[Vision2020] HR 3855

[Phil Nisbet]

Dan

The bill is flawed, which is of course why Otter pulled out on it.

Back when we discussed similar things years ago, the obvious change to this 
kind of legislation would have been and still should be to sell some of that 
land to the State and local governments.

A big portion of the Forest and BLM lands in Idaho are not Wilderness and do 
not possess quality to be Wilderness.  They are working lands and in many 
cases we have problems seeing them properly administered.  This in many 
cases is because the property positions of Federal and State and Private 
Entities are a patchwork of ownerships.

That patchwork is supposed to be cleaned up by land exchanges and other such 
devices, but as those who have experienced the process of it, the time and 
effort required to transfer lands takes decades and more money than a lot of 
that land is worth.

We all know that the 66.4% of Idaho owned by the absentee landlords in 
Washington DC is not generating revenues for our states tax requirements.  
We also know that the program of Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) does not 
come anywhere near to covering the Feds portion of the costs to the State or 
its community for the ownership they have.  Allowing the Idaho Department of 
Lands to purchase 15% of the USDA Forest Service and BLM lands in Idaho 
would be a very good thing in terms of helping to pay for education in our 
state.

The Feds own over 35 million acres of Idaho and selling 5,250,000 acres to 
IDL that could be added to the University and School trust land base would 
add over a Billion dollars in value to our educational institutions here.  
IDL currently manages 3,650,000 acres of land that return $65,000,000 a year 
to the States educational endowments every year, so adding more than double 
to that would be a great way of helping to improve education here in the 
state.

So lets say we carve a mortgage deal with the Federal Government on five and 
a quarter million acres of ground and pay them $15 an acre per year for the 
next thirty years.  The land would still generate an extra $25,000,000 for 
Idaho Schools in that first 30 years and over a hundred million dollars a 
year thereafter.

And if it were Idaho Department of Lands property, it would still be public 
lands accessible to the general public.

Phil Nisbet


>From: "AreaMan (DanC)" <areaman at moscow.com>
>To: "'Moscow Vision 2020'" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] HR 3855
>Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 10:22:33 -0800
>
>Amazingly, Tom Hansen and I agree on something.
>
>I am opposed to selling our public lands to private interests.  It
>doesn't matter if you are a hiker, hunter, dirt biker, snowmobiler, or
>even just a couch potato.  Everyone benefits from the harvest of timber
>on federal lands, and many reap the benefits of being able to recreate
>in our public lands/national forests.  I am especially wary of Section
>1(c), which would be most detrimental to my way of life here in Idaho.
>It would be *slightly* more amenable if this bill took an equal
>percentage of lands from each state, but I'm still against the sale of
>public lands to private interests.  It's not that I'm against all
>private interests.  The biggest landowner in Latah County does a pretty
>good job of taking care of their holdings, and they are also pretty good
>about letting people "use" their land for recreational purposes and
>allowing access for hunting and fishing, just as long as the users are
>responsible (that's a whole 'nother barrel of monkeys there, maybe it'll
>come up some other time).
>
>On the other hand, why couldn't timber sales be made on these lands and
>earmarked for disaster relief?  No matter what, timber is going to be
>harvested because that is a part of responsible stewardship and the
>management of forest health.  Of course we'd have to see where timber
>dollars would be taken from before it could meet full approval.
>
>Hoping for a good summer of trail riding in the St. Joe and Clearwater
>Nat'l forests (and hopefully on some private ground *with permission*),
>
>DC
>
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