Historical Background

When Oregon joined the union in 1859, two sections, or 3.4 million acres were granted at statehood by Congress in trust to support public schools. (Oregon Enabling Act Section 4 and the Oregon Territorial Act of 1848, Section 20, August 14, 1848.)

Oregon’s first Constitution as part of statehood indicated that the Common School Fund:

” . . . shall be set apart as a separate, and irreducible fund to be called the common school fund, for interest of which together with all other revenues derived from the school lands mentioned in this section shall be exclusively applied to the support, and maintenance of common schools in each school district and the purchase of suitable libraries, and apparatus therefor.”

Oregon's First Constitution, Article VIII

In 1930, scattered school trust sections in the eastern portion of the state were exchanged with the federal government for 71,000 acres of burned timber lands in the Coast Range between Coos Bay and Reedsport. These lands today are called the Elliott State Forest. It was recognized that within a few decades, these lands could begin to generate timber revenue and that the well-managed forest would generate significant revenue as the trees grew. These lands are in one of the world’s most productive timber areas.

For many decades, this arrangement worked well and generated more than $700 million dollars for Oregon schools along with hundreds of good paying jobs for rural Oregon workers.

In 2014, the State of Oregon (through the State Land Board) reached a settlement with three conservation organizations, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands, and Portland Audubon, to cancel 28 timber sales in the Elliott, Clatsop, and Tillamook forests. This agreement is described in "Victory in the Elliott State Forest! 28 Oregon Coast Timber Sales Cancelled", Earth First! Newswire, February 6, 2014:

As an organization that works directly with rural communities and the climate justice movement, Cascadia Forest Defenders can’t really get behind land privatization or carbon trading—a false solution to climate change,” [said Ben Jones of Cascadia Forest Defenders, a Eugene-based direct-action group]. “The Common School Fund system is unjust and broken, and it’s not really our job to fix it."

In 2017, the Oregon Department of Forestry was fired as manager of the Elliott State Forest. Since then, no harvesting has happened on the Elliott, and no plans for future harvesting exist. This means one of the most productive forestland areas in the world is losing money each year, its roads continue to deteriorate, and each year it stores ever more flammable carbon.

The State Land Board has spent the last two years planning to give the Elliott State Forest to the OSU College of Forestry in a sweetheart deal for pennies on the dollar: this productive forestland is easily worth over one billion dollars on the open market, but the value being assigned to it is only $220.8 million.

Along the way, the State Land Board (through the Department of State Lands) has spent more than $870,000 from the Common School Fund to pay OSU to prepare an Elliott State Research Forest proposal. Both the State Land Board and OSU should be ashamed for taking this money from Oregon's schools. If the State of Oregon decides to create more research forests (OSU already has ten other research forests), and if funds are needed to prepare those proposals, then those funds should be appropriated by legislation, not taken from the Common School Fund.

This deliberate squandering of Common School Funds comes from a political desire to avoid logging and "sequester carbon." For example, Kate Brown is a member of the State Land Board, and her political campaign website, KateBrownforOregon.Com includes the following statements:

Kate is fighting to protect our land, water, and air. She is standing up to Washington politicians who have walked away from America’s commitment to combat climate change and is working to make Oregon a national leader in clean energy, reducing emissions, and conservation. … Climate change threatens Oregon’s economy, contributes to raging wildfires, and threatens our Oregon way of life.

Further, on March 10, 2020, Kate Brown signed Executive Order No. 20-04, “Directing State Agencies to Take Actions to Reduce and Regulate Greenhouse Gas Emissions”:

WHEREAS, all agencies with jurisdiction over natural and working landscapes in Oregon will need to prepare and plan for the impacts of climate change and take actions to encourage carbon sequestration and storage … this Executive Order calls for the state of Oregon to reduce its GHG emissions (1) at least 45 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2035; and (2) at least 80 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2050.

Given these political campaign statements and follow-on Executive Order, any reasonable outside observer would have to conclude Kate Brown has divided loyalties: the Elliott State Forest can either be left untouched to sequester carbon, or it can be actively managed and logged to provide revenue for the Common School Fund. These dual forestry objectives fight each other, a classic case of divided loyalty.

While this may be popular among urban environmentalists and with the elected members of the State Land Board, it robs Oregon's schools of an important source of revenue. A similar court case involving the “Oregon Forest Trust Lands” was decided in November 2019 when a Linn County jury gave Oregon counties a $1.1 billion dollar award because Oregon had breached its contract with rural counties by failing to maximize logging revenues on state land. This case demonstrated that Oregon’s neglectful management of state forests and timid legal defense against environmental litigation resulted in a significant loss of trust income.

Meanwhile, over half of the Elliott State Forest is surrounded by industrial forest land. These companies practice responsible forestry, and they continue to harvest trees in a profitable and sustainable manner.

For all these reasons, Dave Sullivan filed a lawsuit against the State Land Board and Kate Brown in Polk County Circuit Court. The various Court documents in that lawsuit are described below.