Undeterred by last year's bipartisan opposition, the Bush Administration has resurrected its plan to sell public lands to fund rural schools.

Last year, the administration identified about 300,000 acres of National Forest lands that could be offered for sale to raise money for the Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. In a conference call Tuesday, Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said that after further review, 27,000 acres have been dropped from last year's proposed acreage that could be put up for auction.

The administration anticipates selling only about 175,000 acres to raise the estimated $800 million to fund the program for five years.

"In a perfect world, we would all have rich relatives to give us money to fulfill all our objectives. But this isn't a perfect world," Rey said. "... We are happy to discuss alternatives if someone has a better idea."

It's the same challenge he put forth last year. Montana Sen. Max Baucus did come up with an alternative rural school funding plan, but Rey said that money was diverted elsewhere.

Baucus said he's prepared to once again work with Congressional leaders to come forward with a better plan. While he supports extending the rural schools program, which was established in 2000 and expired in 2006, Baucus said selling off public lands isn't the answer.

"We're going to find a way to fund the Secure Schools program without selling even one acre of public land," Baucus said. "Auctioning off our outdoor heritage is not the way to do this. Our public lands in the West are sacrosanct. The president can count on a fight in Congress."

Last year's plan also was panned by the four men who ran the U.S. Forest Service from 1979 to 2001, as well as dozens of environmental groups, backcountry outfitters, anglers and hunters and thousands of people from across the nation who sent letters arguing that the long-term loss of public lands would offset any short-term gains.

"The administration has failed to listen to the American people and their overwhelming opposition to selling off national forest lands," said Michael Francis, national forest program director for The Wilderness Society. "It's a sad commentary that the administration would completely ignore the overwhelming opposition that this misguided plan created last year by releasing a nearly identical proposal to sell the country's public lands to help remedy their poor fiscal decisions."

Rey argues that the plan had bipartisan support as well as opposition -- it just wasn't as vocal.

The Secure Rural Schools Act provides payments to counties that include some of the 193 million acres of tax-exempt national grasslands and forests, as a way to offset the loss of those taxes.

Lewis and Clark County, which is surrounded by the 900,000-acre Helena National Forest, receives about $446,500 annually from the national forests. Broadwater County's share is around $85,000 and Jefferson County takes in about $190,000 from this program.

Rey said that barring any congressional action, the last payment to counties was made in December 2006. The next would come in December.

"The only payments that will be made to counties is 25 percent of the gross receipts as timber harvests are sold and paid for," Rey said, unless the current Act is extended by Congress.

As with last year's proposal, the Bush Administration plan calls for eventually weaning the counties from the Rural Schools Act money during the next five years. They would continue to receive a portion of the timber sales receipts, which total around $300 million annually.

The new plan does make a few changes.

Rey wants Congress to make two decisions -- one is for a one-year extension to cover payments for this year; and the other to reinstitute the program from 2008 to 2011, with the gradual phase out of the program.

It now calls for splitting revenue from the sales equally, spending $400 million on the rural schools program and $400 million per year on land acquisition or habitat improvement projects. Rey said they would "front load" for the first two years, then taper off funding for the last two years.

Another change is that half of the money raised from the sale of lands in one state would stay in that state.

The new plan also calls for putting together an advisory commission to determine if individual parcels are worth selling. Rey notes that the public won't be able to comment on the proposed parcels for sale, since they already did last year, so the advisory team would instead handle those deliberations.

In Montana, 11,159 acres are potentially for sale in the Beaverhead, Bitterroot, Custer, Deerlodge, Flathead, Gallatin, Helena, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark and Lolo forests, down from 13,948 acres included in the initial proposal. About 300 acres are on the Helena forest.

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or at eve.byron@helenair.com