After nearly two-year lapse, Congress renews Secure Rural Schools funding

After letting funding lapse for nearly two years, Congress voted to renew crucial federal funding that rural counties and schools have counted on for a quarter century.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday evening voted 399-5 to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act through September 2026, and to provide lapsed payments for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. The vote came after a year-long campaign led by bipartisan federal lawmakers from the West.

The U.S. Senate in June unanimously voted to reauthorize the act. It now goes to the president to be signed into law.

“The Secure Rural Schools program has been a lifeline for rural communities across Oregon since I originally authored the program back in 2000,” Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in a statement. “I’m relieved the House has finally done its job with the long-overdue passage of my bill to return the safety net for critical services to communities that need it the most.”

Wyden co-authored the original law that provided tens of millions each year for rural schools and communities that previously benefited from revenue generated by natural resource industries on public lands. Since then, it has provided $7 billion in payments to more than 700 counties and 4,400 school districts across 40 states and Puerto Rico that have large swaths of federal land within their borders.

Oregon, where more than half of the state consists of federal land, has experienced the biggest loss of any state since the funding lapsed in 2023: nearly $48.7 million in money for rural roads, public services and schools, according to a September report from the D.C.-based Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy and think tank. Idaho has missed out on $21.3 million, Alaska more than $12.6 million and Washington more than $14.7 million.

Overall, states have lost out on more than $207 million in the two years since the act expired, the Center for American Progress found.

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Twice since December 2024, the Senate has voted to renew the act in an effort led by Wyden and Idaho’s senior U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican.

But each time the Senate approved it, the House failed to take a vote. The bill lapsed in 2023 and counties haven’t gotten payments since early 2024. House Republicans most recently failed to reauthorize the act in the tax and spending cut megalaw they passed in July.

With just weeks before the House is due to wrap its work for the year, Wyden, Crapo and 83 bipartisan lawmakers from the Senate and the House sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, urging them to take a vote on the act before they recessed.

Just 12 hours after receiving the letter, the House announced it would fast-track consideration and a vote on the bill.

Washington’s U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat representing southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, led the passage of the bill in the House.

“The Secure Rural Schools program is absolutely critical, and the passage of this legislation is beyond overdue,” she said in a statement. “Candidly, the only reason it took this long is because way too many folks in D.C. have been blissfully ignorant about how disastrous the lapse of SRS has been for timber communities in Southwest Washington and across the West. Schools have closed up, teachers have been laid off, and our kids have been left footing the bill for Congress’s neglect.”

Since the funding lapsed, schools in Skamania County in her district have laid off staff and a middle school was forced to close.

In Alaska, the failure to reauthorize the program caused rural school districts to cut their budgets, particularly in southeast Alaska, home to the vast Tongass National Forest.

Rep. Nick Begich, R-Alaska, voted for the bill on Friday, and both of the state’s senators — Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan — supported it as well.

Reporter James Brooks of the Alaska Beacon contributed to this report