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Editorials are written by or
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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.
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