WTE: Lawmakers are encouraged to look at federal land conveyance

The Wyoming Republican party resolved in 2018 to “work to transfer the administration of public lands to the States with the stipulation that the States will not sell or transfer to private use without three quarters authorization from that state legislature.”

This resolution addresses a glaring imbalance between twelve Western States and the rest of the country. The federal government owns and controls about five percent of the lands in states east of Wyoming. But in the Western States, it controls nearly half of the land surface and significantly more of the subsurface rights.

The subsurface royalties alone are staggering. The federal government skims 52 percent from any oil, gas or coal royalties extracted from subsurface that it controls. That means the people of Wyoming transfer 750 million dollars per year from the state budget to the federal budget simply because Washington retained subsurface control of so much Wyoming land.

Of course, there is a legitimate reason for the federal government to own military bases, federal office buildings, post offices, National Parks and Reservation lands. In the west, these types of holdings are not out of proportion to similar federal holdings in the rest of America.

The resolution is not about those, but about land that generates revenue from grazing, logging and mining. While the eastern states were given sovereignty over these lands within their borders, the twelve western states have, so far, been denied equal rights.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) controls 245 million acres of public lands located primarily in the 12 Western States compared to only .03 million acres in 38 other states (almost all of which is in northwestern South Dakota). The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manages more than 154 million acres of these are in the Western States and only 38 million in the rest of the country.

Surface revenue from these lands goes directly to Washington, D.C. and is not taxable by the state or county. To compensate for this lost revenue, Washington is supposed to remit Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) back to the counties where the lands are located.

But how much does Washington siphon off first? Seven studies between 1950 and 1999 came up with wildly different figures. One BLM study assured us that counties receive three times more from Washington than local property taxes would yield. But the USFS concluded that PILT reimbursed only one-ninth of the property tax value!

Worse still, since the PILT program began in 1976 Washington has a history of not paying even the legally required amount. Currently there are 800 different counties throughout the west that are suing the federal government for PILT back-payments.

Money is power. The more of it that flows through Washington before coming back to Wyoming, the more power Washington has over Wyoming’s sovereignty. The Republican resolution seeks to level the playing field for the Western States.

Three questions typically arise about the transfer federal lands.

First, will transfer of land administration be a net financial burden on the state’s budget? After all, road maintenance and firefighting costs money.

It would certainly be helpful for a forensic accounting firm to get to the bottom of convoluted money-trails. Only then could we have firm numbers. But it stands to reason that the federal government is not currently losing money on their land holdings within our borders. If they were, they would be first in line to transfer that liability to the states.

Second, will transfer of federal lands to the state close access for recreation? Currently state-owned sections in each township currently allow no camping.

These “state-sections” were deeded to the state with school funding restrictions. The conveyance of federal lands would not have that restriction. So, lawmakers are free to write access guarantees in the final law.

Third, might states sell off these lands to private parties to pay off debt?

Considering that Wyoming has over 8 billion dollars of investments while Washington owes over 22 trillion dollars, the federal government has a far greater incentive to cannibalize public lands than the state of Wyoming would.

In fact, in recent years congress has seen three bills proposing the sale of federal lands to pay off debt. As the national debt increases exponentially the temptation will only get worse. Wyomingites who want to keep public lands public should applaud the “stipulation that the States will not sell or transfer to private use without three quarters authorization from that state legislature.” Currently Wyoming has only three votes out of 535 in Washington to stop such sales.

All Wyomingites have a desire to preserve the beauty and the wilderness resources of this great state. The conveyance of federal lands to state ownership is not about making public lands private. It is about guaranteeing that public lands remain public. On that goal, we all agree.