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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 29, 2017)
6 CapitalPress.com Editorials are written by or approved by members of the Capital Press Editorial Board. December 29, 2017 All other commentary pieces are the opinions of the authors but not necessarily this newspaper. Opinion Editorial Board Editor & Publisher Managing Editor Joe Beach Carl Sampson opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion O ur V iew New federal tax law a plus for agriculture he tax reform bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump last week appears to have provisions that favor farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses. In a year when the prices of many commodity are depressed, that’s good news. Among the provisions that are good for farmers and ranchers: • The bill raises the section 179 expense deduction from $500,000 to $1 million and is indexed to inflation. The deduction allows a producer to expense, with limitations, a capital purchase for business use instead of depreciating the item over time. The provision should facilitate the upgrade of machinery, property and T Evan Vucci/Associated Press President Donald Trump shows off the tax bill after signing it in the Oval Office of the White House on Dec. 22. The new law is expected to be benefi- cial for farmers and ranchers. software. Good for producers, good for vendors. • The bill increases the eligibility threshold for cash accounting from $5 million average gross receipts to $25 million. Cash accounting allows farmers and ranchers to record income when commodities are sold and expenses when bills are paid. It’s a tool that gives farmers flexibility to optimize cash flow and better manage their tax burden. The continuation of allowing cash accounting had not been in original versions of the bill. Most farmers already use cash accounting, but the bill will allow more producers and processors to use that system. • Tax rates in all brackets are coming down for both businesses and individuals. That usually means savings. • The measure doubles the federal estate tax exemption to $11 million per person. We would like to see the estate tax eliminated altogether, but doubling the amount of an estate subject to taxation is a good start. Critics point out that a relatively few farming operations were subject to the tax, even under the old exemptions. That may be true as a percentage of all properties that meet the federal definition of a farm — “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year.” The truth is there are a great many commercial operations that have taxable assets valued in the millions of dollars. The bill’s provisions will make it easier to keep these operations intact and productive for successive generations. From a philosophic point of view, we have never understood the justification for assessing a tax at the owner’s death on property that was vigorously taxed during the owner’s life. The bill is not without its sticking points. It eliminates the personal exemption and reduces or eliminates other deductions. And most of it expires in seven years. On balance, the bill seems good for agriculture. Producers, processors and agribusiness owners should consult their tax professionals early in 2018 to take full advantage. Congress must pass funding solution for fighting wildfires O ur V iew By WILL WHELAN For the Capital Press W Dan Wheat/Capital Press Molly Linville feeds her cows on the KV Ranch near Palisades, Wash., Nov. 29. She’s reduced the herd after losing 91 percent of her grazing ground for the next two years due to last summer’s Sutherland Canyon Fire. Rancher becomes part of solution T he harrowing story of Molly Linville, a Central Washington rancher, is enough to send chills through any rancher. A lightning bolt crashed to the ground near her remote home on June 26, starting a wildfire that would grow to 37,981 acres. The local fire district was able to protect her house, but one of her most valuable possessions — 6,000 acres of rangeland — was essentially left to burn. With the flames racing toward her 60 mother cows, their calves and four bulls, she had to move the animals to safety with only the help of her cattle dog. By the time the fire was done with her land, 5,500 acres were burned, making it unusable for grazing her cattle for two years or more. She would have to sell half of the cattle, losing their valuable genetics, because the land could no longer support them. The state Department of Natural Resources has a policy that fails to recognize the value of rangeland. The agency even chooses not to fight fires on 600,000 rangeland acres it owns. The DNR will protect forestland, but grazing land is seen as worthless. “Firefighters look out here and they don’t see anything. It’s wasteland in their minds. I thought they didn’t care. I said I lost everything and I got blank looks. What I’ve learned is they literally don’t understand the value of rangeland,” Linville, 42, told Capital Press reporter Dan Wheat. She operates the KV Ranch mostly by herself while her husband works overseas. Beyond the ignorance, that policy makes DNR a bad neighbor, she said. If DNR lets its rangeland burn, there is nothing to stop a wildfire from crossing onto private rangeland. A fire that could be stopped when it’s small is allowed to build into a massive conflagration, destroying valuable grazing land and killing livestock, wildlife and, too often, people. “This is not an indictment against DNR firefighters. It’s DNR policy,” she said. Linville decided to meet with DNR and fire officials to find out more about the policy. Better yet, she wanted to help fire officials understand that rangeland is much more than vacant land. In some cases, if you added up the feed value of rangeland and the value of livestock it supports over the years, it’s probably as valuable as an equal amount of forest land. Through her efforts, Linville is making headway. Working with fire chiefs she is developing a training course that will help firefighters understand the value of livestock and the land that supports it. This is a breakthrough, particularly in Washington, which has been plagued by massive wildfires in recent years that have killed cattle, people and damaged livelihoods. We applaud her efforts. It is an example of the ranching spirit that seeks to solve problems instead of fussing about them. We urge DNR officials to follow up on the message that Linville has delivered. It’s long overdue. e’re approaching the end of Decem- ber and the West is still burning. Today, the fires continue to threaten lives, de- stroy homes and force evac- uations of communities in California. Not too long ago the blazes and smoky skies were here at home in Idaho. Tomorrow, fires will impact us again and our neighbors. Longer fire seasons, larger fires and drier condi- tions — all made worse by a changing climate — are the alarming trends we face. With these trends comes another worrisome fact, the cost of fighting fires contin- ues to grow. At a price tag of more than $2.9 billion in 2017 fis- cal year, the government has spent more money fighting fires than any other wildfire season on record. Fires have already burned more than 8.8 million acres in 2017, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Yet, there is no dedi- cated source of funding to fight these fires. Instead the funding is coming from the same budgets meant to care for our forests and deserts. Severe fires — whether nearby or somewhere else in the West — are having an indirect but major impact on Idaho’s public lands, partic- ularly our national forests. While we may have little control over some factors in dealing with wildfires, we can fix this ever growing and deteriorating funding problem. The solution lies with Congress. Both chambers of Con- gress are currently consider- ing legislation that would do just that. The Senate this fall introduced the Wildfire Di- saster Funding Act, and the House of Representatives introduced a similar bill this Guest comment Will Whelan summer. These bills would allow the public lands agen- cies to access disaster fund- ing in the most severe fire seasons and help protect their land stewardship bud- gets from the ever-escalat- ing cost of fire suppression. Our Idaho lawmakers are some of the leading voices for this bi-partisan legislation. Senator Crapo and Congressman Simp- son are the lead sponsors for the legislation in their respective chambers. Sena- tor Risch and Congressman Labrador have played im- portant supporting roles. We thank them for their leader- ship and commitment. We think these compre- hensive congressional ap- proaches are a great idea. And we’ve been collabo- rating with a broad coali- tion, ranging from the tim- ber industry to sportsmen’s groups to other conservation organizations, to show the broad and bipartisan support for a wildfire funding fix. We know that firefight- ing costs are going to con- tinue to rise. And under the government’s current fund- ing structure, our public lands managers simply can’t keep up. Idahoans love and de- pend on our national for- ests. We need to keep them healthy, accessible, and safe. So, it’s critical for Congress to pass a funding solution to this problem right away. Please show your sup- port, by letting Congress know fire funding legisla- tion should be a priority. Go to http://bit.ly/wildfirefix. Will Whelan is the direc- tor of government relations for the Idaho chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Readers’ view Dead trees still a valuable resource Evidence indicates that over the years wildfires have become larger and more intense. But, there seems to be no consensus as to why. The finger of blame seems to point in many direc- tions. Some have provided evi- dence, they claim, that shows fire fighting practices over the past 100 years are responsible. Others claim that past logging practic- es should be blamed. Still oth- ers would have you believe that the removal of forest roads have thwarted timely fire suppression efforts. Then there have been lawsuits restricting what profes- sional forest managers believe to be best management practices. Of course, there is the case for climate change. It may be that we may never know who or what is responsi- ble. Maybe all of them have had an impact. But, that is not my present concern. What are we going to do with the dead and dy- ing trees? The day the tree dies agents of biological decomposi- tion begin. We know these trees have economic value for a short period of time. For some species this time is only a few months while for other species this peri- od of time might be a few years. Even though loggers don’t like working in the dirty conditions, they should have started remov- ing these trees the day the fire was out. The lumber could be used to provide building materials need- ed to stimulate our economy. This would provide employment in parts of our state where un- employment is lagging behind our cities. At the same time it would generate funding for local schools, roads and county gov- ernment. Logging would also remove the dead trees that often create damaging environmental conditions in a re-burn. In the past we have seen mis- guided organizations filing lawsuits to stop or delay logging in these fire areas. Hopefully they have seen the errors in their ways and are will- ing to work with the locals for the greater good. They might even dis- cover that many of their goals are also goals of the locals. Carlisle Harrison Hermiston, Ore. Letters policy Write to us: Capital Press welcomes letters to the editor on issues of interest to farmers, ranchers and the agribusiness community. Letters policy: Please limit letters to 300 words and include your home address and a daytime telephone number with your submission. Lon- ger pieces, 500-750 words, may be considered as guest commentary pieces for use on the opinion pages. Guest commentary submissions should also include a photograph of the author. Send letters via email to opinions@capitalpress. com. Emailed letters are preferred and require less time to process, which could result in quicker publi- cation. Letters also may be sent to P.O. Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308; or by fax to 503-370-4383.
