WASHINGTON  -  U.S. Representative Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08) today indicated that she could not support a proposal to sell 21,000 acres of the Mark Twain National Forest, primarily located in the Eighth Congressional District, to finance a national program for rural education.

 

“Rural education is an extremely important priority for me, but so is the health of our rural schools right here in Missouri.  If we are selling federal lands in Missouri for this program, we must be sure the formula for distributing these funds is fair.  Right now, we are looking at a proposal to trade a dollar of forest land for a dime of education funding.  In the plan’s present form, under the present formula, I can’t support that trade-off,” Emerson said.
      
Some Southern Missouri school districts are nearly 50 percent impacted by the presence of Mark Twain National Forest lands, for which they receive payments in lieu of taxes through the federal Impact Aid program.

 

“Where there are small parcels of land that are not really connected to the larger pieces of the Mark Twain National Forest and are not environmentally sensitive, I think we can give private individuals the opportunity to bid on it.  I do not want to support a precedent, however, that involves selling major portions of the Mark Twain, but losing the payments in lieu of taxes and shortchanging our schools in the process,” Emerson said.