WASHINGTON - The Agriculture Department sent proposed legislation to Capitol Hill on Thursday that would allow the agency to sell off hundreds of thousands of Forest Service acres and use the $800 million in revenue to fund a rural school program.

The proposal has drawn the ire of many Western lawmakers, but Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey again advocated for it in testimony before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday on the Forest Service's 2007 budget.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., who chairs the panel's Interior and Related Agencies Subcommittee, told Rey about the opposition he has heard to the proposal from voters at home. Burns said he couldn't justify it to his constituents, especially when 75 percent of the receipts go to schools in California, Oregon and Washington.

"I'm not going to sell my ranch and then send the money over there," Burns said.

Rey said department officials would like to work with Congress on adjusting the payment formula in order to bring more equality to the payments made in different regions. Under the current funding system, the states that had seen the greatest decline in timber receipts were awarded the highest payments.

That payment formula was set in 2000 under the Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which the administration is now proposing to renew for five years and fund in part with the national forest land sale.

The act, designed to provide transitional assistance to rural counties affected by declining revenue from timber harvests on federal lands, is set to expire at the end of this year.

The Forest Service has drawn up a list of about 300,000 acres that could be sold. But Rey said sale of 150,000 to 175,000 acres probably would suffice to raise the needed funds.

In Montana, 13,948 acres are potentially for sale. In Wyoming, 17,619 acres made the list.

Montana and Wyoming members of Congress support the Rural Schools Act and want it to be renewed, but say a different funding source must be found.

In a conference call with reporters, Rey acknowledged the opposition, but noted that no alternative funding proposals have emerged.

"We all have an agreed-upon goal, the question is what is the best way to get to that goal," he said, adding that department officials never said they had found the "best" way.

"At present, it's the only way," he said.

Rey said the acres potentially for sale are all expensive and difficult to manage, in isolated tracts, and no longer meet Forest Service needs. State and local governments and land trusts would have the first chance to purchase the lands at fair market value, and any remaining parcels would go up for public auction.

The public comment period on the proposal began Feb. 28. Rey said the department has received slightly more than 1,000 comments thus far and analyzed about half of them. Most came from individuals and ranged from outright opposition to selling any federal lands to comments pro and con on specific parcels, he said.

The public comment period ends March 30, but Rey said the department would consider extending the deadline if it received enough requests to do so. The entire legislative proposal is posted on the Forest Service Web site. Rey described it as "quite simple and easy to read."

If passed, the legislation would provide rural counties approximately the same amount they received in 2006 and then ramp down the payments each year until the program would be phased out after five years.