[NOTE: This version from website. The last three paragraphs did not appear in the print edition of the paper]

Anchorage Daily News, June 28, 2000

CONSERVATION BILL MEETING IS POSTPONED By David Whitney

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scrubbed a meeting today intended to to begin work on House-passed legislation to reallocate proceeds from federal offshore oil drilling to parks, wildlife conservation and coastal states.

Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski, the panel's chairman, hopes to bring the bill up for committee consideration after Congress returns from its July Fourth recess.

The House legislation, called the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, passed by a 315-103 margin in May. But it took weeks of negotiations headed by House Resources Committee chairman Don Young before a deal was struck late last fall with committee Democrats - a time-consuming process that seems to be replicating itself in the Senate.

The House legislation calls for spending about $2.8 billion from annual federal offshore drilling receipts. It would go to coastal states to help ease the effects of oil drilling; add lands to federal parks and build more parks and recreational fields in urban areas; pump money into restoring wildlife populations and educating the public about them; and increase funding for historic preservation and other programs.

Murkowski faces obstacles on two fronts. Like Young, he is drawing heat from property rights groups that strenuously oppose the legislation as pork barrel spending that will put more privately owned lands into federal ownership.

But Murkowski also faces difficulties with the senior Democrat on his panel, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, whose state has no coastal lands and would like to see revenues more equally distributed with interior states such as his.

Committee spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said that while there has been progress in the negotiations between Murkowski and Bingaman, they have yet to reach the point where a draft compromise is in hand. She said Murkowski doesn't want to convene the full committee until a draft has been produced for committee consideration.

"We believe that will happen," she said. Others predicted the committee may be called into session on the bill in mid-July.

Like Young, R-Alaska, who lost the votes of nearly half his Resource Committee Republicans when his bill came up last November, Murkowski also may be facing a situation where the majority of the Senate panel's votes come from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Five of the panel's 11 Republicans signed a recent letter to Murkowski urging him not to bring up the measure. Property rights activists have targeted a sixth committee Republican, Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, as the swing Republican vote.

The American Land Rights Association has been operating a phone bank to rally opposition in a half-dozen states. In its message, it condemns the legislation for "paying Eskimos in Alaska to hire police officers" and providing "welfare for the likes of Ted Turner and other billionaires to build baseball stadiums."

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The legislation includes no such provisions, but does provide funding for cities to build baseball and soccer fields if they wish. And in Alaska, which stands to reap as much as $163 million a year in new spending, money would be available to help small towns and villages address some of the problems of oil development, and that might include the need for additional law enforcement.

Even in Alaska, there is opposition to the measure. The Republican Party of Alaska approved a resolution condemning the legislation at its state party convention in May.

Although Murkowski himself has been critical of giving the federal government more money to buy land, it does not appear there will be any major reworking of the provision beyond tightening the requirements for congressional approval.

Reporter David Whitney can be reached at [email protected].