12 



Joan Smith, we will recognize you for five minutes. I would ap- 

 preciate it if you folks will strive to stay within your time. 



STATEMENT OF JOAN SMITH, SUPERVISOR-ELECT, SISKIYOU 

 COUNTY, CALIFORNIA 



Ms. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Joan Smith and I 

 am a newly-elected county supervisor, Supervisor-Elect for Siskiyou 

 County, California. I am here today to report to you how Option 

 9, the President's forest plan, has affected my county. 



The Federal Government controls 64.5 percent of the land in 

 Siskiyou County. In April of 1993, when President Clinton held his 

 Forest Conference in Portland, he promised relief to our depressed 

 forest communities. Those of us who attended that conference were 

 given hope by the President at that time. He promised relief for our 

 long-suffering communities. The relief he promised us has never 

 come. 



Our communities are still suffering, and some of them, such as 

 Happy Camp, California, have all but died. The only large business 

 in that town was a sawmill. Two years ago, the sawmill closed its 

 doors and laid off all their employees, eliminating $14 million in 

 annual payments to loggers, truckers, machine shops, and local 

 businesses. The town died, businesses closed, and Happy Camp is 

 virtually a ghost town. 



I do not want to see this repeated throughout our region, espe- 

 cially when it is completely unnecessary. No one wants healthy, 

 sustainable forests more than the rural people who live within 

 them. I am saddened that Option 9 appears to be a public relations 

 facade. 



The majority of the people hurt by reductions in logging are self- 

 employed loggers or those who work for small family-owned busi- 

 nesses, not greedy multinational corporations. For example, my 

 friends, Lonny West and his partner, Clyde Ashenhurst, in 

 Siskiyou County own a small logging company. Before the Presi- 

 dent's plan, they employed 25 employees and had an annual pay- 

 roll of $453,000 annually. They gave their employees good health 

 insurance and profit sharing. 



Over 80 percent of Lonny's work is Federal timber sales, making 

 him vulnerable to swings in Federal timber policy. Lonny is cur- 

 rently not working and his partner, Clyde Ashenhurst, has applied 

 for unemployment for the first time in 26 years, since he began in 

 the logging industry. None of Lonny's employees or former employ- 

 ees have gone through the retraining program set up in the Presi- 

 dent's forest plan. 



Siskiyou County has lost 65 percent of its loggers over the past 

 six years. We have lost half of our high-paying manufacturing jobs 

 due to mill closures resulting from reductions in timber sales due 

 to Option 9. 



Reducing timber jobs has not resulted in a more diversified and 

 healthy economy. Losses in high-paying timber jobs have been re- 

 placed by increases in lower-paying service sector jobs. Suddenly, 

 displaced middle-aged workers are competing with their own chil- 

 dren for the same jobs flipping hamburgers and waiting tables for 

 minimum wage. 



