A former Baker County, Ore., commissioner is concerned that hundreds of rural residents across the state, including many in the northeast corner, could see significant increases in their bill for wildland fire protection through the state Department of Forestry over the next two years.

But they wouldn’t know the final tab until they receive their property tax bills in November — after the fire season, said Mark Bennett, who retired as a commissioner at the end of 2022.

“It impacts a lot of people,” Bennett said.

He’s among that group — he estimates that the proposed rise in fire protection rates through the Oregon Department of Forestry could boost his property tax bill by around $3,000.

Bennett, who is chairman of the state’s Wildfire Programs Advisory Council, said he is slated to testify about the situation before the legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee in late April.

He is advocating for the legislature to include in the budget for the 2024-25 biennium $15 million from the state general fund. That would significantly reduce the increase in protection costs for landowners.

The current budget has that $15 million general fund “offset,” said Joy Krawczyk, public affairs director for the Department of Forestry.

That money allowed the department to hire about 85 employees, including approximately 35 seasonal firefighters, and buy new equipment to bolster ODF’s firefighting capacity, but without passing the entire cost on to landowners, Bennett said.

Augmenting the agency’s firefighting ability was among the requirements in Senate Bill 762, which the legislature passed in 2021, Bennett said.

With wildfires on average burning more acres, and fire seasons starting earlier and persisting later, that need will continue, he said.

But without the continuing general fund offset, the cost will be borne by landowners, Bennett said.

ODF requested $15 million for the next biennium, but Gov. Tina Kotek didn’t include the money in her proposed budget.

Bennett, who said he has talked about the situation with legislators including Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, and Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, whose districts include Baker County, is lobbying to have the legislature add the $15 million general fund offset to the budget.

Without that money, the fire protection bill for timber land in Northeastern Oregon would rise from $1.72 per acre to $2.31, a 34% increase, Bennett said.

The rate for grazing land, of which there are thousands of acres in Baker County alone, would jump from 45.5 cents per acre to 72 cents, a 58% increase, he said.

Owens called the proposed increases “unacceptable.”

“We need to figure out how to come up with the $15 million that is needed to cause this not to happen,” the legislator said. “I will champion that effort with others.”

Although the ODF assessments aren’t technically mandatory, Bennett said landowners who opt out of paying the fee would have still have to pay for some sort of fire protection.

Realistically, the ODF fee is the most feasible for the vast majority of landowners, he said.

The potential ODF rate increase would not affect all rural landowners, Bennett said.

Those whose properties are within a rangeland fire protection district, including ones in the eastern and southern parts of Baker County, pay a fee to those districts but not to ODF, he said.

Some other residents, however, including in parts of Baker Valley, do pay a “dual fee” for fire protection, to a rural fire district and to the ODF.

According to ODF statistics, the agency provides fire protection to almost 2 million acres in Northeastern Oregon — 1.09 million acres of grazing land and 848,000 acres of timber ground.

Protection rates rose by 8.7% for timber land and by 12% for grazing land for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2023.