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Despite running record deficits, the Bush Administration has proposed to employ an old technique to reduce the fderal debt. The new budget calls for making more money from selling public land -- and it was land sales, primarily, that eliminated the federal debt entirely back in 1835.
This time around, the administration proposes to divert land-sales revenue that had been going to local entities. Although this doesn't affect us directly in Colorado, it bears watching.
The story starts in Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas and one of the fastest-growing areas in the country -- it gets about 1,000 new residents every week. Like Nevada in general, Clark County is mostly federal land -- about 80 percent.
Almost all of that is what used to be called the
public domain,
administered by the Bureau of Land
Management. In rural areas, it's sometimes known as the
land the government couldn't even give away.
Over the
years, nobody wanted it for homesteading, mining, or the
like, and so it remained in federal ownership.
But times change, and formerly worthless wasteland gains value when it sits next to growing cities. So the BLM started selling land in southern Nevada. The process, however, involved backroom dealing.
A federal General Accounting Office report issued in
2000, covering land sales and trades in the 1980s and 90s,
concluded that federal agencies have not always ensured
that the land being exchanged is appropriately valued or
that the exchange is serving the public interest.
In Clark County the nonfederal party in one
unidentified exchange acquired 70 acres of federal land at
a value of $763,000 and sold the parcel the same day for
$4.6 million. The same proponent acquired another 40 acres
from the Bureau [of Land Management] at a value of $504,000
and also sold this land the same day for $1
million.
The backroom deals ended with the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998. It requires public auctions; some proceeds go to Nevada schools and water providers, some to protect delicate habitat, some to build parks and trails, etc.
Since it went into effect, the land sales have brought in about $1.9 billion. And Nevada, which has the highest percentage of federal land of any of the 50 states, has been generally pleased with the results.
But the results have been too good for the Bush Administration. In the 2006 federal budget unveiled yesterday, the administration wants to change the law so that 70 percent of the money goes back to the federal treasury, rather than to Nevada.
According to the budget, federal land sales in Nevada
are making a lot more money than Congress foresaw when the
law was passed in 1998. The receipts generated by these
land sales have been nearly eight times higher than anyone
anticipated, with future revenue projections exceeding $1
billion per year,
the budget document said. So the
budget proposes that $700 million of this annual income go
to the federal treasury, rather than Nevada.
That state's congressional delegation will likely be able to block the change, but the concept behind it -- getting more money into the federal treasury by selling BLM land -- could make for interesting times in other growing states with a lot of public land, like Colorado.
Look through the rural real estate listings, and you'll
see expressions like bordering thousands of acres of BLM
land,
bordering BLM offers the utmost in
privacy,
very secluded, backs up to BLM
and
offers excellent views and borders BLM.
In other words, there's an assumption that having the BLM as a neighbor is an eternal guarantee of privacy and serenity and unmarred views and all those other attributes that realty sales agents like to offer to potential buyers of rural property.
But the Bush Administration has greatly expanded oil and gas production from public lands, while backing off on protection for roadless areas -- actions that do not provide much in the way of privacy, serenity and unmarred views.
And if it sees money to be made from selling public lands, the Nevada fund-transfer proposal in the 2006 budget could be just the start of a big federal auction all over the West.
It figures. Just about the time Westerners figure out how to make money from public land -- by extolling it as an amenity for buyers of adjacent private land -- the federal government will change the rules.
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