OFA Update
New Office Location and Holiday Closure
OFA now resides at 399 E. Main Street, Suite 220, Columbus. Zanesville has been a wonderful host for the last 8 years, but we are excited to return to our historic location. Columbus is the state’s seat of government and where many of our partners are located. In addition, it is a central location for our members with much easier access for most. We look forward to the strategic benefits of the new office and to you visiting us there.
The OFA office will be closed on December 25, 2024. We wish you a blessed time with family and friends!
Annual Meeting Registration
The meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency Columbus. The event begins on Wednesday, February 5 with our President’s Reception to be held at Land-Grant Brewing. We have reserved the Land-Grant Extension and the Winter Garden. This is sure to be a fun evening of networking with your peers. Try your hand at brewery curling, ride the ice bumper boats or just hang out in a heated igloo and catch up with friends. The meeting will continue Thursday with a full day of industry sessions, ½ day of landowner sessions and our annual awards luncheon. We hope to see you there!
See the meeting agenda and access the registration form below
Make your reservations online here or call the hotel at 614-463-1234 and ask for the OFA rate code G-MBS0.
Conservation Award Nominations are open; please submit your nominations online here.
OFA Foundation Update
End-of-Year Giving Opportunity
The OFA Foundation, Inc. is operated exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purposes to encourage the conservation of Ohio's forests and the development of industry which uses the forest resources. The primary forestry goals of the Foundation are to educate the public, promote sound practices and encourage research. All donations to the foundation are tax deductible. Gifts are accepted from individual donors, groups, organizations, corporations and other foundations and can given to the general fund or one of the following programs.
E.B. Miller Scholarship - This program offers financial assistance to students pursuing a forest resource education. Currently, one or more scholarships are offered each year to Ohio high school graduates who have been accepted into an approved university, college, junior college or technical university offering a forest resource curriculum. Scholarship applications are due on April 15 of each year. Applications received after the deadline will be considered for the following year.
Conservation Education Grants - The Foundation will support special activities including education programs, forestry promotions, forest research and anything that meets the goals of the foundation.
Camp Canopy - Since 1950, OFA has operated an annual forestry camp for high school students; and since then more than 10,000 students have participated. The one-week residential camp offers students a chance to learn about forestry resources in a fun-filled, natural setting. Sponsoring a student would be a thoughtful gift for a high school student in your life.
Ohio Tree Farm 2025 Tree Tube Giveaway
This is the second year the Ohio Tree Farm Committee has secured a grant from Marathon to purchase tree tubes for eligible individuals. Please see the form below for a complete description of how the program works, who is eligible, and how to apply.
Market Update
HardwoodReview Forecasting
The light at the end of the tunnel is looking less like a train, but there remains a lot of tunnel to traverse, especially with Christmas, Lunar New Year and Tet holidays upon us. At best, it will be months after the inauguration before consumer prices, interest rates and taxes come down enough to raise real wages and stir new hardwood product demand. Without demand improvements, a premature uptick in hardwood lumber production could swamp low-grade markets and erode both the grade lumber price increases earned over the last year and the thin margins upon which mills and yards are surviving. Continued restraint will get more difficult if lumber scarcity and increased late-year export activity push lumber prices higher than we are forecasting.
On the up side, exports were steady through Sep, and contacts reported both a pre-EUDR bump in Oct and increased Nov demand from China ahead of potential new tariffs. With EUDR implementation now officially pushed back a year—maybe longer—exports to Europe will slump in Dec, but at least those markets will remain open in 2025. Mexican demand is also looking good—better still if tariffs work against exports to China in 2025—with White Oak shipments surging in late-summer and Q3 Red Oak shipments the highest in 20 years.
Legislative Update
From the Hardwood Federation
Tax
As we have noted many times over the course of this year, 2025 is shaping up to be historic in the tax space. Tax lobbyists that we attend meetings with are dubbing 2025 as the “Super Bowl of Tax” and “Taxmageddon.” While we anticipated that tackling expired and expiring business tax benefits would be the first item out of the gate next year as part of a budget reconciliation package, it appears that President-elect Trump and Republican leadership are going to first pursue some of the other issues on which he campaigned. Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) announced in early December that he would like to see the outlines of a budget reconciliation bill within the first 30 days after President-elect Trump takes office. According to leadership staff we have spoken to, the GOP will pursue two distinct reconciliation packages next year. The first will focus on energy, border security and military readiness/defense. Specifics on policies that will fall into these tranches are not yet clear. The second package will focus singularly on tax and extending the business tax benefits enacted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
As we have noted, the appeal of using the budget reconciliation process is that it circumnavigates the 60-vote threshold in the Senate--meaning that only a simple majority is needed to clear the upper chamber. As Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats in the 119th Congress, these measures are certain to pass barring any GOP defections. Reconciliation has fairly strict parameters but has been used often in situations where one party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House.
The Hardwood Federation’s priorities in the second reconciliation bill will be restoring the full expensing tax benefit that has been phasing out over the last few years and is scheduled to take another 20 percent haircut in January. The plan is to restore 100 percent bonus depreciation back to 100 percent and do so retroactively. The other piece is reviving and extending the research and development (R&D) tax credit. As part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the ability of businesses to fully expense R&D costs in the same year those costs were incurred expired in 2022. Currently, those R&D costs have to be amortized over a 5-year period—essentially making investments in your business more expensive. Again, the plan is to restore and extend full expensing of R&D costs and make restoration of this key tax benefit retroactive. Also riding on this second train will be extending the 20 percent tax deduction for S-Corporations and other pass-through tax structures. This benefit was also put in place by the TCJA in an effort to introduce some semblance of tax parity between the rate larger C corporations negotiated and that which is assessed to smaller Main Street businesses. Unfortunately, this benefit expires at the end of 2025 and its extension is critical. To provide perspective, 62 percent of all private sector jobs are anchored by pass-through businesses. To put a finer point on it, 88 million people in this country show up for work every day at a business that is structured as a pass-through. It is a tax structure that is popular in our sector and the Hardwood Federation team will be working with our allies in the business community and Congress next year to ensure that this deduction is carried forward.
Farm Bill
It is a virtual certainty that last year around this time we wrote that the Farm Bill would be a top priority in the coming year and that action on reauthorizing legislation was imminent. Regrettably, we are in the unfortunate position of having to write that same sentence again one year later. The politics simply did not align between Democrats and Republicans this year on a Farm Bill rewrite. Party leadership remained so far apart on spending priorities that forging consensus was unachievable. Efforts are now underway in the Lame Duck session of Congress to extend the current Farm Bill for one year and, according to sources we have spoken to, even those negotiations over an extension are not proceeding smoothly. But hope springs eternal and we anticipate that new leadership—potentially on both the Agriculture Committees—will yield different results in the new Congress. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) will be new in the Ranking Member slot on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. She and incoming Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) have a good working relationship, and both have proven to be champions on key issues to the forestry and forest products sectors. In the House, Chairman GT Thompson (R-PA) will continue on as Chairman, but there is heated competition for the Ranking Member post. The current Ranking Member on the House Agriculture Committee is Rep. David Scott (D-GA), but he is being challenged by moderate Democrats Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) and Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN). This issue will be settled before Congress leaves for the year.
While a new Farm Bill was not enacted in 2024, it was not an “all for naught” exercise. Many provisions that surfaced in the House and Senate Farm Bill proposals were positive, including legislative language that would have doubled funding for the Market Access and Foreign Market Development Programs. Legislators also showed their support for grant programs at the Department of Agriculture that incentivize innovative wood product manufacturing and renewable heat and power projects that provide offtake for our sawmill residuals. The House Agriculture Committee-passed bill also includes forestry and forest products workforce development provisions that will help enhance the supply of trained employees that can work in our sawmills. The Hardwood Federation advocacy team looks to build on this progress in 2025 and we remain optimistic that a new Farm Bill will be signed into law sometime next year.
Trade
The President-elect’s campaign rhetoric over the last year or so has been pretty consistent on the international trade front. He has vowed that from Day One of his second Presidency he plans to get tough with our trading partners and rely heavily on his favorite tool to level the international playing field—tariffs. As we are all painfully aware, the hardwood industry was dealt a devastating blow during the first Trump Administration when China imposed retaliatory tariffs on our hardwood products destined for markets there. The effect of these tariffs was felt literally overnight as export demand dropped off the table. The Hardwood Federation team, working with our Executive Committee, has been in frequent talks since the election on ways to prepare for a tariff war should one materialize. It is difficult to ascertain at this point whether the President-elect is using the threat of tariffs simply to bring our trading partners to the negotiating table or if he really is preparing to impose tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada and European Union countries in January. We are preparing for the latter and are in the process of communicating with the President-elect’s transition team and key Members of Congress about the devastating effects tariffs would have on our sector. We will keep you regularly apprised of developments in this space and will be calling on you to help in our advocacy efforts should the tariff threat become a reality.
There will of course be many other policy issues that surface next year, but these three are top of mind for the Federation and the ones for which we are preparing. The new Congress-the 119th-will gavel in January 3 when newly elected Members are sworn in and then the action starts. As always, the Federation team is here and engaged and will be communicating developments regularly as the Congressional and new Administration’s agenda takes shape.
Safety Update
From Sedgwick
C-159 recreational activities waiver
‘Tis the season that many of our clients host volunteer events in their respective communities. Volunteer work makes us stronger together to serve our people. These employer-sponsored events are considered recreational activities. Many times, employers are cautious about having recreational or fitness activities at their workplaces because of the potential of an employee getting injured and filing a workers' compensation claim.
Sedgwick encourages you to have your employees sign an Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) C-159 recreational activities waiver form (click here) to waive workers’ compensation coverage for injuries. We also understand that these events are morale boosters and you may not choose to have employees complete the waiver. However, if an employee is injured during the event, this could result in a workers’ compensation claim.
It is BWC's policy that an injury or disability incurred during voluntary participation in an employer sponsored recreation or fitness activity is not compensable if the injured worker signed a waiver of the right to workers' compensation benefits prior to engaging in the recreation or fitness activity.
If you have any questions, contact Paul Feck at Sedgwick at paul.feck@sedgwick.com. Also view this month's safety article below.
Upcoming Events
2025 Annual Meeting
2/5/2025 » 2/6/2025
Location: Hyatt Regency, Columbus, Ohio
OFA Proudly Supports
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