are called

business information centers and have provided

counseling, access to capital and marketing resources, and business information.

ONABEN has expanded out of Oregon, lending

assistance to tribes in Washington state, such as the

Makah, Colville and Yakama and has planned to

expand to California state to assist the Hoopa tribe.

There are 20 different sites in North Dakota, South

Dakota, Montana and within the Navaho Nation,

which have been created based upon the experiences of ONABEN.

Business Assistance: USDA Rural Development

Administration

Challenge of resentment--The Rural Development

Administration (RDA), formerly the Farmer’s Home

Administration, was met with numerous challenges

when the NWEAI was first announced. One challenge was explaining to those not directly involved

in the NWEAI effort why so much funding was

being directed to three states. Many career people

in Washington, DC expressed resentment and or

confusion, resenting the NWEAI process because it

meant less funding for their areas to utilize.

Challenge of proposals--Another challenge was

handling and prioritizing proposals. One RDA office

received about 600 proposals during the first week

on the job, and with only five to six staff to handle

all that paperwork, it was demanding. Some

projects were easily funded, such as water and waste

projects. These projects improve infrastructure and

take about two to three years to implement, often

because of environmental processes. Rural Business Grant Enterprise proposals were those where

economic planning teams had formed years earlier,

and projects had already been envisioned in the

context of a community plan. These proposals were

also funded easily. Because not all counties had

planned in advance, funds were not distributed

equally in all areas. The RDA has been working on

getting other communities to catch up. Other

projects were in gray areas, others were very creative and visionary. When told a project was not

going to be funded, an unfortunate response often

received from the community was that they had the

idea everything was to be funded. This miscommunication is something that needs to be improved for

the future.

50
Challenge of state politics--Politics between the

states created further challenges for the RDA. The

Community Economic Revitalization Team (CERT)

process in California was different from Oregon and

Washington, and agencies that had never worked

closely had to learn to build relationships in order to

make the NWEAI work effectively among states.

Paper trails were created in agencies in each of the

three different states for one project receiving

funding from all three states. This was not the most

efficient way to handle paperwork, and is one of the

problems which needs to be dealt with to improve

the process.

Future challenges--Challenges remain for the

future. The timber funds will disappear and a

shortage of funding will occur in the RDA. Rural

Business Enterprise Grants will decrease in availability. For grant and infrastructure programs, if

there is to be funding at the level experienced with

the NWEAI, it will have to come from Congress.

For the loan funds created through the Intermediary

Re-lending Program (IRP), there is a way to replenish funds without waiting for the loans to be repaid.

IRP borrowers can explore utilizing secondary

markets to sell off revolving loans, thereby creating

additional revolving loan funds in an area. This

potential should be investigated. The Guaranteed

Business and Industry Program has not been fully

utilized for funding, with the first step being outreach to lenders. Native American Tribes should be

fully able to utilize business loan programs, and

checks should be done to make sure the community

coordinators are in place and funded. Finally, the

importance of maintaining relationships and continually creating new relationships cannot be

stressed enough.

Business Assistance: The Small Business Development Center

First stop project--The Small Business Development Center predates the NWEAI. The NWEAI

assisted the Small Business Development Center by

funding a project called the First Stop Project.

Funding came from the Small Business Administration, the Oregon Economic Development Department, USDA Rural Development, and the Old

Growth Fund. Although over fourteen centers in the

state of Oregon participated in the First Stop

Project, the following perspective is that of just one

in the city of Roseburg, Oregon.

Making connections--The First Stop Project found

that established businesses were of higher priority

for funding than start up businesses in the Roseburg

area. They chose established businesses as the

target, although start up businesses were also assisted. The First Stop Project helped businesses find

the program through commercial lenders by creating

a pad of referral forms, which were handed out for

free to numerous lenders throughout the county.

Another way to make connections between the

businesses and resources providers was setting up a

meeting. Early during the project, a successful

lunch meeting was set up between professionals and

business resource providers, where 50 participants

attended. Community corporations, business development corporations, attorneys, accountants and

bankers throughout the county were invited to this

meeting.

Jobs in the Woods--The state network office in

Eugene noticed interest in the Federally-funded Jobs

in the Woods program. Questions were being asked

about how to access workers from the program and

if the workers were successfully starting their own

businesses after completing the program. The First

Stop Project noted this interest and placed ads in

newspapers advertising free business assistance for

51
individuals planning to enter woods related business

or expand on existing woods related business.

There was zero response to this ad, which the First

Stop Project believes was due to timing. The ads

were placed in early 1996 and the appropriate time

for this type of advertisement may have been 1992

to 1993.

Success on a small budget--For the First Stop

Project in Roseburg, Oregon, a budget of only

$25,000.00 for two years assisted 337 businesses.

These businesses were able to land approximately

$2.5 million in loans. Feedback from the clients of

the First Stop Project supported the planning process chosen, and the ultimate summation was

nothing would change if the First Stop Project were

to be implemented again.

COMMUNITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Communities and Infrastructure: Coos, Curry,

and Douglas Counties Business Development

Corporation

Barriers to getting started--The media generated

by the NWEAI created many unrealistic expectations. The coastal programs for Coos, Curry, and

Douglas Counties Business Development Corporation (CCD) received numerous applications from

private businesses, many assuming everyone was

going to receive grant funds from this NWEAI.

Assistance from the Small Business Administration

was necessary to sort through all the applications in

order to find truly eligible projects.

Other barriers the CCD faced included a lack of

knowledge about the state and Federal programs

involved in the NWEAI process and a lack of

strategic planning on the part of Coos, Curry, and

Douglas counties. This lack of strategic planning

often resulted in projects that had no clear definition, unrealistic timelines, and little budget information. It was also difficult for the counties to set

priorities for their projects. The county planners did

not give a lot of direction in this area and when the

CERT process was established. Consequently, the

people that the County Commissioners chose for

local CERT teams felt overwhelmed.

Overcoming the barriers--State and Federal

representatives came to the area and hosted a

countywide forum in each county. The response was

very positive. Counties learned how to establish

priorities and develop long term strategies. Counties learned that the projects arise from a strategic

plan, which helps the applicants reach agreement

about the community’s and county’s priorities. The

CCD learned about criteria for the priority setting

process, which it passed on to the county, and

difficulties in priority setting were minimized.

Other lessons learned included the need to maintain

a level playing field. This meant no special treatment for any district, community, or port and conduct the establishment of priorities publicly to avoid

perceptions of secrecy and possible suspicion.

Long-term outcomes--Many of these new skills

will stay with the CCD and with others involved in

the NWEAI process after it ends. Strong partnerships have been created between state, Federal, and

local agencies that will remain long into the future.

These agencies have also designed new ways of

doing business, one that includes collaborative

techniques.

Communities understand the importance of maintaining strategic plans for the future. The CCD has

been able to obtain assistance through its funding

partners and the Rural Development Administration

to help the Coos, Curry, and Douglas counties

annually update their strategic plans. The CCD has

taken many of the important lessons from the CERT

52
process and transferred them into a regional strategies program. For example, the program mandates

county projects come from a strategic plan, and that

the regional strategies board must use an evaluation

worksheet to help establish project funding.

Success stories--The importance of what CCD has

learned from the NWEAI process is evident in many

of its success stories. One such story is that of Coos

and Curry counties finally being able to overcome

the lack of flexible, affordable space for emerging

small businesses. This had been an ongoing problem, but after four and a half years, the Coos County

Business Incubator was created. The first result was

22,000 sq.ft. of space for lease to small businesses

at affordable prices. The Port of Brookings harbor

had added nearly 10,000 sq.ft. of retail space to their

area, and the city of North Bend has been working

to add 43 acres to their airport business park.

Other successful projects include the city of

Coquielle, which lost over 300 jobs after the closure

of a Georgia-Pacific mill in 1990. One project has

focused on turning the mill site into a business park.

The city of Myrtle Point is another example. After

the closure of a Georgia-Pacific mill, the city almost

became a ghost town. However, funding to create a

new main street has given existing businesses along

the street the incentive to improve their appearance,

also helping improve the quality of life in the area.

Communities and Infrastructure: Port of

Skamania, Skamania County, WA

Skamania county--Skamania county, Washington,

is composed almost entirely of rugged, mountainous

areas, 80 percent of which are the Gifford Pinchot

National Forest. Another eight percent is comprised

of public, state and federal ownership and the

remaining 12 percent is private, of which only 1.7

percent is taxed at full value. The entire population

of Skamania county is 10,000; nearly all live along

the Columbia River, near the Cascades. The largest

urban area has a population of 1,200 citizens.

Skamania county has been continually experiencing

various forest management practices and environmental regulations, and in 1986, 15 percent of the

county became the Columbia River Gorge National

Scenic Area with land use restrictions placed upon

the only occupied lands within the entire county.

Next came timber harvest restrictions from 1992 to

1993. Timber jobs, numbering nearly 1,000 in the

early 1980s, were less than 200 in 1997. Serviceoriented jobs, on the other hand, rose from 100 in

the late 1980s to over 700 in 1997. The average

cost of a home in the city of Stevenson, however,

rose from $73,000 in the late 1980s to $175,000 in

1997.

Skamania county protested these impacts and

formed the Community Action Team, a 42 member

committee made up of various public entities and

county citizens.

Feedback on four goals

Four goals had been mentioned earlier in the symposium in regards to communities: 1) allow communities to manage their own destinies; 2) provide

technical assistance; 3) cut red tape; 4) provide

access to the dollars. Skamania county, one of the

two hardest hit counties in Washington state, had

feedback on these four goals.

Managing destinies and providing technical

assistance--Overall, Skamania county saw that

when it came to providing community assistance,

the CERT program was successful in implementing

these four goals. There were concerns about providing technical assistance to communities. Do the

communities have the tools to continue building

healthy economies once the technical assistance is

gone? The importance of continuing technical

53
assistance within the county and communities after

the NWEAI ends is emphasized.

Skamania county has seen the importance in allowing communities to choose their own destiny.

Sustainability is generally seen as good but may not

be the appropriate goal for some rural communities.

Each individual community should be able to

address any rising conflicts between the rural

quality of life and fear of change due to economic

impacts.

Cutting red tape and providing access to dollars--

After developing a comprehensive plan of goals and

objective, the CERT process gave Skamania county

and the Community Action Team the avenues to

implement necessary projects. The CERT process

had definitely cut through red tape, created partnerships, helped establish mutual understanding and

communication in Skamania county. The CERT

process was able to provide avenues for implementation of many projects, which brought in needed

dollars into various communities. But communities

of Skamania county asks if this was enough? Did

the money go to the right projects? What will

happen once the money is gone and the NWEAI

ends? Skamania county’s rural communities do not

have the same options as many metropolitan areas

when economic challenges such as this arise. These

rural communities are natural resource dependent;

they have never had to conduct a long term capital

facilities plan or a marketing plan for economic

development. It was never necessary in the past and

now it is necessary. Cost/Benefit analyses, longterm budget planning, long term comprehensive

planning, wide range public involvement processes:

these are seen as the kinds of tools necessary for all

communities if they are going to survive after the

NWEAI ends.

ECOSYSTEM INVESTMENT &

WORKERS AND FAMILIES

Ecosystem Investment: Columbia-Pacific Resource Conservation & Development

Background--The Columbia-Pacific Resource

Conservation and Development Organization

(Columbia-Pacific RC&D), located on the Olympic

Peninsula in southwest Washington state, provides

technical assistance in the form of project planning,

implementation, and administration to community

groups involved in the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI). Examples include setting

up a revolving loan fund for high risk businesses

and managing habitat restoration projects. The

main goal of the program is to provide communities

with projects with encourage sustainable economic

development.

History--Columbia-Pacific Resource Conservation

& Development began its involvement in 1990,

when it sponsored the Pacific Coastal Economic

Recovery Conference. Four Washington state

counties participated: Mason, Grays Harbor, Pacific,

and Wahkiakum. Many ideas were formulated

during this conference and one idea stressed the

need for a workforce to restore salmon habitat. This

helped lead Columbia-Pacific RC&D to begin its

role in researching the Jobs in the Woods Program

and eventually implementing the Washington state

funded program, Jobs for the Environment.

Ecosystem Investment: Jobs for the Environment

Creation--In 1992, with support from various

Washington state timber companies, lumber mills,

timberland owners, and the International Woodworkers of America, Columbia-Pacific RC&D

successfully lobbied their state legislature for an

appropriation of $15 million for a program now

known as Jobs for the Environment. The ultimate

54
goal for Columbia-Pacific RC&D was to create a

new environmental restoration industry, using

Federal, state and private funding.

Private industry--The creation of such an employment industry would provide the availability of a

worker who is skilled in multiple jobs. ColumbiaPacific RC&D was servicing private industries,

timber companies, conservation districts and public

works departments in over five Washington State

counties. Ninety percent of the work had been done

on private land.

Training--The employee is trained in a variety of

skills, including habitat restoration, watershed

restoration, road decommissioning, commercial and

pre-commercial thinning, ecosystem management,

culvert removal, bioengineering, erosion protection,

road maintenance, tree planting, stream bank protection and monitoring. Columbia-Pacific RC&D

has in place an apprenticeship program which is

4,000 hours long, only 562 of which is classroom

time. There is also an additional 2,000-hour add-on

requirement for

heavy equipment operation.

The Future

Columbia-Pacific RC&D created the first organized

labor restoration nonprofit group in the nation.

They will continue to build confidence within the

private and public sectors, providing workers who

are multi-skilled to handle an increasing variety of

restoration projects. To assist in the continuing

success of this program and others related to the

Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, Columbia-Pacific RC&D sees a need for greater involvement on the part of the Congress and President’s

Administration.

Ecosystem Investment: The Rogue Institute for

Ecology and the Economy

Background--The Rogue Institute for Ecology and

Economy was founded in 1989 by a group of concerned citizens searching for a better way to deal

with issues related to the economy and the environment, particularly with the effects of the declining

northwest timber industry on Oregon communities.

In collaboration with other organizations, the Rogue

Valley Ecosystem Workforce training partnership

was created. As of 1997, the Rogue Institute is in

its third year. In 1997 the training program had 16

first year students and four second year apprentices.

Enrollees from the program find work experience

on Federal lands with the assistance of the Oregon

Economic Development Department.

Concerns

Funding--The training programs provided at the

Rogue Institute are similar to those provided at the

Columbia-Pacific Resource Conservation and

Development program but the emphasis is on

catering to the USDA Forest Service and the Bureau

of Land Management as the primary contractors.

The Rogue Institute has had concerns about its

ability to continue negotiating partnership agreements with Federal agencies. Oregon state does not

have a matching nonfederal funds like the Washington state Jobs for the Environment program. The

Rogue Institute suggests that any savings in costs

between a for-profit contractor and a nonprofit

training organization should be allowed credit as a

match.

The Future

A Sustainable economy and reinvestment--The

Rogue Institute for Ecology and The Economy

55
strives to assist in helping communities create

sustainable ecosystems and economies, particularly

in rural areas. A primary focus for the Rogue Institute is linking people back to the land. Through the

Little Applegate Landscape Design program, the

Rogue Institute is striving to break down the wall

between the economic and ecosystem sides of the

Northwest Forest Plan. The Little Applegate Landscape Design effort shows communities how they

can create a reinvestment mechanism and benefit

from natural resource management. This will

ensure reinvestment of dollars created from timber

harvesting, dollars that will benefit local communities. The program also involves the agency in every

step of the planning process in order to make sure

they understand the reinvestment they have created

through landscape restoration.

Workers & Families: STEP

Background--The Siskiyou Training and Employment Program (STEP) of California was developed

in 1996 as a way to provide dislocated timber

workers with training similar to that found in Federally-funded Jobs in the Woods Programs sponsored

in Oregon and Washington. A demonstration grant

was provided by the US Department of Labor,

which provided funding for ecosystem management

training programs in 16 northern California counties. Siskiyou county, a small county of about

40,000 citizens, has effectively created partnerships

with numerous public agencies. The Job Training

Partnership Agency of Siskiyou county used this

funding and its close partnerships with the Economic Development Council, the local community

college, and the US Forest Service offices to implement STEP.

The community coordinator, involved in the California CERT process and present on the Economic

Development Council, provided resource assistance.

The community college provided classrooms and

curriculum development assistance. The U.S. Forest

Service provided the training projects necessary for

the curriculum and technical assistance. STEP

began recruitment assessment and enrollment of

trainees.

The Program

Training provided--Although ecosystem management was the main focus of the curriculum, STEP

saw the need for other classes. Basic survival

training skills were taught, such as first aid and

CPR. Safety classes teaching the operation of tools

such as chainsaws were included. The basics in

wildfire fighting were part of the curriculum. As

both men and women were working together, STEP

included sexual harassment prevention training.

The individuals were also trained in ecosystem

management, which included watershed restoration,

manual release, planting, thinning, and native plant

propagation. Projects students are trained on include thinning, planting, and manual release

projects for the U.S. Forest Service. For private

landowners, clearing land for irrigation use and

installing draining pipes. For the Shasta Community Forest, a greenhouse, which hadn’t been used

for over two years, was rebuilt for native plant

propagation.

Changes made in 1997--STEP was only one of two

California counties to continue offering training in

1997. Some changes were made in the program

structure. The screening process was modified to

target individuals who were interested in a learning

experience versus a temporary job. Transportation

was provided, as work sites were often two to three

hours away from a student’s home. This also allows

for fewer vehicles, and less damage, on any roads

traveled. A debriefing time was added at the end of

each day to gather positive and negative feedback

about the day’s experiences. Classroom training

56
days were rescheduled from Fridays to Mondays

followed by fieldwork Tuesday through Friday,

giving the students a better mindset.

Enrollees and success--STEP was not intended to

provide jobs; this was a training program with pay.

Out of the initial 20 applicants, six dropped out

during the six to seven month training period,

possibly because they thought they were going to be

provided with employment similar to the Jobs in the

Woods Program.

Out of the remaining 14 who graduated, all were

offered job search and placement assistance from

STEP. All graduates found work. Five found

temporary work conducting public land watershed

restoration. Four applicants found employment with

private resource management agencies. Two applicants went to work for STEP; two went to work for

the U.S. Forest Service. One graduate is working

part time and is also a full time student in natural

resource studies.

Future--STEP hoped to continue offering its assistance as long as possible. One goal is to aim towards a more technical oriented curriculum, with

the assistance of the U. S. Forest Service. STEP

will continue to look for ways to provide services

for the community, private landowners, and public

agencies.

Workers & Families: Forks Forestry Training

Center

History--The Forks Forestry Technology Training

Center of Forks, Washington state, is the only center

of its kind in the United States. Noticing that more

and more young people who entered the industry

lacked traditional forestry labor skills, local logging

companies and landowners established the nonprofit

center to address this problem, using funding provided by the CERT process. The Forks Forestry

Training Center established an executive committee

of 21 people and decided the mission of the center

would be to provide world class leaders in vocational forest worker and development training

throughout United States and Canada.

Purpose and training--The purpose of the Forks

Forestry Training Center is to provide operator

training and equipment testing for new and developing equipment design to make forest operations

more efficient, bridging the gap between technology

and jobs. Services provided include regular training

programs, contract training, and practical research.

While students attend a training program, they are

also taught technical forestry skills such as silvicultural skills, landscape design, soils, and wildlife

habitat management. There were two regular

training programs: a 13 week machine operator

program and a six week hand falling for cable

thinning program. In the machine operator program, students were taught how to operate both a

harvesting machine and a forwarder, doubling

chances for employment. There was a significant

need for well trained cut-to-length machine operators; many landowners were suffering stand damage

due to ill-trained machine operators.

The hand falling for cable thinning program incorporated techniques that minimize wildlife habitat

and stand damage while are cost-effective. Some

helicopter logging has been used and expansion to

include yarders is being investigated.

The Public

Relations--The Forks Forestry Technology Training

Center encouraged public education and relations by

giving tours. From local high school classes to

visiting teachers from Utah, over 45 tours to 175

people were given in 1996. The president of

Simpson Timber Company was among one of the

many tourists.

57
Obstacles

Struggles and recommendations--The Forks

Forestry Technology Training Center was created to

meet a need. That need was a well trained logger

who could implement necessary silvicultural prescriptions. The labor force did not realize that need

and the center has not been able to provide enough

students to meet the job demand. Another obstacle

was the timeframe. With less than one year to

become self-supportive, difficulties were encountered in obtaining staff and instructors. The final

obstacle was available land base for the center to

use for its training. For-profit local contract loggers

competing for the same land created this obstacle.

Recommendations given by the center on how to

deal with these obstacles included educating employers, workers and developing a strategy, which

sets a given timeline for projects. The Forks Forestry Training Center did not recommend establishing numerous training centers throughout the United

States. Although there is a demand, it is a limited

demand. Too many centers would weaken

everyone’s chances of being effective.

58
Chapter 8--The Northwest Economic Initiative: Lessons Learned and Questions Remaining

Ellen M. Donoghue

Harriet H. Christensen

Ron Saranich

AUTHORS

ELLEN M. DONOGHUE is a research social scientist with the Social and Economic Values Program,

Pacific Northwest Research Program, Portland Forestry Sciences Lab, P.O. Box 3890, Portland, OR. 97208

HARRIET H. CHRISTENSEN is a research social scientist and team leader with the Social and Economic Values Program, Pacific Northwest Research Program, Seattle Forestry Sciences Lab, 4043

Roosevelt Way NE., Seattle, WA. 98105

RON SARANICH is a community development coordinator with the Cooperative Forestry Program,

USDA Forest Service, P.O. Box 3623, Portland, OR. 97208

59
ABSTRACT

Panelists at the forum entitled “Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Have the Hopes Been

Realized?” presented lessons learned and questions

remaining about the NWEAI process. The lessons

revealed that attention to process, particularly with

respect to barrier removal, communication, and

building trust, was important to successful implementation of the NWEAI. The lessons also reinforced the many challenges of community and

regional economic development. Most communities

had multiple needs, ranging from basic infrastructure to employment. Although sizeable, the amount

of NWEAI funds had not met all needs, and

prioritization was an important process. The lessons

learned and unanswered questions discussed during

this panel will be useful not only to NWEAI administrators and researchers, but also to administrators

and participants of other regional and community

economic development strategies.

Keywords: Northwest Economic Adjustment

Initiative, lessons learned, research questions,

development opportunities, community capacity,

administrative processes, regional economic development.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter summarizes the major points made by

a panel of speakers during the forum entitled “The

Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Have

the Hopes Been Realized?” The objective of the

panel was to provide a diverse group of presenters

an opportunity to highlight key lessons learned and

questions remaining about the implementation and

impacts of the Northwest Economic Adjustment

Initiative (NWEAI), while at the same time allow

for audience interaction and contribution. Panelists

were affiliated with governmental and non-governmental community development organizations,

Native American Tribes, the US Forest Service, and

the Washington State Community Economic Revitalization Team (WACERT). This session was

designed to assist NWEAI program administrators

and researchers in identifying key areas for program

modification, evaluation, and study.

The topic of the panel complemented the project

and outcome specific information presented by

NWEAI funding recipients, program administrators,

and rural development specialists in previous panels

(see for example, chapters 6 and 7). The ideas and

comments from the panelists and audience are

summarized below in two sections: lessons learned

and questions remaining. Additional lessons and

research considerations are discussed throughout

this proceedings (see for example, chapters 9, 10,

and 11).

LESSONS LEARNED

An economic development assistance program as

large and innovative as the NWEAI will produce a

number of lessons arising from unintended consequences, outcomes, and oversights. Community

members, program administrators, rural development specialists, and other participants in the

NWEAI have valuable insights that are useful for

understanding the NWEAI process and for developing future regional development strategies. Below

are some key lessons about the NWEAI process as

identified by a panel of NWEAI participants.

60
Emphasize Community Interests and Needs

The CERT process was designed to facilitate a

community-based approach. Communities, in

collaboration with the state CERTs, identified

problem areas and potential development opportunities, rather than have Federal agencies prescribe

development projects. This structure proved to be

important not only becuase it forced agencies to

examine previously existing barriers to interagnecy

collaboration, but also becuase it generated

opportunties for community empowerment. Expanded and improved mechanisms were developed

to assist government agencies in responding to local

initiatives.

 Balancing Long-term Economic Development

Objectives with Short-term Needs is Difficult

The experience of the NWEAI demonstrates that

even extensive development strategies, with large

budgets and broad scope, have difficulty achieving a

balanced, holistic approach to meeting short- and

long-term needs. In many resource-based communities in the Pacific Northwest, a host of short-term

immediate needs, such as unemployment, emerged

out the period of declining timber harvests. However, a

sizeable portion of the NWEAI money was allocated

for large-scale projects, such as wastewater and

drinking water projects. These projects will improve the distribution of services and quality of life

in rural communities. Large infrastructure projects

are also important for attracting new businesses into

an area. However, except for some construction

jobs and employment at the new facilities, large

infrastructure projects did not provide immediate

relief for the economic hardships faced by people

formerly employed in the timber or wood products

industries. More work is needed to balance shortand long-term needs and objectives.

Communities Have Varying Abilities to Respond

to Economic Development Opportunities

Although the CERT process was designed to even

out the playing field and reduce some of the barriers

that may inhibit rural communities from applying

for development assistance funds, communities in

the region had differing experiences participating in

the NWEAI process. Communities had varying

levels of prior experience acquiring grants and loans

for community projects. The existence of a grant

writer on a community’s administrative staff was

not a prerequisite for success in obtaining NWEAI

funds. The NWEAI was designed so that a lead

agency would assign staff to assist communities

with technical matters pertaining to the application

process. Nonetheless, the process went more

smoothly for communities that had more experience. Communities that had been through a strategic planning process were better equipped to prioritize projects. As one panelist suggested, participation in the program required that “...community

leaders master three Ps: patience, perseverence, and

paperwork.”

The NWEAI experience reinforced the importance

of developing a community’s capacity to identify

and prioritize its needs and seek out opportunities

for funding and technical assistance. Also, because

out-migration often results from declining economic

opportunities, communities were faced with the

challenge of keeping talented leaders and business

people in the community.

Need to Reach out to Highly Impacted Communities

More personnel resources and an improved strategy

may be needed to reach out to highly impacted

communities that do not have sufficient capacity to

develop project proposals and are not well informed

about development opportunities. Larger communi61
ties located along transportation corridors or with

previous experience with community projects were

better equipped to participate and, in general,

received more funding relative to the more isolated,

less prepared communities.

Need for Reinvestment of Local Profits and

Attention to Scale

One element for building stronger, more flexible

communities is to reinvest the profits from both

resource-based and non-resource based industries

back into the local community. Historically, timber

sales and economic development projects have had

inherent biases toward “bigness” in terms of scale,

scope, and objectives. Also, investment in capital or

technology is more likely than investment in labor.

Smaller scale commodity extraction may be an

appropriate and desirable scale for some communities. However under the current timber contracting

system, small scale bids may not be competitive.

The current system does not emphasize small scale

commodity extraction and yet the smaller scale may

provide communities with the flexibility they need

to adjust to changing ecosystem management

practices.

Importance of the Job Retraining Process

Many hard lessons were learned by timber-based

communities about the potential drawbacks of

basing the local economy on a single industry.

Unemployment impacts were substantial in some

areas in the Pacific Northwest. Education, training,

and job-retraining programs that are designed to be

flexible to changing employment needs and opportunities will better serve job seekers, employers, and

economic development objectives. Without a strong

correlation between retraining programs and employment opportunities, displaced workers and

employers will not be well-served. Jobs in the

Woods and other retraining efforts have provided

some important lessons along these lines.

Building Trust and Good Communication Between Federal Agencies and Communities

The process of building trust takes time and must be

sensitive to the history of experiences that Native

American Tribes and rural communities have had

with government agencies. Some communities had

strong relationships with Federal programs or

employees, while other communities were reluctant

to work closely with Federal agencies. The degree

of clarity of the information about the state CERT

process was one factor that affected community

engagement in the NWEAI process. As projects

were developed, continual communication between

agencies and communities about the status of the

project was important in building community

confidence and providing feedback to agency

officials.

Need for On-Going Monitoring and Evaluation of

Assistance

Like many public projects, the NWEAI was not

designed with a mechanism (fiscal or administrative) to monitor and evaluate the implementation

and outcomes of the NWEAI. While the NWEAI

was designed to be flexible and innovative at an

administrative and policy level, it did not include a

mechanism to allow for a comprehensive evaluation

of the program. An initiative-wide accounting

system would have contributed to this, as would

better accounting of socioeconomic indicators at the

community level prior to the implementation of the

NWEAI. For instance, while it was predictable that

a common post-NWEAI question would be “Did the

communities most in need benefit from the

62
NWEAI?,” little attention or resources were put to

creating a mechanism to answer this type of question.

QUESTIONS REMAINING

Panelists and audience members provided a range of

questions about the implementation, impacts, and

processes of the NWEAI. The following is a compilation of these questions.

1. To what extent did financial and technical

resources reach those communities most

impacted by the declines in timber harvests?

What are the constraints and opportunities for future

assistance?

2. In what ways can the NWEAI be

implemented more efficiently? Can the application

process be shortened even further? Is there a way to

make the procedures and processes better reflect the

size of a project, given that bigger projects may

require a lengthier more detailed process?

3. Did the State CERT process work for all

potential recipients? What additional institutional

barriers can be removed? Is there an opportunity for

Tribes to work directly with Federal agencies rather

than go through the state CERT process?

4. What are the opportunities and constraints

for building new collaborative relationships

between federal land managers and communities

adjacent to federal lands?

5. How are the benefits and costs associated

with federal land management actions distributed?

6. To what extent does the prioritization of

wood commodity projects reflect the need for valueadded, high skilled, and high paying jobs?

7. How can the Forest Service, Bureau of Land

Management, and other federal agencies mesh their

annual programs of work with the strategic action

plans of rural communities? What are the

constraints and opportunities for this?

8. How can communities build more effective

linkages to organizations that provide economic

development assistance?

9. There is a need for more evaluation of the

type and extent of jobs that were created with

assistance from the NWEAI. What type of jobs

were created? How were the jobs categorized and

measured? What was the placement process, and

what are workers perceptions about that process?

10. How much economic diversification at the

community level is enough? What are the

benchmarks of progress in economic

diversification?

11. What are the constraints and opportunities

for bringing together researchers and community

members to develop a research agenda? How are

these efforts funded?

CONCLUSION

Continued dialogue that includes diverse

perspectives is important for understanding and

addressing the range of intended and unintended

outcomes of the NWEAI. The above lessons

revealed that attention to process, particularly with

respect to barrier removal, communication, and

building trust, was important to successful

implementation of the NWEAI. The lessons also

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reinforced the many challenges of community and

regional economic development. Communities vary

in their abilities to respond to economic

development opportunities. Agencies have limited

resources and personnel to provide technical

assistance to rural communities. Even with

multiagency cooperation, collaboration, and process

simplification, it takes time for the effects of

economic development assistance to be felt at the

community level. Once an economic impact occurs,

such as what resulted from the decline in timber

harvests, people begin reacting and unanswered

questions discussed during this panel will be useful

not only to NWEAI administrators and researchers,

but also to administrators and participants of other

regional and community economic development

strategies.

Panel members were:

Karen Berkholtz, Washington SCERT Chair

Sue Burcell, Karuk Community Development Corporation Executive Director

Chris Gannon, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Soil Scientist

Lynn Jungwirth, The Hayfork Watershed Research and Training Center Director

Darrel Kenops, Willamette National Forest Supervisor

Dan Leinan, Forks, WA. City Clerk-Treasurer and Forks Economic Development Steering Committee

Chairperson

Charles Spencer, Labor Education Research Center Coordinator

Jim Zelenka, Lane County Council of Governments Economic Development Coordinator

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Chapter 9 Research on the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative:

 Outcomes and Process

Paul Sommers

AUTHOR

PAUL SOMMERS is senior research fellow at the Northwest Policy Center, Institute for Public Policy and

Management, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, Box 353060, Seattle,

WA 98105-3060

65
ABSTRACT

Several presentations at the Northwest Economic

Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI) conference discussed ongoing or completed research on the impacts of the NWEAI. These research efforts can be

divided into two general groupings: 1) research on

the outcomes for workers and communities, and 2)

work on the changes in Federal and state funding

processes and perceptions at the local level of the

importance of these changes. New forms of collaboration have emerged among Federal and state

agencies, enabling many communities to implement

locally designed projects easier. This innovation in

agency decision-making with respect to infrastructure funding programs seems to be the most successful outcome associated with the NWEAI. In addition, successful programs have been created to teach

ecosystem management skills to natural resource

workers, but weak demand for such skills among

public agencies and private landowners is inhibiting

the application of these skills and the emergence of

a new high skill/high wage profession.

Keywords: Collaboration, infrastructure, economic

development, ecosystem management, workforce

skills

INTRODUCTION

This chapter summarizes major points made by

speakers who conducted research on the implementation and impacts of the Northwest Economic

Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI). These studies fall

into two major categories: studies of worker retraining programs, and observations of the implementation and impacts of infrastructure funding programs.

These studies are summarized below, after which

some comments are offered on the major findings

and their policy implications.

OUTCOMES FOR WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES

One of the important aspects of the NWEAI was to

make funds available to retrain dislocated timber

workers. All of the affected states made special

efforts to connect dislocated workers with training

programs to ease their transition into new careers

and new sources of employment. Two presentations

examined the impacts of these retraining efforts.

Margaret Hallock, director of the Labor Education

Research Center and member of the Oregon Community Economic Revitalization Team (CERT),

discussed ongoing work on the impacts of the

Federally-funded Jobs in the Woods program in

Oregon. Jobs in the Woods was an effort to define

and implement a high skill/high wage strategy

designed to achieve overall goals of the NWEAI to

not only restore the health of watersheds but to also

help communities, businesses, and workers move

into a field called ecosystem management. The

goals of Jobs in the Woods were to train people for

ecosystem restoration work in forests, and to work

on policy changes to ensure that there would be

demand for these trainees as they graduated. Also,

graduates would earn sufficiently high wages so

they could remain in rural towns they resided in

before the entire forest economy transition began, at

about the time of the owl listings. The high skill/

high wage strategy was meant to overcome a level

of compensation for forest restoration work that

hovered around $5,000 a year prior to this project.

Training programs were accompanied by efforts to

build partnerships with a variety of state and Federal

agencies, including JTPA, the U.S. Forest Service,

U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the state

Department of Forestry. Other partners included

unions, community based organizations, and rural

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development organizations. Calling this a “sandwich approach,” Margaret Hallock indicated that

neither top-down mandates, nor bottom-up organizing efforts alone can change the labor market

outcomes. Change takes place only when training

institutions and public agencies coordinate their

programs with workers and communities.

Three kinds of outcomes needed to be tracked to see

if the training and policy changes made any difference:

1) workforce outcomes, such as skill levels,

 employment, and wages;

 2) forest ecosystem management practices,

 and community health, such as involvement

 in (3);

 3) forest planning and community benefits

 from forest management activities.

Eight separate demonstration projects were funded

in Oregon to train workers, and complementary

activities were funded in the states of California

and Washington. Through these demonstrations,

forest ecosystem restoration activities were carried

out on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land

Management lands, and some very limited activities

on private lands. Each demonstration project

involves steering committees with representation

from Federal and state agencies, community-based

organizations, work crews, and sometimes unions.

Oregon State University developed a curriculum,

and a new state approved apprenticeship has been

approved based on this curriculum. The steering

committees and projects have been active for three

to four years.

While it is too early to report on final outcomes,

preliminary findings can be summarized. The

demonstrations prove that there are workers interested in doing restoration work, a point that some

skeptics had disputed initially. Skill development

has certainly taken place, including among Latino

workers who went through a special Spanish language version of the curriculum. Job quality has

improved relative to the kinds of forest restoration

jobs that existed prior to these projects; wages are

higher, and the jobs are of longer duration. However, there are not very many of these jobs; perhaps

only two percent of the in-the-woods jobs available

are ecosystem restoration jobs. The commitment to

new ways of managing forests is not very widespread within the land management agencies. The

program has had limited impacts with respect to the

second criterion, land management practices. A

current strategy for trying to increase the supply of

jobs for these high skill ecosystem restoration

workers is to create a tool kit for watershed councils and communities on how to take control of

ecosystem management. On the third criterion,

community health, the local steering committees

that had been created seem likely to become permanent institutions; one project evaluator said that

they are “...a real intellectual infrastructure that will

live beyond these projects.”

Looking back on the experience, Margaret Hallock

indicated that building partnerships is very time

consuming but essential. Moving these new practices into the private sector will be an additional

challenge. Research continues with support from

several foundations to track outcomes more completely.

Corrine Gobeli from Oregon State University

discussed her research on two dislocated worker

training programs, Jobs in the Woods, and Choices

and Options, an Oregon state program funded in

1991. Her research was carried out with a

multidisciplinary team composed of two foresters, a

rural sociologist, and an adult education specialist.

The research project was based on interviews with

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persons who went through these two training programs. Tracking them down months or years later,

and getting them to cooperate in the research process was the first challenge. To achieve a final

sample of 69 former dislocated timber workers

required contacting all Jobs in the Wood participants, of whom 19 agreed to be interviewed, and

choosing a random sample of the 586 Linn and

Benton county Choices and Options participants

from February 1992 to December 1994, of whom 30

were eventually located and agreed to participate in

interviews. Choices and Options participants were

interviewed one to four years after they participated

in a two week workshop. Jobs in the Woods participants from 1994 were interviewed one year after

they completed the program, while the 1995 participants were interviewed just after they completed the

training in October and again the next spring as they

were moving into the workforce and searching for

jobs. The nature of the research process indicates

that the findings are necessarily qualitative and

exploratory.

The dislocated timber workers who participated in

these programs were typically Caucasian, male,

non-veterans, ages 30-54, and had completed high

school. Most live in rural communities where job

opportunities are few, and their job skills often do

not match the available openings. Of the 49

interviewees, 30 had worked previously in wood

products mills, 11 had been loggers, and 8 had been

forest technicians.

While these demographic profiles indicate a common type of dislocated worker, the interviews

revealed a great deal of diversity within these

groups of workers. While many of them came from

families that had long worked in the timber industry,

others went into forest or mill jobs simply because

that was the only employment available in the area.

Workers made comments such as “It was never my

dream, but what else was I to do?” Loggers tended

to be proud of the skills they had learned in the

woods and liked the independence these jobs had

offered. Forest technicians also frequently mentioned the skills they had acquired on their former

jobs. Some of the former mill workers reported that

the was work comfortable and predictable, but for

some it was perceived as monotonous and boring.

The layoff experience disrupted these individuals'

lives in many ways, and while alternative career

choices were perceived, no choice was costless.

The need for these dislocated workers to go back

into some form of training or schooling had to be

balanced against their children's educational needs.

Many of them had depleted financial resources and

were afraid of going back to school or concerned

about age discrimination.

Those workers who had experienced mill shutdowns

and layoffs in the past were better prepared to cope

with these situations. A typical comment from these

workers was, “Hey, I have been through two mill

closures, I’ve made it before, and I’m going to make

it again.” Workers who applied for the Jobs in the

Woods program went through a competitive process

to enter the program and tended to be more thoughtful about their options and more committed to a new

career in the forests.

After leaving these programs, the paths of these

workers diverged further. At the time of the interviews, 26 of the 49 workers were working in full

time, permanent positions. Two were unemployed,

three had semiretired, six were still in school, and

six were working in part-time or seasonal jobs. Of

the 33 working full- or part time, 26 had moved out

of the timber industry and seven had taken ecosystem restoration jobs.

There were also impacts of the training programs in

terms of coping with dislocation, finding out how to

find a job, acquiring new skills, and finding work

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that they enjoyed doing. However, the interviewees

reported very diverse outcomes on these issues. The

research team classified six people as “survivors,”

or people who had nothing positive to say about the

dislocation experience, and were worse off financially. About 20 workers had adjusted relatively

well, achieving a measure of financial security in

new jobs. Four people had made significant

changes, achieving goals they had never considered

reachable.

Based on this exploratory research, Gobeli offered

several suggestions for reemployment programs.

One point was that no program can make career

transition simple or painless, and the diversity of

people and their approaches to changes in their lives

must be accommodated. Positive outcomes may

take a long time and cannot be measured simply in

terms of wages or job placement.

STATE INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING:

CASE STUDIES

In this group of studies, the focus was on infrastructure funding processes. Researchers were attempting to describe and characterize what went on in

each state that participated in the NWEAI in terms

of reshaping the funding processes through which

local areas access state and Federal programs for

assistance in funding local infrastructure such as

water and sewer systems, or community facilities.

The opening presentation was made by Jan Bargen,

a graduate student in Texas who previously worked

with both the Oregon and California Community

Economic Revitalization Teams (CERTs) and their

funding processes. The focus of the CERTs was not

on dislocated workers, but on restructuring the local

economies disrupted by the cessation of harvesting

on many public forests and the closure of many

mills that had been the economic mainstay of a

number of small towns. Restructuring these economies meant that various infrastructure investments

were needed to prepare these areas for new employers, who would not even examine potential sites

until the infrastructure was in place. The CERT

process was used to funnel available federal program dollars into infrastructure projects developed

by local areas. Reflecting on the process in California, Bargen and a student colleague examined how

well the process worked from the state agency’s

point of view.

The report by Bargen and her colleague Shawn

Garvey noted that while harvest volumes fell after

1990, stumpage values increased so dramatically

that around 1994 or 1995 the total value of timber

harvested in northern California actually increased

from about $400 million to $600 million. At the

same time the affected counties grew by about

16,000 in population, only two of them growing at a

slower rate than the state as a whole. Lumber and

wood product jobs went up by 600, and unemployment was at a six year low when the report was

published in 1996. Due to the stumpage value

increases, Federal and state payments to timber

counties rose by more than $1.5 million. Their were

691 new businesses from 1993 to 1996, and a 6.4

percent increase in taxable sales. The region remained below the state level of per capita income,

although the gap narrowed slightly during this time

period, and the increase in the number of food

stamp and general relief program clients slowed.

Associated with this economic activity was an

impressive amount of investment by U.S. Department of Agriculture in infrastructure, which was

funneled through the CERT process. A total of 64

projects were funded, tripling the investment level

reached in the previous three year period.

The Bargen/Garvey report examined four case

studies to get a better feel for how well the funding

69
process worked. These cases suggest the CERT

process contributed to new partnerships and relationships among local, state, and Federal government officials. These relationships paid off in a

number of ways, making it possible for multiple

agencies to work together, something they had not

done in the past, and making it possible for someone

to identify a problem and get it resolved. For the

first time, funders came out to the communities

rather than forcing community representatives to

come to Sacramento. Another key aspect in successful projects was leadership, often just one

persistent person who made a difference. Readiness

was also important. When the CERT program

started, communities that were ready with a plan

both received earlier funds and more total funds

compared to communities that had to get organized

and do community level planning before approaching the CERT.

Scott Duff, past director of USDA Rural Development in Oregon, and Terry Raettig of the USDA

Forest Service described the Rural Development

programs that were administered through the CERT

process in Oregon. Funds from six programs became a significant part of the Northwest Economic

Adjustment Initiative, as listed below:

• drinking water loans and grants

• wastewater loans and grants

• community facility loans and grants

• rural business enterprise grants

• inner urban re-lending programs

• business and industry loan guarantees

Evaluating the impacts of these very different

programs collectively as they were delivered

through the CERT process is a complicated

undertaking. Duff and Raettig attempted this

evaluation task using three different approaches, as

follows:

1) description of the nature and extent of each

program in Oregon,

2) assessments of the socioeconomic policy,

3) assessments of specific programs to determine if

participants thought the programs had made a

difference

The Duff/Raettig evaluation examined 63 projects,

all projects funded in 1994 and 1995 in Oregon.

First, program files and other secondary data such as

census data were examined in the descriptive part of

the work. Next, a questionnaire was sent out to 181

people to gather information on service delivery

issues and program impacts. Finally, intensive onsite examinations were conducted to as part of the

third research approach.

The following tabulation shows the rough

magnitude of the 1994-95 RDA projects:

 No. Total RDA

Year of projects funding Contribution

1994 28 $33 million $27 million

1995 35 $72 million $65 million

A report is available describing job impacts in

detail. Looking across all 63 projects, a total of over

2,000 jobs were created, with rural business

enterprise grants and intermediary re-lending

programs accounting for most of the job impacts.

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The 63 projects were quite diverse, including such

projects as:

• a tribal administration center that had

consolidated offices spread all over the

community.

• hospital project that had been in the planning

stages before NWEAI. Because of the CERT

process, the project was restructured and was

able to secure community development

block grant funds that were not previously

accessible due to organizational problems.

• a water project that increased fire projection,

transmission, and distribution capacity.

• a business re-lending project that allowed

the merger of six different loan programs,

enhancing a local area’s ability to leverage

federal dollars with funds from other

sources.

The administrative process was streamlined by the

CERT, making it possible for Duff to administer

these programs with a significant growth in program

volume at the same time that he was reorganizing

his agency and reducing overall staffing levels from

130 to 87 persons. From a loan applicant point of

view, the time required to develop a project and

secure funding went down, another significant

impact.

Mary McBride, Rural Development director in

Washington state, summarized her efforts to

evaluate the effectiveness of the NWEAI in

Washington, focusing on what happened in three

case study communities. Sultan, in the eastern part

of Snohomish county, is within proximity of a major

urban area and was in danger of becoming a

bedroom community for commuters, which was not

consistent with the community’s vision of itself.

Their water treatment facility was at capacity and

there was a moratorium on new development. The

community decided that new infrastructure should

be developed so that new businesses could get

started and more local jobs would be available. Up

to 100 jobs may result from this investment. In

Lewis county, a $1.9 million loan was provided for

re-lending throughout Lewis and Cowlitz counties,

leveraging private investment of nearly $2 million

and resulting in 111 new jobs at an average annual

wage of over $23,000. In the northwestern corner of

the Olympic Peninsula, the Makah tribe used funds

from this program to develop a marina to serve their

own and visiting vessels working the offshore

fisheries.

The assessment process suggested a number of

lessons that can be carried forward into future work,

as listed:

• more technical assistance funding is needed

because there are not enough resources for

planning and feasibility studies. The U.S.

Forest Service and the Economic

Development Administration have helped in

this area.

• the CERT process brought people to the

table that had not been a part of the

discussion in the past.

• the funding process was significantly

streamlined and many barriers to getting

funding have been removed by the CERT

process.

• Federal agencies should build partnerships

with state and local government, allowing

each agency to handle the part of a project

that is its unique capability, breaking

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projects into manageable pieces that each

agency can deal with effectively.

McBride concluded that there was a great deal of

value in the innovations of the CERT process and

that ways should be found to preserve and build on

these new ways of doing business.

CHANGES IN FUNDING PROCESSES

The final group of research studies focused on how

the NWEAI and the CERTs have changed the

funding processes as perceived by local

governments and non-profits.

Bill Campbell of the Oregon Economic

Development Department was involved in

evaluation the process and impacts of the NWEAI in

Oregon from 1993 to 1995. Several research

methodologies were used including surveys of

contact people listed on project applications,

interviews with key people involved in

implementing projects, surveys of community

leaders in impacted areas, and review of public

documents. Cooperation with the research process

was very good; 203 of 245 identified local contacts

participated in the necessary interviews. The

process covered some 677 projects in the works

from 1993 to 1995.

About two-thirds of the interviewees were familiar

with the federal funding process prior to the

initiative. Half of them said there was insufficient

money available prior to NWEAI, and 65 percent

said that the scarcity of funding prevented projects

from going forward. However, those projects that

did receive funding met community objectives.

The NWEAI attempted to meet local communities’

objectives rather than imposing program objectives

from the Federal level. However, the majority of

survey responses indicated that local prioritization

was not completely effective as a way of

establishing project priorities; Federal objectives

would have aided the decision makers.

Local leaders perceive the initiative as aiding local

level communication, and helping to create better

community unity as well as providing new

infrastructure, jobs, and businesses. One reason

these multiple impacts were possible is that the state

of Oregon convened various agencies so that

infrastructure, family issues, business development,

and ecosystem needs could all be considered

simultaneously. The mechanism led to new kinds of

adjustment and flexibility among the agencies.

Campbell concluded that the keys to the success of

the initiative are “communication, cooperation, and

collaboration.” An example of the outcomes is a

wastewater project in Cave Junction in which four

Federal agencies had some jurisdiction or

involvement. Usually it takes four separate

environmental assessments if four agencies are

involved, but in this case, a single assessment was

agreed on and carried out.

A key problem Oregon faces is that, as those

involved may say, “We’re building a pipeline of

projects some ten feet high. And we’re able to fund

or finance the upper six inches.” The capacity is

just not there in Federal and state programs to

address all of the needs out there. If one looks

outside the official impact zone for the NWEAI to

some of the counties on the east side of the state,

there are many communities that meet NWEAI

assistance criteria that are not able to access funds

because they are not included under the umbrella of

NWEAI. The state is attempting to extend the

CERT process to these communities.

The last presentation was by Jan Bargen, concerning

the views of California participants towards the

CERT process. Survey instruments were sent to 142

72
people, essentially all key players in the projects in

California. A total of 44 percent responded to the

survey, resulting in coverage of 76 percent of the

projects USDA Forest Service funded. In this

survey the awareness results were intriguing.

Essentially all respondents were aware that dollars

were coming from USDA Forest Service, but

relatively few knew what the NWEAI was.

Whether this is good or bad is debatable; if local

decision making is a goal then perhaps it is good

that the process was not identified separately from

the agencies since it is the agency people that are

seen in communities. While respondents were

satisfied with the procedures and outcomes, but they

were not specific or definitive in their responses to

how much difference in outcomes can be attributed

to the initiative. Respondents did perceive less red

tape, and more collaboration among state and

Federal agencies, but they were not able to say that

due to the initiative things are better in their

particular communities.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

These presentations, while diverse in scope and

methodology, suggest two broad impacts of the

NWEAI:

1) Improved interagency and intergovernmental

collaboration and,

2) Promising workforce training intiatives but

limited demand for program graduates.

Agency Collaboration

The NWEAI funding process inspired an entirely

new level of collaboration among and between

Federal and state agencies. Many communities

report that for the first time agencies are working

together to help communities achieve their goals,

rather than making separate decisions and paying no

attention to the projects that fell between the cracks

because they needed several different forms of

assistance to succeed. Many new relationships

emerged among agency representatives that had not

worked together in the past. A general feeling from

several of the studies was that these new

relationships would be useful in meeting local area

funding needs in the future.

Specialization among agencies--Collaboration

among agencies allowed each agency to specialize a

bit, offering its special competency or resource to

improve outcomes for the local areas. This aspect

of coordination was particularly helpful in moving a

number of projects forward.

Funding: Planning and Problems

Prior planning--Planning ahead helped community

projects get early funding. Communities that had

engaged in serious planning efforts prior to the

NWEAI knew what they wanted and were better

able to secure funding than those who had to come

together to plan before preparing acceptable

proposals.

Funding insufficiencies--A common complaint

from the communities is that funds are insufficient

to solve all of the infrastructure problems that are

inhibiting economic development. While

collaboration among agencies greatly improved the

allocation of the available funds, the overall level of

funding is inhibiting the resolution of problems that

hold these regions back.

Worker Training and Workforce Development

Ecosystem management training is promising--

Ecosystem management training was a success in

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the sense that workers acquired new skills and

obtained significantly higher wages. However few

new ecosystem management jobs seem to be

opening up, raising questions about the overall

success of the Job in the Woods efforts in Oregon

and Washington. Even within the Federal agencies,

demand for these newly trained workers is weak,

and private demand is almost nonexistent. The long

term survival of these efforts to make ecosystem

management a reality, and to raise income

possibilities for people who work in the forests, is

not clear at this point.

Workforce development/economic restructuring

coordination--Essentially, there has not been any

coordination between the workforce retraining

programs and the economic restructuring funding.

The workforce retraining provided new skills in

managing forests on the ground through the Jobs in

the Woods programs, and other individuals were

able to correct basic education deficiencies or

acquire specific vocational skills at community

college programs. However, these efforts were

unrelated to the funding for economic restructuring,

most of which has gone into infrastructure

investment so as to permit new firms to establish

themselves within the impacted region. Individual

communities are pursuing new firms through

industrial recruiting efforts but few communities are

targeting forest management firms that could utilize

the ecosystem workers. Other firms explicitly

focus on the skills displaced forest workers have

acquired through the retraining programs. This

appears to be a lost opportunity to maximize impact

of the federal funds, but it should be noted that

economic development efforts tend to produce

outcomes over long periods of time, and it is not

obvious at the present what kinds of firms will

locate in these communities. For the majority of the

displaced workers, there is no way to predict the

exact vocational skills that may be demanded in

their community in 3-5 years. For many, the

retraining is part of a process of preparation to leave

the area for larger communities with better job

prospects. Missed opportunities, such as taking

steps to create more ecosystem management jobs or

targeting certain kinds of firms and focusing

training efforts on the needs of those firms, may

have required new program authority. A

fundamental aspect of the NWEAI strategy was to

make do with existing programs. We are left in a

trap, knowing that better outcomes could have been

achieved but with no feasible strategy for moving in

those directions.

Continuation of Agency Relationships

Since the strongest aspect of the NWEAI seems to

be the new forms of interagency cooperation, it is

important to consider how these relationships can be

preserved and extended. As the Pacific Northwest

encounters new challenges similar in some ways to

the coastal forest region issues, particularly with

respect to endangered or threatened salmon runs, the

same cooperative model may help other

communities in responding to some challenges to

their economic vitality. In addition, other parts of

the country might be able to learn from successful

practices in the Pacific Northwest. In this context,

the fragility of the successful practices in this region

should be noted. The new forms of interagency

cooperation are not institutionalized in laws or

agency rules. The cooperation can continue if: 1)

the individuals who participated stay in their current

positions and remain committed to continuing these

modes of operation, and 2) state and Federal policy

makers do not create new policies that inhibit

cooperation, and 3) program authorization and

funding remain available.

None of these conditions are guaranteed, and it

would be preferable to develop mechanisms to

institutionalize some aspects of the new cooperative

mode of operation. Rather than legislation that may

74
end up inhibiting further innovation, Memorandum

of Understandings between agencies could be a

useful option to consider to preserve the joint

decisionmaking and specialization of agency roles

that have emerged. Occasional forums could be

convened among agency leaders to consider

mechanisms to improve current processes, and to

encourage other regions to adopt some best

management practices.

75
Chapter 10 What We Have Done, What We Have Learned, and What’s Next

Anne S. Berblinger

AUTHOR

ANNE S. BERBLINGER is Economic Development Representative, Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, One World Trade Center, Portland, Oregon, 97204.

76
ABSTRACT

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI) has helped many forest dependent communities improve infrastructure, support economic

diversification, offer job training to dislocated

workers, begin to restore forest ecosystems, and

even realize long held dreams. The people involved

at every level in the NWEAI have learned lessons as

well. This experience has taught us how important it

is to provide clear information and make sure it is

understood, to take full responsibility for ensuring

that all the communities impacted by an economic

dislocation have access to the funds and resources

provided for recovery, to honor and empower the

volunteers and paid staff who make a program like

this work, to solve problems rather than just run

programs, and to break down the barriers which

prevent resources from being invested in as effective a way as possible.

Beyond the NWEAI, what do communities need in

order to continue to adjust and thrive? There are

unfinished items to be addressed before the NWEAI

can be considered complete.

The labor intensive process which brought economic improvement to many communities has

depended on local staff, many of whom were paid

with NWEAI funds. This funding will no longer be

available when the NWEAI is over. Will there be

local funding to take up the slack?

Can we institutionalize the best practices of the Jobs

in the Woods program?

Can we maintain spirit and momentum of the team

of agencies serving rural communities through the

NWEAI?

What about other forest communities in the Northwest which got started later, received less from

NWEAI funding, and are not yet well advanced in

the process of economic adjustment?

Can the community spirit, hard work, and commitment of so many at the local level be maintained

and supported until the job is done?

Keywords: NWEAI, Skamania county, city of

Raymond, Pacific county, Linn county, Clallam

county, Makah Indian Reservation, infrastructure,

investment, job training, Jobs in the Woods, Jobs for

the Environment, Rogue Valley Ecosystem

Workforce, Siskiyou Training and Employment

Program, STEP, Siskiyou County, USDA Rural

Development, US Forest Service, Economic Development Administration, loopholes, priority ranking,

commitment, collaboration, barriers, momentum.

NWEAI ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The mission of the NWEAI has been “...to develop,

stabilize, and augment the capacity of individuals,

families, businesses, communities, and tribes to

adjust and thrive in the face of declining timber

harvests.” This conference highlighted some of the

ways we have done this.

Investment in Communities

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative has

provided many impacted communities with the

opportunity to resolve long standing community

capacity and infrastructure problems.

Skamania county was one of the two hardest hit

counties in Washington state. Populated with isolated communities amidst rugged terrain, this

natural resource dependent county has had little

experience with practices like strategic planning,

capital facilities planning, and cost/benefit analyses.

77
These are the tools a community needs under any

circumstances to be successful. The NWEAI

helped economic development practitioners learn

how to use these and other tools and rewarded them

with project grants and loans when they were used

effectively. Skills like these will be a lasting benefit

for the Skamania county and many other communities.

The city of Raymond in Pacific county, Washington

had wastewater and solid waste problems which

needed to be solved before they could realistically

undertake any job creation strategy. Pacific county

officials were at first skeptical of the entire NWEAI

process because of prior negative experience with

state and Federal agencies. When the agencies

involved in the NWEAI gave this city and county

the necessary encouragement, worked with the

newly created county infrastructure committee

through the project development process, and

cooperated in financial packages, skepticism was

replaced with trust and a constructive working

relationship. The needed infrastructure was funded

and built, and Raymond has created new jobs.

Scores of communities can tell similar stories to

these two.

Business Development and Economic Diversification

In contrast to some early expectations, the NWEAI

did not provide free money to implement good ideas

and turn them into thriving businesses overnight.

However, meaningful business development resources were provided across the region. Oregon

state First Stop program, as described by Terry

Swagerty, Director of the Small Business Development Center at Umpqua Community College in

Roseburg, provided a resource to help people with

business ideas turn them into realistic business

plans. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Intermediary Re-lending Program has put millions of

dollars in the hands of locally controlled organizations, which have made scores of loans for businesses start-ups and expansions, creating loan funds

that are permanent resources for business development in the region.

New Opportunities for Dislocated Workers and

Ecosystem Investment

The NWEAI process has provided funds for training

programs which have given dislocated timber

workers new careers. Jobs for the Environment was

created by the Columbia-Pacific Resource Conservation & Development Council in southwest Washington State. They successfully lobbied the state

legislature for an appropriation of $15 million to

begin the program. The goal was to create a new

environmental restoration industry to provide

services to Federal, state and private landowners.

Workers become skilled in a variety of jobs, including habitat and watershed restoration, road decommissioning, commercial and pre-commercial thinning, road maintenance, and ecosystem management. The NWEAI partnered with the Washington

state program to create many more jobs and train

many more workers.

The Rogue Valley Ecosystem Workforce, one of

many Jobs in the Woods pilot program partnerships

in Oregon, was created by the Rogue Institute for

Ecology and Economy, whose leadership was

looking for a better way of dealing environmental

issues. The Rogue Institute’s programs are provided

primarily through contracts with Federal and state

agencies, which “bundled” needed work within each

watershed to provide long term employment and

maximum benefit to the ecosystem. Training

programs are similar for workers to those provided

by Jobs for the Environment.

78
Siskiyou county, California, had created STEP, or

the Siskiyou Training and Employment Program.

STEP was funded by a demonstration grant provided by the US Department of Labor. The

Siskiyou County Job Training Partnership Agency

utilized its close partnerships with the local Economic Development Council, the community

college and the US Forest Service to begin a training

program. All 14 enrollees who graduated during the

first year of STEP's existence (1996) found work in

the field. Training provided includes ecosystem

management, basic wildfire fighting, preventing

sexual harassment, survival skills, CPR, and first

aid.

Besides these well publicized Jobs in the Woods

program, the NWEAI helped fund programs to train

dislocated timber workers for many other jobs. A

very high percentage of training program participants now hold jobs outside the declining timber

industry.

Community Dreams Realized

The NWEAI has provided financial resources for

the implementation of projects long planned for, but

seemingly out of reach. The Makah Indian Reservation is located in an area subject to severe storms,

Clallam county, Washington state, on the northwest

corner of the Olympic Peninsula. A safe harbor and

marina to protect the fishing fleet and transient

recreational vessels has long been needed. For

years, the Makah Tribe had been asking the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers for assistance in building

a breakwater.

 In 1991, the Army Corps of Engineers finally

agreed, provided the Makah Tribe could raise 20

percent of the cost. The Makah Tribal Council

introduced the project into the Washington Community Economic Revitalization Team (WACERT)

process and was successful in obtaining funding

from 11 different state and Federal sources for the

breakwater matching share and for construction of

the marina. The breakwater was completed in

December 1995 and the marina in May 1997. This

was the realization of a 30-year dream. The safe

harbor created by the breakwater has allowed for an

expansion in the fishing fleet and two fish processing plants can now operate year round.

LESSONS WE HAVE LEARNED

Advice to Others Undertaking Major Economic

Adjustment Initiatives

Be understandable and realistic in announcing

and promoting the program-- Make sure information is clear and well understood by the communities intended to benefit from the NWEAI. Dave

Schmidt of Linn county, Oregon (who also represents the Association of Oregon Counties), told us

that elected officials and their constituents were

frustrated and confused when new funding for the

NWEAI didn't match what they expected. Although

representatives of the Clinton administration who

promoted the program never said that the NWEAI

would offer free money to any person, business or

community with a good idea, many people in the

impacted communities had that expectation. Then

they were disappointed to learn that most of the new

money for communities and businesses came in the

form of loans, that the limited grant funding was not

directly available to businesses, and that all the

funding came with obligations and local share

requirements.

Honor existing local plans--Many communities and

tribes were well prepared for the NWEAI, having

earlier conducted strategic economic planning.

Siskiyou county is one example. The county attributes its success in getting NWEAI resources

79
invested in its communities, particularly those along

the Interstate Five corridor, to a previous

countywide economic assessment and the resulting

economic planning. When the NWEAI started, local

leadership had agreed on priorities, formed local

interagency partnerships, and were ready to submit

projects for funding. Chuck Clendenin of the

USDA Rural Development, California, on July 30th

1997: "...Rural Business Grant Enterprise proposals

which were funded easily were those where economic planning teams had formed years earlier, and

projects had already been envisioned in the context

on a community plan..."

Support local planning where it is not well developed, and understand that it can be a time consuming process. Other communities had not conducted

economic assessments or economic development

planning prior to the NWEAI and found themselves

at a disadvantage. It takes time to understand and

develop trust in a process like the NWEAI, time to

establish the partnerships, time to achieve community consensus on a vision, goals and priorities, and

time to develop and implement projects. Unprepared communities, often the smallest and most

isolated, did receive money and technical assistance

for planning and project development, from the

Economic Development Administration (EDA) and

the U.S. Forest Service. Many of them were ready

for grant and loan funding to implement their plans

several years into the NWEAI.

Ensure that all communities have access to the

benefits even if local planning and implementation

capacity is limited. NWEAI funds were granted by

the EDA to councils of government, economic

development districts, and Native American Tribes

to augment existing staff and resources and especially to provide staff support to small an unincorporated communities. CERT meetings and agency

outreach promulgated the ethic of nurturing

econommic adjustment and community developbest possible job also produced burn out, expressed

in an attitude of “waiting for the NWEAI to be over,

so things could get back to normal,” or “declare

victory and go home,” which may mean a return to

business as usual and abandonment of new and

better ways of doing business.

ment in all of the impacted communities, especially

the most rural and isolate communities.

Nikki Whitty of the Coos, Curry, and Douglas

Counties Business Development Corporation who

staffed the CERT process for Coos, Curry, and

Douglas counties in Oregon described how challenging it was for local leaders to engage in the

process. One problem was the unrealistic expectations of the NWEAI described above. Another was

a general lack of knowledge about state and Federal

programs involved in the NWEAI process. A third

was a lack of clear direction on the part of the

county planners when it became necessary to set

priorities for projects. Persistence and commitment

on the part of leaders and staff overcame these

problems, and now the process is working smoothly

and credibly in Coos, Curry, and Douglas counties.

Provide adequate staff--Provide enough staff and

other resources at the field level to the agencies

responsible for implementing the NWEAI. The

NWEAI took place in the context of major

downsizing of most of the Federal agencies involved

in the NWEAI, and the northwest region was not

spared in this process. The administration heard

from local people that spending resources on a big

bureaucracy would not be acceptable. They made

the decision, based on that input, to do the job with

existing staff, and then existing staff was downsized

as part of another administration initiative. And in

some agencies there were yet other initiatives which

competed for staff time and resources. While

Federal staff did rise to the occasion and accomplished many of the goals of the NWEAI, the goal

of speeding project review and decision-making was

not achieved. The lack of adequate staff to do the

80
The states of Oregon and Washington staffed their

SCERTs (State and Community Economic Revitalization Teams) with state employees and got off to a

running start. The Regional CERT had assigned

staff only in the beginning. The California CERT

did not have a staff person until the Resources

Agency received an EDA grant for that purpose

about a year into the NWEAI. Lack of CERT staff

was a real problem in these two cases.

State and Federal agencies can work together

effectively. The NWEAI produced two innovations

which helped agencies work together and helped

communities gain access to the financial assistance,

as follows:

• a single short project notification form that

all participating agencies can use to become

familiar with potential projects.

• a single list of projects from each Tribe or

county (prioritized in Oregon and

Washington, but mostly not in California),

used by all agencies to inform their

investments.

These tools provided a basis for collaboration on

projects and for cooperation in responding to

communities in a seamless way. Pacific county,

Washington, is a good example of how

collaboration and cooperation helped the county get

past its preconceived suspicions of state and Federal

agencies. For Linn county, the consultation

provided by the managers and staff of state, Federal,

and regional agencies was one of the strong points

of the entire NWEAI process. If a unified process of

priority setting is adopted, as in Washington and

Oregon (where all the agencies pay attention to the

same list of priorities), watch out for loopholes in

the process. Dave Schmidt, Linn county, Oregon,

pointed out that some communities were submitting

their projects directly to agencies for funding,

bypassing the ranking process.

We realize now that we should have started the

NWEAI with more integration and communication

between the ecosystem management and economic

adjustment programs. We have made progress in

making these connections, but there is still a long

way to go.

Break down the barriers--An increased

understanding of how proactive and responsive

programs can become has led to a lower tolerance

of barriers, by which we mean laws, regulations, or

agency policy and practices that prevent programs

from responding effectively to community needs

and priorities. Barriers identified by local or agency

staff were raised to SCERTs, the Regional CERT,

and the Multiagency Command (MAC), and many

were resolved.

Probably the most important barrier that was broken

was the grantsmanship syndrome. We shifted away

from staging competitions in which the winners

were those who could prepare good applications

responsive to top down agency criteria, and toward

funding those projects identified by the

communities as most important to them. This

change often includes hands on help with paperwork

by agency staff to some of the less sophisticated

applicants, and hands on help with project

management after the projects are approved.

Other barriers, such as duplicative paperwork on

projects where more than one agency is involved,

have not been thoroughly resolved.

THE JOB OF ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT IS

NOT COMPLETE

The NWEAI has been a particularly satisfying

experience because the substantial additional

81
has enabled many communities to actually finish the

process of economic adjustment, or at least to have

infrastructure and economic development resources

in place to continue the process without much

additional outside help. But there are many

communities which are just at the beginning of the

process. Mill closings are still happening, creating

more dislocated workers. We have only scratched

the surface in ecosystem investment.

Where do funds for projects to finish the adjustment

effort come from? Siskiyou county, despite its

success utilizing the NWEAI program, is still

behind in establishing effective economic

opportunities for many of its remote communities

and Tribes at the time of this presentation. The

representatives of this county and others are

concerned that assistance is ending just as they are

in a position to take advantage of it.

Dave Schmidt of Linn county, Oregon, points out

that eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and the

Sierras communities in California, were not

included in the NWEAI are suffering the impacts of

timber industry decline. What about these counties/

communities?

Anita Gahimer, Port Director for Skamania county,

Washington, asks, "Did the money go to the right

projects?" This is a natural concern. Communities

and agencies were willing to take risks in the

NWEAI process. What if some of the projects don't

work out for the communities? Are the resources

out there to support a second chance?

Once the NWEAI funding runs out, will there be

enough local resources to keep staff in place for this

labor intensive process?

This is a demanding job for agency staff. As new

initiatives appear and agency downsizing continues,

will staff continue to devote time and energy to the

The Jobs in the Woods program is the prototype for

a new relationship between public lands and the

people who have depended on them: a high skill,

family wage strategy for high quality land

management work done by people who live in

communities adjoining or within the forest. This

program should become a permanent result of the

NWEAI. It would be a valued asset to eastside

counties feeling the impact of a declining timber

industry, and to forest communities around the

country. Continuation of the Jobs in the Woods

program will also mean a continued investment in

building the capacity of contractors, workers, and

land managers. Mr. Jim Lowery of the Pacific

County Economic Development Council,

Washington, expressed concern over the ending of

Jobs in the Woods/Jobs for the Environment,

wondering if workers and contractors were being set

up for failure. We can’t let that happen.

Severely impacted communities who are making

progress need to continue working at it, and

agencies need to keep providing technical and moral

support. Linn county wants continued outside

leadership to keep community spirit and momentum

going during the recovery process after the NWEAI

ends.

All of us, local leaders and staff, agency staff,

elected officials, dislocated workers, business

people, and those in Sacramento, Salem, Olympia,

and Washington, D.C., who have supported this

effort. We have achieved great and meaningful

progress in helping communities, workers and

businesses adjust to and thrive in the face of

reduced timber harvests. We have learned so much

in the process that we can share with others

undergoing similar economic crises. We are not

done. Many of us will keep on.

NWEAI process?

82
Chapter 11--Extending the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative to other Regions:

Utilizing the Initiative and the Institutions

Harriet H. Christensen

Terry L. Raettig

AUTHORS

HARRIET H. CHRISTENSEN is a team leader and research social scientist with the Social and Economic Values Program, Pacific Northwest Research Station, stationed at the Seattle Forestry Sciences Lab,

4043 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA. 98105

TERRY L. RAETTIG is an economist, Social and Economic Values Program, Olympic National Forest

Headquarters, 1835 Black Lake Blvd., Olympia, WA. 98512

83
ABSTRACT

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative

(NWEAI) was conceived and designed to provide an

innovative approach to respond to a regional economic and social crisis. This paper specifically

describes the innovative nature of the NWEAI, how

it is used as a model for economic and community

development, and how it is continuing through

application elsewhere. There are a number of

broader implications of the NWEAI experience.

Several critical issues remain to be addressed in the

region.

Keywords: Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, institutions, community and economic development.

UTILIZING THE INITIATIVE AND THE

INSTITUTIONS

"The Northwest Forest Plan is producing a

radical and massive change in

 federal agency culture."

- - James Pipkin,

The Northwest Forest Plan Revisited, 1998

The NWEAI was conceived and designed to provide

an innovative approach to respond on a regional

basis to an economic crisis caused by dramatic

changes in forest management objectives and

policies (ROD 1994, Tuchmann and others 1996).

When compared with the existing approaches to

economic and community development that have

been used elsewhere, the NWEAI coordination,

policies and institutions are indeed an innovative

model (Raettig and others 1998). The NWEAI is

built on a base of existing Federally funded economic assistance and development programs and is

the institutional framework of coordination and

service delivery that is a model for implementing a

geographically targeted assistance initiative. The

innovative nature of the NWEAI model has been

asserted through these mechanisms:

• A systematic basis for providing coordination

between the various Federal, state and local entities

involved in economic and community development

within the NWEAI region. This coordination was

designed to be accomplished through the

Community Economic Revitalization Team(s)

(CERT)s and Multi-Agency Command (MAC)

without creating a new bureaucratic organization.

• A process for focusing on service delivery and

removing perceived barriers to effective and

efficient provision of the economic and community

development programs.

• The provision of a “seamless delivery”

environment.

• An economic and community development

initiative that is based on outcomes and results

rather than programmatic and bureaucratic inputs.

• Community-focused development.

• A process for providing a dynamic initiative that

responds to changing conditions as the NWEAI is

implemented.

• Linkages to the ecosystem management

institutions and activities that are concurrently being

implemented as part of the Northwest Forest Plan.

The success of the NWEAI and its utility as a

model for economic and community development

will, in part, be measured by the continuing

application of the NWEAI policies and institutions

84
 economic and community development efforts in

other regions.

The continuation of the NWEAI institutions and

policies within the NWEAI region has been insured

by the extension of the NWEAI for an additional

two years. The extended NWEAI will not continue

to receive and manage enhanced levels of economic

and community development money from the

Federal funding agencies as was the case for the

original five years of the NWEAI, but will utilize

the NWEAI processes, institutions, and coordination

to manage the normal levels of agency funding in

the region. This extension was supported by the

three states and effected through the signing of a

revised Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by

the original Federal agencies participating in the

NWEAI. In the words of Regional Community

Economic Revitalization Team (RCERT) co-chair,

Bob Rheiner “The NWEAI process and [experience

with] collaboration will not allow agencies to go

back and do business the way we used to.” The

Federal, Tribal, state, local government and nongovernment NWEAI partners will continue to

expect to be involved early in the decision process

and on a continuing basis as economic and

community development programs are

implemented.

Further use of the NWEAI created institutions may

also occur in the Pacific Northwest outside the

NWEAI region. Both Oregon and Washington are

considering asking the Federal government to use

their respective State CERT to manage economic

development efforts in conjunction with the Interior

Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project

(ICBEMP). So far, the only enhanced economic

development funding associated with the ICBEMP

is 20 million dollars in fiscal year 1999 for planning

purposes.

Even without additional economic development and

assistance funding the NWEAI model may provide

useful strategies for implementing ecosystem

management and associated economic development

activities in the Columbia Basin. The process of

systematically assembling and considering

economic development proposals through a state or

regional community economic revitalization team

may prove useful. Also the explicit involvement of

practitioners and managers from all of the funding

agencies in the process and the emphasis on

“seamless” delivery of economic assistance may

enhance the level of service in the basin.

There are also indications that some of the essential

elements of the NWEAI processes, policies and

institutions are being considered for use in other

regions facing severe economic dislocations because

of changes in natural resource policies and changes

in resource dependent industries. The southeastern

part of Alaska is experiencing mill closures, large

reductions in timber harvest on Federal lands, and

decreases in lumber and wood products

employment. The Federal agencies with economic

and community development programs in the area

and their state and local partners are in the process

of creating a “Southeast Alaska Community

Economic Revitilzation Team” (SEA-CERT). The

SEA-CERT is based on the NWEAI model. Federal

program managers dealing with the collapse of the

George’s Bank fishery in the North Atlantic Ocean

and resource policy changes in the Everglades

region of Florida have also expressed interest in the

potential use of NWEAI approaches in their

respective regions.

The effects of the NWEAI on the region, rural

communities, and people will extend far beyond the

five years of the NWEAI that had already been

funded. Economic and community development

programs provide a capacity base for future

developments, improvements, and social and

economic well-being. Many NWEAI projects have

within the region. Another measure of the utility of

the NWEAI model is the potential use by other

85
provided training and development to enhance

leadership, business management, and technical

planning and community development skills in local

communities. The empowerment of people in these

rural communities is a potential lasting legacy of the

NWEAI. Communities and groups within

communities may have differing perspectives on the

value, usefulness, and desirability of the social and

economic changes and the success of the NWEAI.

Other economic and community development

projects that have been part of the NWEAI are, by

their very nature, long term investments that will

continue to provide positive long term economic

impacts. For example, the initial investment in

infrastructure such as water systems and industrial

parks will continue to attract new and expanding

businesses to recipient communities until the added

capacity is fully utilized. Intermediary relending

projects will provide capital in future cycles of

relending as the original loans are repaid. Even for

those projects that are already providing direct

positive economic impacts, secondary and induced

impacts will be generated as respending of the

original income occurs within the community.

The NWEAI programs and projects represent broad

scale funding decisions. While strategic community

plans played an important role in the project

generation and prioritizing process, actual project

funding represents availability of funding as much

as a systematic response to documented or

perceived needs. The actual mix of funded projects

in a specific community may not necessarily

represent a coherent program of community

development. On a positive side, multi-agency

funding and leveraging of scarce resources allowed

for the completion of community projects that

would not have been funded under previous

institutional arrangements.

There are a number of broader implications of the

NWEAI experience:

• There is no assurance that rural communities

will not face economic dislocations in the future

even if the NWEAI is successful in diversifying the

economies of rural communities. Outside forces

such as global economic conditions, intra-region

migration, and national social and cultural changes

will continue to affect rural, natural resourcedependent communities.

• Local efforts to create sustainable

communities may force resident’s to make difficult

choices between short-term prosperity and longterm objectives.

• Changes in natural resource management

may have significant costs to rural communities

such as workforce retraining, relocation and loss of

established community leadership. These costs are

not shared equitably by various groups within the

community.

• There is a question as to what extent

NWEAI community and economic development

programs will be sufficient to achieve desired

community goals. The cumulative impact of

reductions in timber industry employment and

income and reductions in land management agency

budgets and personnel for natural resource

management activities can be very large in certain

communities.

A number of critically important issues remain to be

addressed. As Sommers (Chapter 8) noted: “the

new forms of inter-agency cooperation are not

institutionalized in laws or agency rules.” Continued

collaboration will depend on commitment by key

individuals to continue and in absence of policies

that would roll back the innovative gains that the

NWEAI has made. Berlinger and others (Chapter 7)

said, “communities in the region have not yet

completed the process of economic adjustment and

still have concerns for the future.” Berblinger in

Chapter 10 also noted, “Can we maintain spirit and

86
momentum of the team of agencies serving rural

communities through the Initiative? And, can the

community spirit, hard work, and commitment of so

many at the local level be maintained and supported

until the job is done?”

Research and Assessment-based Responses to

RCERT and OFEA Issues

The RCERT and the Office of Forestry and

Economic Assistance (OFEA) staff have maintained

a focus throughout the NWEAI on utilizing research

and evaluative information as the basis for

evolutionary change in the Initiative. An indication

of this commitment to adaptive learning is the

development of a list of key research and

assessment questions that were to be answered as

the NWEAI was implemented. These questions can

logically be grouped into 3 categories:

• Initiative process issues.

• Initiative capacity issues.

• Initiative outcomes and

accomplishments.

The questions are important as they represent the

collective view by those most intimately associated

with the NWEAI of critical research and monitoring

issues and concerns that are the basis for the

adaptive learning process for the NWEAI. A

synopsis of how these research and assessment

questions have been addressed by reseach and

studies reported in this forum and other efforts

provides a suitable benchmark of the NWEAI. An

explicit review of how each question has been

addressed by category follows:

Process-Related Questions

Ten of the questions deal with process issues. We

list the number of the question from the original list

and discuss findings from the research studies and

discuss findings from the research studies and

assessments:

1. Did participants in the Initiative improve the

Federal delivery system? Improving the Federal

delivery system in the course of implementing the

NWEAI has been a key consideration sincethe

inception of the Northwest Forest Plan and the

NWEAI (Multi Agency Command 1993,Tuchmann

and others 1996). Every one of the studies

referenced in this synopsis attempted to determine

how successful the implementation of the NWEAI

had been in improving the Federal service delivery

system. In general, assessments of the NWEAI have

concluded that there have been important

improvements in the Federal delivery system

(Bargen 1997, Raettig and Christensen 1994,

Tuchmann and others 1996). The studies also

recognize that improving the delivery system is a

process that continues throughout the

implementation of the NWEAI, and that some of the

efforts at specific improvements in service delivery

have not been successful. A variety of suggested

improvements in the service delivery processes

 and institutions are included in many of the reports.

2. What actions were taken to accomplish the

above? Across the entire NWEAI, the emphasis on

collaboration and partnerships, and the process to

address barriers and impediments (Tuchmann and

others 1996) are cited as actions that have

contributed to improvements in the federal delivery

system. Individual Federal agencies have also taken

actions to directly improve the delivery of specific

NWEAI programs (Raettig and Christensen 1994,

Raettig and others 1996, Reyna and others 1996).

Another action the RCERT, SCERTs, MAC and the

agencies have taken to effect improvements in the

delivery system is through the support of assessment

activities. The development of the 26 questions by

OFEA and RCERT, the support of the array of

research reports and studies including this

manuscript are examples of such actions that

87
ultimately contribute to delivery improvements.

3. How satisfied were the participants, etc. with

the actions of the agencies and the effects of the

improvements? A number of the studies have

attempted to measure participant satisfaction with

the Federal agencies’ NWEAI-related processes

 in general and specifically attempts to improve the

process. Raettig and others(1998), Raettig and

others (1994), Pacific Rim Associates (1995),

Bargen (1997), and Tuchmann and others (1996) all

have addressed the satisfaction issue. These studies

portray a general climate of participant satisfaction

with improvements in the delivery systems but also

cite dissatisfaction concerning specific

improvements remaining to be addressed or

completed. The collaboration of the Federal

 agencies to reduce redundancy in the application

process and speed the funding process up, and

technical assistance from the funding agencies are

positive examples that participants noted (Raettig

and Christensen 1994, Raettig and others 1996,

Bargen 1996). Dissatisfactions noted include the

failure of available resources to meet expectations,

ineffective or absent communications with local

proponents, and excessive bureaucratic rules

(Bargen 1997, Pacific Rim Associates 1995, Raettig

and Christensen 1994). This is not surprising given

the innovative and dynamic nature of NWEAI as it

is being implemented.

4. What barriers were removed? Did they

apply to the Initiative or program? Temporary or

permanent? Specific examples of Initiative-level

barriers that have been removed and their impact

have been cited (Raettig and Christensen 1994,

Pacific Rim Associates 1995, Tuchmann and others

1996, Bargen 1997). A notable example of a barrier

that was removed is the development of “first stop

shop--seamless delivery” concepts to make the

NWEAI--CERTprocess more accessible to project

proponents. Other examples of program specific

barriers have been noted in many of the agency

reports as well as program specific studies and

include the decentralization of Business and

Industry Guaranteed Loan program decision

authority, and the changes in the Departments of

Agriculture and Interior contractingrequirements to

favor local participants in the Jobs in the Woods

program (Raettig and others 1996, Reyna and others

1996, Tuchmann and others 1996).

Our interpretation is that given the collaborative

nature of the NWEAI and multi-agency nature

of many of the specific projects, the distinction

between Initiative level barriers and program

level barriers may not be particularly meaningful.

Barriers that have been removed have addressed

issues ranging from the conception, planning,

consideration and funding of proposals to on-theground implementation. The permanence of the

removal of these barriers can only be assessed in the

future as implementation of the NWEAI projects

proceeds.

7. What did the participants do to ensure that

programs were accessible and easy to use?

Given the magnitude of the NWEAI, the

geographically dispersed region, and the immediate

nature of the needed assistance, it is inevitable that

accessability to clients has been a major issue.

Since the NWEAI is really a collection of existing

authorized and funded agency programs with an

existing complement of application, participation,

implementation and reporting requirements, this has

been a formidable task. Early in the NWEAI

process concepts of “seamless delivery” and “the

one stop shop” were proposed as major ways to

enable clients to focus on responding to

opportunities for assistance rather than the

complexities of the application process (Raettig and

Christensen 1994, Washington State Community

Economic Revitalization Team 1994, Raettig and

others 1996). Other efforts to improve ease of use

of NWEAI programs have focused on reducing

88
 Raettig and others (1998) document the successes

of some of these efforts as well as some

dissatisfaction over perceived complexities and

barriers to easy access to NWEAI programs.

9. How well did other efforts described above

 work? In general other efforts to make the NWEAI

processes accessible and easy to use such as the

“one-stop shop” and simplifications in the

application documentation produced positive results

(Tuchmann 1996,Bargen 1997, Washington

Community Economic Revitalization Team 1994).

Raettig and others (1998) reference a number of the

successes as well improvements that could still be

made. There is evidence that some of the

difficulties in terms of ease of use and accessibility

noted in earlier studies had been resolved by the

time later studies were completed.

8. Was the “lead agency” approach effective in

making programs more accessible and easy to use?

The detailed process of implementing the NWEAI

has varied in each of the three states. Each state has

had a version of the “lead agency” or “lead agent”

concept as a part of the SCERT process that has

contributed positively to NWEAI implementation

(Tuchmann and others 1996), but there have been

differences in what the concept was, how it has

been appliedand the results. In Oregon the lead

agency concept has been an explicit part of the

process. In Washington the “lead scoping agent”

has successfully been a single contact point to link

applicants and the NWEAI institutions

(Washington Community Economic Revitalization

Team 1996). The “lead agency’ concept has been

applied in Oregon as an integral part of the

application process. Participant satisfaction with

the process has generally been good in Oregon but

there have been perceived deficiencies in

understanding,outreach and the effectiveness of the

application process (Pacific Rim Associates 1995).

The California SCERT applied the “lead agency”

concept in a process that forwarded applications to a

lead agency on the judgementof an individual

CERT coordinator (as opposed to the committee

decisions used in Oregon). This could result in

increased efficiency at the expense of collaboration

between CERT participants (Bargen 1997).

13. What did CERT do to coordinate forest

management and economic development? and

14. What were successes and frustrations

resulting from these efforts?

The RCERT and three state CERTs have directly

supported the coordination of forest management

and economic development through their support of

the ecosystem investment parts of the Initiative

(Washington Community Economic Revitalization

Team 1994, Tuchmann and others 1996). Tuchmann

and others (1996) also noted the complexities of the

program that has two potentially conflicting

objectives: the remaining disagreements over the

intent of the program, and problems funding all of

the ecosystem management components of

the Initiative. A review of the 1994 Jobs in the

Woods Program (Tarnow 1995) pointed out that

major problems were the unrealistically high

expectations among potential workers resulting

from agency promotion efforts and difficulties

arising from agency contracting and procurement

practices. The CERTs have also had a direct but

less obvious impact on coordinating forest

management and economic development through

the funding and implementation of projects that

support existing and emerging businesses dealing

with forest products including special forest

products and expanded secondary manufacturing of

locally produced timber (Raettig and others 1996,

redundancy in the application process, simplifying

program requirements, and public contact by

NWEAI managers.

Washington State Community Economic

Revitalization Team 1994).

89
Our interpretation is that the NWEAI supported

training activities such as the Forestry Training

Center at Forks, Washington that will impact both

forestry and economic development by creating a

highly skilled workforce for new forestry methods.

15. What did CERT participants learn from

efforts that may help future efforts to coordinate

ecosystem management & economic development?

Among the most significant lessons learned

concerning the coordination of ecosystem

management and economic development are the

following (USDA/USDI 1996, Tarnow 1995,

USDA, Forest Service1996):

• The coordination of the often conflicting

objectives of ecosystem management and

economic development is very complex,

particularly as compared to other NWEAI

program areas.

• Adequate funding is ultimately the

prerequisite to accomplishing both

objectives on a meaningful scale. This has

not been realized in the NWEAI and the

demand for funding has exceeded available

resources.

• Existing agency contracting and

procurement processes can create real

barriers to accomplishing the desired

coordination.

• An agreement on the vision and goals of a

coordinated program is necessary, and

extremely difficult to achieve.

Capacity-Related Questions

Six of the evaluation and monitoring questions deal

with capacity issues.

5. What did the Initiative do to provide

assistance for local planning and decision making?

The Forest Service, USDA Rural Development,

and the Economic Development Administration

in the Department of Commerce all have NWEAI

programs that provide assistance to support local

planning and decision making (Tuchmann and

others 1996, Raettig and others 1996). In some

cases financial support goes directly to the local

community or planning entityfor specific planning

products or processes while in other instances

support has been given to organizations such as

Rural Development Initiatives Inc. in Oregon to

support broad programs supporting local planning

and decision-making. These NWEAI programs

often build on existing State economic development

programs supporting local and sub-State efforts

(Tuchmann and others 1996). Some NWEAI

programs such as specific USDA Rural

Development loan and grant programs have

indirectly encouraged local planning and

decision-making by requiring completion of certain

planning processes and products such a strategic

or comprehensive plan a prerequisite for receiving

assistance.

6. Did the assistance improve the quality of

local planning and decision making? It is reported

that these programs for supporting local planning

and decision making have made positive

contributions to the quality of local processes and

represent one of the significant accomplishments of

the NWEAI (Raettig and others 1996, Tuchmann

and others 1996). One example of the kind of

improvements in the local planning process

supported by NWEAI programs is the

unincorporated community of Happy Camp,

California (Bargen 1997). NWEAI programs and

support enabled Happy Camp, a community that did

not have an existing plan, to begin a planning

process, become an active partner in the NWEAI

process, and undertake positive community

development projects. Other positive NWEAI

contributions to local planning activities are

documented across the region.

90
23. What was the existing base of community

capacity prior to the Initiative? Although there is

no base measurement of communitycapacity,

NWEAI economic development efforts in the region

have built on a foundationof existing capacity and

local institutions. Federal programs such and those

in the Economic Development Administration and

state supported institutions such as Rural

Development Initiative Inc., the Oregon Economic

Development Department and theWashington

Department of Community Trade and Economic

Development were actively supporting local

economic development activities before the

Northwest Forest Plan. There is evidence, however,

that local capacity for economic development was

lacking or needed improvement in parts of the

region and in certain unincorporated communities

(Bargen 1997, Raettig and others 1996).

Infrastructure in many of the rural NWEAI areas

was either lacking or obsolete.

24. What did the CERTs do to improve local

capacity? The CERTS were able to improve local

capacity directly by funding projects aimed

specifically at improving local economic

development capacity through either technical

assistance or supporting specific capacity improving

projects (Bargen 1997, Raettig and others 1996,

Tuchmann and others 1996,Washington Community

Economic Revitalization Team 1994). NWEAI

programs have also set the stage for local economic

development by funding infrastructure projects such

as water and wastewater facilities that are essential

for future development (Raettig and others 1996,

Tuchmann 1996). Finally, the requirements for

local planning and economic development products

and institutions as a precondition for participation

in NWEAI programs has provided a powerful

incentive for local communities. The collaboration

that is the foundation of the NWEAI is one of the

essential conditions for efficient and effective

planning for community development.

25. What changes in local capacity took place as

a result of CERT efforts? It is perceived that CERT

support of NWEAI projects to enhance local

capacity provided an increased capability in

communities across the region to undertake

community and economic development activities

(Bargen 1997, Raettig and others 1996, Tuchmann

and others 1996). Some of this capability was

realized in an increased skill level among both

economic development practitioners and the

community at large as a result of support for such

projects as the Rural Development Initiatives Inc.

business assistance team project and the Lane

Community Collegefirst stop shop project. Other

enhanced capability has been in specific community

development plans, projects and capital facilities

such as the industrial park in the City of Oakridge,

Oregon. Also, many communities have realized the

benefits of partnerships and collaboration to provide

a base for community development activities and

this model can be used by the communities in future

development activities using skills enhanced in the

NWEAI process

26. How much were community plans advanced

as a result of the Initiative? NWEAI financial

support has provided for the completion of plans

that had already been started and enhanced the

quality of plans in progress in the region (Pacific

Rim Associates 1995, Raettig and others 1996,

Tuchmann and others 1996). The NWEAI has also

initiated strategic planning activities in communities

that had not previously been involved in such

activities (Bargen 1997). Practitioners have

indicated that these efforts have been a significant

factor in enhancing the level of community capacity

(Tuchmann and others 1996).

91
Outcome and Accomplishment Questions

Ten of the questions deal with outcomes and

accomplishments of the NWEAI.

10. What did the Initiative do to ease the shortterm transition for workers? The Initiative program

that directly addresses the transition for dislocated

 workers is the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA)

funded through the Department of Labor Secretary’s

Reserve. This program provides for worker

retraining and, importantly, for temporary living

expenses while the worker is in training. The initial

minimum target level of funding for this NWEAI

program was $12,000,000 and this level has been

exceeded in every year of the Initiative since 1995.

Indirectly, the Northwest Forest Plan is providing

assistance in that timber sales on Federal lands have

been resumed and some workers will find or be able

to continue employment in harvesting and

processing timber (Tuchmann and others 1996).

11. How many workers benefited from these

efforts? Did families benefit? What were the

benefits? The OFEA report noted that “Since the

initiative began, 4900 worker-training opportunities

had been created in the region” (Tuchmann and

others 1996:176). It is not clear if this is a total for

fiscal years 1994 through 1996 or a total for some

shorter period of time. In fiscal year 1996, the

RCERT reported that training opportunities for

2433 workers were provided (Regional Community

Economic Revitalization Team 1996). Training

for family members was not reported separately in

either the OFEA report or RCERT annual reports.

The 1996 RCERT annual report does indicate that

training opportunities were extended to other

workers in timber communities in addition to

primarily and secondarily-impacted forest product

workers.

12. JTPA questions: Workers served by JTPA

and by other programs; the success rates; were

family members served; and what were the results?

JTPA training opportunities provided are noted in

the response to the previous question. Information

is not available on other programs or family

members served. Tuchmann and others (1996)

reported that 1006 workers had either completed or

left training programs by the end of fiscal year 1995

and 817 of these workers had found jobs.

16. Were economic benefits enhanced through

this coordination? Ecosystem benefits enhanced?

How much? The NWEAI ecosystem investment

programs across the region have generated an

important economic impact (Tuchmann and others

1996). In fiscal year 1994, for instance, an

estimated 2,200 jobs (equivalent to 600 full-time

jobs) were created by the ecosystem management

programs. In fiscal year 1995, the total number of

jobs created increased to almost 3,700. Another

measure of the economic impact of these jobs is

indicated by the total wage and benefit value of

$17.10 per hour for the fiscal year 1995 program

(USDA/USDI 1996). While an accounting of

ecosystem accomplishments is not available, a

variety of needed watershed and ecosystem

restoration projects were completed including road,

culvert, stream, and vegetation projects.

17. What have the CERTs done to create a

network to coordinate training for dislocated

workers with economic development efforts? One

of the more visible efforts to coordinate training for

dislocated workers and economic development has

been the ecosystem workforce demonstration

projects in Oregon (Labor Education and Research

Center 1995, Tarnow 1995). The ecosystem

workforce demonstration projects have been

conceived to create a quality workforce (certified

ecosystem management workers) through training

and experience on actual ecosystem management

projects. An important element of the ecosystem

management workforce demonstration projects has

92
been the payment to participants of wages and

benefits sufficient to provide support for the worker

and family. Completing quality ecosystem

management projects was also an explicit

consideration in the ecosystem workforce

demonstration projects. Similar networks have been

created in other states to provide the necessary

training and experience to develop an ecosystem

management workforce. Notable efforts in other

states include California projects in Eureka, Hayfork

and Yreka and the Columbia Pacific RC&D project

in Washington. Yet another method that training,

ecosystem management and economic development

have been coordinated through the support of the

Jobs in The Environment program in Washington

State--an existing cooperative effort.

18. Did these efforts improve the success of job

training programs? One of the defining

characteristics of the ecosystem workforce

demonstration program has been the emphasis on

evaluating the program and projects on an ongoing

basis. Evaluation work has been undertaken

directly by the entities involved such as the Labor

Education and Research Center at the University of

Oregon (Labor Education and Research Center

1995), the Federal land management agencies

(USDA/USDI 1996), the State CERTS (Washington

Community Economic Revitalization Team 1996),

and outside interest groups (Tarnow 1995). These

evaluation efforts all documented successful

strategies, techniques and projects that have

improved the success of the training/ecosystem

management coordinated program but also pointed

out the large measure of improvement that could be

made as implementation continued. On a regional

level, funding and the extraordinary complex nature

of implementing projects with such diverse and

potentially conflicting goals were identified as

factors that have complicated implementation

(Tuchmann and others 1996).

19. What did the CERTs do to stimulate job

opportunities in forest-related economic activity?

The CERTs stimulated job opportunities in forestrelated sectors through the entire process of

managing the Jobs in the Woods program. Support

of innovative methods of contracting, packaging of

potential projects and project administration directly

translated ecosystem investments into jobs for

dislocated timber workers (Tarnow 1995,

Tuchmann and others 1996). Creative management

of the projects has meant that many of the

ecosystem management opportunities are accessible

to dislocated workers. Coordination of workforce

training and ecosystem management enabled the

program to create new employment opportunities in

the impacted rural communities. In addition, CERT

support of other economic development projects has

enhanced job opportunities in the more traditional

forest products harvesting and processing industries

as well as secondary manufacturing components of

the sector (Raettig and others 1996).

20. How successful were efforts to create forestrelated jobs? Answers have already addressed the

magnitude of employment opportunities created by

ecosystem management investments. It is important

to note that the program has done well in matching

job opportunities and displaced timber workers. Of

2,226 jobs that were reported as created by the 1995

program, 45 percent went to dislocated imber

workers USDA/USDI 1996). Across the region the

program’s efforts and success in meeting

expectations were limited by the lack of full

program funding (Tuchmann and others 1996).

21. What long-term strategic economic

investments were made by Initiative participants?

The NWEAI programs have made important

investments in long-term capital facilities in the

timber communities. Raettig and others document

the magnitude of economic investments from a

regional perspective. Notable examples of

infrastructure investments include water and

93
wastewater treatment facilities (Raettig and others

1996, Reyna and others 1996, Washington

Community Economic Revitalization Team 1994),

community health facilities in Reedsport, Oregon

(Raettig and others 1996), industrial park

improvements in Oakridge, Oregon (Raettig and

others 1996), and marine facilities in Washington

(Washington Community Economic Revitalization

Team 1996). Other long-term strategic investments

have been made in revolving loan funds funded by

agencies such as USDA, Rural Development and the

US Department of Commerce, Economic

Development Administration (Raettig and others

1996, Reyna and others 1996) that will provide a

crucial source of credit for emerging and expanding

small businesses. A third way the NWEAI has

invested in long-term economic development is in

human capital. NWEAI projects like the business

assistance teams and first stop shops in Oregon

(Raettig and others 1996), and a forestry training

center in Washington (Washington Community

Economic Revitalization Team 1996) provide

enhanced skills among individuals and groups that

are a base for future economic development.

The next series of questions all involve specific

outcome measures. A number of studies have

answered some of these items for 1996 at the state

or regional level and results are discussed for each

specific sub-question.. A comprehensive

monitoring system is not in place or planned to

answer these questions definitively in the future.

22 a. What private investments associated with the

public investments had been made by 1996? By

2003? Two information sources addressed this

question for portions of the NWEAI region. In

Washington for fiscal years 1994 through 1996,

non-federal sources accounted for 32 percent of

total WACERT project funding. The 3.8 million

dollars of private investment accounted for 2.5

percent of total project funding and 7.3 of the nonfederal funding (Washington Community Economic

Revitalization Team 1994, 1995, 1996). A study of

USDA Rural Development NWEAI programs for

fiscal years 1994 and 1995 in Oregon (Raettig and

others 1996) indicated that non-Federal sources

accounted for 17.1 percent of total project value but

did not separately account for private sources.

Private investments have been an important part of

NWEAI project funding but an exact accounting has

been precluded by the lack of a systematic

accounting system.

22 b. How many/what kinds of businesses were

created, expanded, or located in affected

communities by 1996? By 2003? The most

comprehensive source of information on business

impacts of NWEAI programs is the USDA Rural

Development assessment for Oregon (Raettig and

others 1996). In 1994 and 1995 NWEAI projects

funded by USDA Rural Development in Oregon

impacted 146 businesses. Information for those

business impacts that were categorized indicates 11

new businesses, 3 retained businesses and 32

expanded businesses.

22 c. By 1996, how many dislocated workers were

hired and how many other people? How many

threatened jobs were retained? How does this

compare with the jobs lost in the forest products

industry? Only a partial answer is possible for this

question. Tuchmann and others (1996) found that

of the 16,542 NWEAI “job effects” for fiscal year

1996, 12 percent were jobs that were retained or

found by workers after retraining, 44 percent were

jobs created during the fiscal year, and 44 percent

were jobs expected to be created in future years.

One indication of the portion of these workers that

were dislocated timber workers is that 45 percent of

the workers receiving jobs through the Jobs in the

Woods program in fiscal year 1995 were, in fact,

dislocated timber workers. Jobs lost by the timber

industry are discussed in detail in Raettig and others

(1998).

94
22 d. By 2003, how many affected communities

have adjusted to and thrived in the face of reduced

timber harvests? How many jobs in those

communities are associated with public investments

made by the Initiative? This question needs a

monitoring and reportingsystem in place to be

addressed.

22 e. By 1996, which investments or combination

investments have had the most beneficial impact?

By 2003? Capital investments in infrastructure that

have had construction activities begin or complete

are candidates for immediate (1996) beneficial

impacts. Water and wastewater facilities, and other

community facilities are examples and have

generated construction job impacts as well as

providedservices as they have been completed

(Raettig and others 1996, Reyna and others 1996).

Another category of NWEAI projects that has

already had a positive impact are business and

industry programs such as revolving loan funds and

loan guarantees. In many case funds have already

been loaned out and recipient businesses have hired

new employees. Investments in human capital and

capacity often have only just begun to generate

beneficial impacts.

The studies cited in response to the list of questions

and the continuing evaluation and monitoring

efforts of those working on the NWEAI and

Northwest Forest Plan provides a comprehensive, if

not complete, accounting of how successful the

NWEAI has been in addressing community and

economic development needs in the region. We

acknowledge the contributions by Bob Rheiner,

CERT Co-Chair, and all participants at the Forum.

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Pipken James. 1998. The Northwest Forest Plan

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96
APPENDIX A

List of participants at forum entitled "Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative: Have the Hopes

Been Realized,” July 1997, Portland, Oregon.

Name Agency City and State

Roger Ahlbrandt Portland State University Portland, OR

Aldred Ames U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Dev. Ad. Boise, ID

Merle Anderson Siskiyou County Economic Development Corporation Yreka, CA

Rolf Anderson U.S. Forest Service, Willamette National Forest Sweet Home, OR

Janet Anderson-Tyler U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry Portland, OR

Al Angrignon Forks Forestry Training Center Forks, WA

Jan Bargen LBJ School of Public Affairs, Univ. of Texas Austin, TX

John Benoit Willows, CA

Anne Berblinger U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Dev. Ad. Portland, OR

Karin Berkholtz Governor’s Rural Assistance Team Olympia, WA

Patrick Borunda OR Native American Business Entrepreneur Net. Portland, OR

Bob Buckingham Makah Tribal Center Neah Bay

Suzanne Burcell Karuk Community Development Corp. Happy Camp, CA

John Butterworth Benton Bulletin Philomath, OR

Bill Campbell Oregon Economic Development Department Salem, OR

Rebecca Chaffey City of Raymond Raymond, WA

Scott Chapman Portland, OR

Harriet H. Christensen U.S. Forest Service, PNW Research Station Seattle, WA

Chuck Clendenin USDA Rural Development Woodland, CA

Budd Denny Small Business Development Program

Ellen Donoghue U.S. Forest Service, PNW Research Station Portland, OR

Scott Duff USDA Rural Development Portland, OR

Anita Gahimer Port of Skamainia County Stevenson, WA

Chris Gannon Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Warm Springs, OR

Corrine Gobeli Oregon State University Corvallis, OR

Terry Gribben U.S. Department of Labor Seattle, WA

Magaret Hallock Labor Ed. Research Center, Univ. of Oregon Eugene, OR

Richard Haynes U.S. Forest Service, PNW Research Station Portland, OR

Eric Herst USDA Rural Development Portland, OR

Ollie Jones U.S. Forest Service, Willamette National Forest Eugene, OR

Kim Judge State of Alaska Ketchikan, AK

Lynn Jungwirth Karuk Community Development Corp. Hayfork, CA

Darrel Kenops U.S. Forest Service, Willamette National Forest Eugene, OR

Jim Kimbrell Siskiyou county, CA Eureka, CA

Lloyd Kirry U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Dev. Ad. Seattle, WA

Jim Kraft Eastern Oregon University La Grande, OR

Jonathan Kusel Forest Community Research Taylorsville, CA

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Bert Larson Internat. Assoc. of Machinists, Woodworkers Gladston, OR

Dan Leinan City of Forks Forks, WA

Curt Loop Regional Ecosystem Office Portland, OR

James F. Lowery Economic Development Corporation South Bend, WA

Jerry Lucas Makah Tribal Council Neah Bay, WA

Mary E McBride USDA Rural Development Olympia, WA

Al McKee Washington CERT Stevenson, WA

Renate Mengelberg Clackamas county, OR Oregon City, OR

Susan Morrison Rural Human Service Crescent City, CA

Casandra Mosely Rogue Institute Ashland, OR

Bob Nash Superior CA Economic Development Dis. Redding, CA

Jim Neuva Port of Willapa Harbor Raymond, WA

Jennifer Nolton Makah Tribe Neah Bay, WA

Ron Ochs U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry Portland, OR

Richard Phillips U.S. Forest Service, Region Six Portland, OR

Terry L. Raettig U.S. Forest Service, PNW Research Station Olympia, WA

Robert Reiss Trinity county, CA Hyampom, CA

Wendy Reiss Trinity county, CA Hyampom, CA

Bob Rheiner Bureau of Land Management (RCERT) Portland, OR

Dave Rux Internat. Assoc. of Machinists, Woodworkers Aberdeen, WA

Ron Saranich U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry Washington DC

Dave Schmidt Linn county, OR Albany, OR

Phyllis Schrauger City of Hoquiam Hoquiam, WA

Bill Scott Oregon Economic Development Department Salem, OR

Heidi Sickert Sustainable Northwest Portland, OR

Sam Sirkin Oregon Economic Development Department Salem, OR

Paul Sommers Northwest Policy Center, Univ. of WA Seattle, WA

Charles Spencer Labor Ed. Research Center, Univ. of Oregon Eugene, OR

Mark Stanley California Resources Agency Sacramento, CA

Jim Strathman Portland State University Portland OR

Francie Sullivan CEWAER Sacramento, CA

Joanne Sutherland Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Warm springs, OR

Kathy Suvia Siskiyou Training and Development Weed, CA

Terry Swagerty Umpqua Community College Roseburg, OR

Janel Tarczy California Resources Agency Sacramento, CA

Sinclair Tedder British Columbia Ministry of Forests Victoria, BC

Tom Tuchmann USDA, Office of the Secretary Portland, OR

Victor Vasquez USDA Rural Development Washington DC

Jim Walls Columbia Pacific Res. Conservation & Development Aberdeen, WA

Nikki Whitty Coos, Curry, Douglas Council of Governments North Bend, OR

Jim Zelenka Lane County Council of Governments Eugene, OR

Joyce Zwanziger Siskiyou County Economic Development Corporation Weed, CA

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