UNPLEASANT MESSAGE

The Bush Administration Isn't Winning Many Friends In Rural Communities

If President Bush wants the rural communities that supported his 2000
election campaign to repeat the favor in 2004, he's got a funny way of
showing it.

The news that the administration may end several grant programs targeted to
rural areas is bound to send an unpleasant message to residents of those
communities. The grants, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, were
designed to help communities recover from the effects of the decline in the
timber industry.

The Economic Action Program has doled out small development grants - often
just $20,000 to $30,000 - to help communities decide how to revamp their
economies. In Jackson County, such grants have helped Gold Hill, Rogue
River, Central Point, Shady Cove, Phoenix, Talent and the Applegate.

The administration reportedly is concerned that too much of the money was
earmarked for specific communities by Congress, taking away the discretion
of the Forest Service in allocating grants.

This potential move comes on the heels of an administration proposal that
would take vital dredging assistance away from small Oregon Coast ports and
shift it to larger ports, threatening the economies of struggling coastal
communities.

For an administration that espouses the conservative tradition of limiting
the power of the federal government, both of these moves seem mighty
high-handed to us. Telling Congress that a federal bureaucracy is better
able to parcel out grants than members of Congress who represent the
communities is arrogant at best.

At worst, it follows an increasingly disturbing pattern in this
administration - that the federal government knows what's best for us and
will impose its will despite the needs or the stated desires of the public.
We've seen this administration attempt to overturn Oregon's voter-approved
physician-assisted suicide law, and to investigate its voter-approved
medical marijuana law.

Now it has taken aim at grants to distressed communities and dredging funds
for battered coastal towns. That sounds suspiciously like the "rural
cleansing" that conservative voices claim is being conducted by liberal
environmentalists.