crime aeupbt crime and is looking for a lengthy sentence if convicted. the family is outraged. we want aaron locked back up until trial, until he goes before that jury like anybody else who has committed one of these crimes, or is accused of this cry. reporter: after closing a whole wing lane county is filling just 150 of its jail s 500 beds. this after the county was forced to close a $100 million budget deficit. 64 positions in the sheriff s department were cut, so in addition to the prisoner release there are also eight hours, for which there is not a single deputy on-duty to respond to crimes in progress or people this need. county leaders blame the federal government which owns a majority of the land. timber sales used to fund most of the county s services but the u.s. forest service has all but stopped them. and federal timber payments which dwindled, lane county used to get $50 million a year, this
nothing. reporter: right now lane county is only filling 152 of its 507-bed jail. bill: some are blaming the federal government for this. why would that be, dan? reporter: lane county was forced to cut a hundred million dollars out of its budget this year. a big portion of that came from the sheriff s office budget. they eliminated 64 positions, including 28 deputies. that forced the sheriff to close one whole wing of the jail and cut down patrols 16 hours. if you need a deputy eight hours out of the day you re out of luck. the federal government is blamed because it owns the majority of the land in the county. most of it is national force that employed thousands of people and received tax revenue from timber sales. the sales have been dwindling for years. lane county used to get $50 million in timber payments, this year it got 3 million. i think about the employment that would happen if we put the
national forests pits the environment against the economy in some circumstances. dan springer is live in seattle with one of them. dan? reporter: yeah, jon, house republicans say they have a plan that would put thousands of people back to work and save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year and as an added bonus would make the u.s. forests healthier and less prone to catastrophic wildfires. in the last 20 years here in the pacific northwest we have lost about 11,000 logs jobs. hard it hit areas rural counties where most of the land belonging to federal government around designated u.s. forest land. in the county there used to be 10 sawmills. now they are all shut down. the gop plan calls for lifting some environmental regulations that led to 80% drop in logging in national forests. it would streamline the appeal process when timber sales are proposed by forest service. the goal would be to get logging levels back to closer historical levels seen between 1980 and 2000.