A plan to renew the Secure Rural Schools Act for the next five years, while also providing funds for the measure this year and boosting payments to Montana timber-dependent counties, passed the U.S. Senate Wednesday as part of a supplemental spending bill.

The Secure Rural Schools Act is sponsored by Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

The Secure Rural Schools Act renewal would increase the amount of funding for Montana from $14 million in 2006 to $34 million in 2007, then gradually drop payments to $24.8 million by 2011, for a total of $151 million during the six-year period.

That’s an increase of $65 million over current payments.

“Today we scored a huge victory for Montana counties,” Baucus said in a press release. “This was a major hurdle that took a lot of working together and elbow grease. We’re not done yet, but today’s action is a big win for rural communities.”

Once the Senate finalizes the spending bill, it will need to be reconciled with a similar version passed by the House before being sent to President Bush.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester was a co-signer on the bill, and a spokesperson for Rep. Denny Rehberg said that while the congressman hasn’t seen the bill in its current form, he’s supported reauthorization of the Schools Act and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding in the past.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act expired at the end of last year. The program compensates counties for lost tax-revenue to federal lands, and those funds are used to pay for education, road construction, and emergency services.

The Bush Administration had proposed the sale of as many as 300,000 acres to renew the program, but that move met with fierce public outcry.

PILT is a separate yet similar program that also reimburses counties for lost tax revenue due to an abundance of federal lands.

The Schools Act distributes about $2.8 billion to mainly western states, with the PILT program adding $1.9 billion, under the Baucus proposal.

Details of the plan — including where the money will come from — are still being worked out. Baucus previously said he’s identified loopholes that could be closed in the tax code to fund the measure, but declined to elaborate, saying only that last year, when he proposed a plan to pay for the programs by closing a tax loophole that allows some government contractors to avoid paying taxes, that idea was seized upon by the Bush administration and the money went for other projects.