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Page 4 of 4 - for SINGLE PAGE PDF FORMAT
Testimony by Chuck Cushman, Coordinator
Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition
Executive
Director
American Land Rights Association
(Formerly the National Inholders Association)
House Resources
Committee
US House of Representatives
Honorable Don Young, Chairman
Honorable Jim Hansen, Presiding
June 12, 1999
Salt Lake City, Utah
Conservation and
Reinvestment Act (HR-701)
Permanent Protection for America's Resources 2000 Act
Clinton/Gore Lands Legacy Initiative
Where Will The Trust Funds Be Spent?
There is a whole list of programs and plans ready and waiting for the money from this new Trust Fund. The National Parks and Conservation Association 1988 Park Plan Hit List included 88 new national parks and additions of 10 million acres to 212 existing parks. 25% of the additions would come from private landowners. No one knows how much private land is in the 88 new areas. Conservative estimates in 1988 suggested this plan would have cost a minimum of $30 billion and could well be more than twice that.
The Wilderness Society and other groups have followed suit with the "Blueprint For The Environment" which sets out a huge agenda. Dozens of other groups have their own ideas how to spend the new slush fund.
What is more onerous though are the secret future park projects that exist within the Park Service. The Park Service has one called the National Natural Landmarks program. Never authorized by Congress, this back room project gets landowners to list their property by promising that it will not be purchased and that they do not list people against their will. It rewards them with special ceremonies and other ego gratification. On the surface, it sounds like a good program.
However, lots of evidence surfaced a few years back that in fact people's land is listed against their will without even telling them. Despite protests to the contrary, this program is really a plan for future additions to the National Park System. The NPCA calls them "Ladies in waiting". An Interior Department Inspector Generals investigation has clearly shown that the Park Service grew impatient waiting for landowners to give their permission and simply began bypassing them, designating millions acres of private land as landmarks without even telling the landowner they were under consideration. Land Trusts like the Nature Conservancy eagerly participated in this secret process in places such as Waas Island and Beals, Maine. Many more acres of Federal lands were planned to be designated with the result that other uses would eventually be removed.
The Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site program also appears to be tied into a program for expanding the parks while locking out the people. The first tangible evidence that these programs would be used in this manner was by the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, Michael Findley again, when he called in a United Nations inspection team several years ago to examine the New World Mine and its supposed threat to Yellowstone. The UN team recommended a huge buffer zone around Yellowstone and was the moral authority upon which the Clinton Administration based its successful efforts to shut down the project buy using LWCF funds to buy it out thereby depriving Montana of much needed jobs. It is our view that any threat to Yellowstone was largely successful propaganda.
The 26 million-acre Northern Forests of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York are the primary initial target of the green groups for much of the new Trust Fund. There are timber companies going through an economic transition and seem willing to again sell Manhattan Island to the Indians for beads, foregoing the economic future of the area. Vast numbers of communities and thousands of jobs lay in the balance.
The Billion Dollar Trust Fund was originally recommended by the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors (PCAO). The General Accounting Office released a report (RCED-88-86) in 1988 concluding that the PCAO violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by writing its recommendations in closed, secret meetings excluding the public and press. Lamar Alexander was the Chairman of that Commission and Victor Ashe was the Executive Director.
According to the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors, visitation to Park Service areas close to where people live has increased modestly. However, visits to parks and Wilderness areas away from population centers are moving steadily downward as the nations population ages. Yet the PCAO, NPCA, and other plans include massive land acquisition in areas away from where the trends say people now generally go.
Some of the money from HR-701 will undoubtedly go to support national and local land trusts. There are very grave dangers in that. There are some large land trusts like the Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, The Conservation Fund and others that portend to save the government money but there are indications now that they may in fact increase the cost of acquisition. They are acting very much like tax-exempt real estate companies, which cost the government (taxpayer) much more, when they stand between the landowner and the government than if the government could deal direct with the landowner. It is likely when the dust clears that these land trusts have cost the taxpayer the purchase price plus large deductions for perceived donations using "special appraisers." In the end, the taxpayer could pay twice as much ore more.
In an investigation several years ago by GAO, they reported that they were not able to get the information necessary on the land trust in question because the trust would not supply the required financial records.
The Interior Department Inspector General was able to convict two real estate agents that were involved in a scheme to sell land to the Park Service at Santa Monica Mountains NRA at an inflated price through a land trust. The land trust was not convicted of any wrongdoing.
HR-701 should carry with it a requirement that any land trust who receives Land and Water Conservation Fund money should be required to make full financial disclosure of its financial records in order to qualify for participation in the LWCF.
Local land trusts are a good idea. They promote conservation and enthusiasm on the local level. If they get Federal money they will become extended arms of the land acquisition agencies. This condition exists to some extent now but will be greatly expanded if HR-701 passes. Even the managers of local land trusts won't recognize their organizations in a few years if they accept Federal money. One of the main ideas of local land trusts is to raise public awareness and build public involvement in local projects. That comes from fund raising. If these trusts are financed with Federal dollars through the Land and Water Conservation Fund, that local spirit will die.
Most of the Federal part of the over $8 billion spent by the Land and Water Conservation Fund since 1966 is not available for general public recreation. It has been locked up with people uses generally limited and sometimes eliminated altogether. Recreation is an excuse or a code word to develop public support for preservation projects when the real goal is the elimination of people. Someday a major event will bring this process of exclusion to the attention of the public. The results will be dramatic and tragic. Those who now have the power to swing the pendulum need to be careful not to swing it too far. It always comes back with equal force.
The LWCF presently does not have money in it unless Congress appropriates the funds first. Trust Fund proponents carry on the myth that the fund has money in it or that money is owed to it. Congress passed legislation authorizing $900 million per year for the fund in 1978. It only approached appropriating that figure in 1979. That was also the year the former Congressman Sid Yates committee suspended the Park Service condemnation authority because of all the abuses. Congress must appropriate money each year from the present source of funds, offshore oil and gas leasing money, or the money will pass through the fund to support the general government treasury and reduce your taxes. The greens and some Members of Congress who know better encourage the fiction that somehow $900 million per year has built up in the fund and now $8 billion is owed to the fund and that it doesn't cost the taxpayer.
HR-701 dedicates up to $1 billion per year from offshore gas and oil money to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, thus making it a Trust. The Trust Fund does not have to compete against other important national social priorities in the yearly budget process. Somehow, Trust Fund proponents think that the environmentalists and hunters need a special subsidy or entitlement to support their activities. Or perhaps they think they cannot compete in the budget process like everyone else and must receive special treatment.
If HR-701 passes, every special interest should insist on a dedicated Trust Fund for their own pet projects. Congress should consider doing away with the appropriations committees since they will no longer be needed.
HR-701 or the Land and Water Conservation Fund should not be used as a bargaining tool or trading stock to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. While we support opening ANWAR, the funds from ANWAR should not be used to condemn land and destroy private property and communities in the rest of the country. We oppose making HR-701 part of other legislation involving ANWAR. It must stand alone and have to compete on its own merits and not be a result of election year vote trading. It would be appropriate to separate the LWCF from the current HR-701 so that Congress will not sell out private property rights as part of some goal to gain access to the Federal treasury by Coastal states or the Safari Club. We're not making a judgment here over whether that access for Coastal states is right or wrong. Slipping a Billion Dollar Trust Fund in the bill is wrong.
Park Service land acquisition has led to condemnation and removal of special cultural populations in small communities across America. HR-701 will fund the continuation of this process.
Over 115,000 landowners have lost their land to the Park Service alone since 1966 as a result or the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The impact on rural America has been destructive and tragic.
It is very important that field hearings be held around the country on HR-701. This bill is too important to have just a few carefully scripted hearings in selected states.
The Chairman of the old Interior and Insular Affairs Committee promised oversight hearings and a review of mistreatment of inholders in 1980. He failed to deliver on his promise.
HR-701 contains protection against condemnation if that provision passes Congress, a possibility we consider very unlikely. Whether or not condemnation is included in any final version of HR-701, the bill will do terrible social and cultural damage to rural communities across America. Willing seller, willing buyer is largely a myth. The government has ways to make you sell. It just takes the agencies fifteen years to do what they can complete in five years with condemnation.
The conclusions of GAO report after GAO report confirm past abuses. Newspaper and magazine stories by the hundred have told the story. National television shows documenting the horror stories on public television and network news magazine shows add to the documentation. Purchase and relocation by the thousand. It is true... terrible things have been done to the American people and their communities in the name of preservation.
HOW did this happen?
There are lots of little reasons, and TWO BIG REASONS.
First, our Constitution is written the way it is because the founding fathers knew that big government would always try to expand its power over those beneath it. It's why we have all those laws about unreasonable search and seizure. Big government, even big corporate government, always tried to get bigger and more powerful.
Second, for many reasons, most of them good, we have a huge and powerful movement for the conservation and preservation of our natural resources in this country. The American Land Rights Association believes in sensible conservation... some of our volunteers helped found conservation organizations.
But this movement, this bureaucracy, is like all the rest. It believes in itself... and its goals... above anything else... including your rights and the rights of every American.
And they are very smart. They know that American politics and politicians depend upon organizations--like the environmentalists--for political support through their publications and for money... money at election time and money to expose them in a good light in their many and large publications and broadcasts of a "non-political" nature.
So they have power and influence. And they are dedicated. Regardless of what they sometimes say, the basic goal of the environmentalists is to "get people off the land." There are many quotes from the leaders of these groups to show that they really want to keep everyone out of as much of the Federal lands... our land... as they can.
One example is a 1991 statement by Brock Evans, then Vice President and Chief Lobbyist for the National Audubon Society. He was comparing the environmental groups (greens) campaign for Federal acquisition of 26 million acres of the Northern Forests of New England to his successful campaign to shut down the forests and rural communities of the Northwest, using the spotted owl as the tool. He told a group of environmentalist leaders at an activist workshop at Tufts University:
"This will be an even bigger campaign in the next few years than the Ancient Forest Campaign we're just going through in the Pacific Northwest ... I don't agree that we can't get it all back [sic]... I don't agree that it shouldn't all be in the public domain.
And they don't give a rat for your rights... or my rights. They get most of their money from people who don't depend on the land... who pay their dues and lend their names to "good causes," because its the "right thing to do."
These good people, as many Members of Congress, never think about the human rights being trampled every day in the name of their good cause.
'So what can I do about it?" you ask. That's what I thought when it happened to me. I have a cabin-inholding in Yosemite that the Park Service decided to take. My family had been there for a long time, and I didn't believe in simply being tossed out because some bureaucrat said I was in the way.
So a group of us started the National Park Inholders Association which became the American Land Rights Association. And it has become my life.
God has given me reasonably good health, good friends and employees, and dozens, even hundreds of intelligent hard-working volunteers, decent people to help me.
And we have made a difference.
Before we were here, the National Park Service had seized nearly 100,000 pieces of property from American Citizens since 1966. Thousands of others... miners, stockmen, ranchers, farmers, cabin owners, landowners, recreationists, and other users of the Federal lands have been told they had to go... that they "didn't belong."
Thousands of people were being deprived of rights and property that had been assured by their government that they could stay. Families of good men and women had to pack their bags and leave. Why? For preservation. Never mind the promises that were made to create the new parks. Forget about the assurances that the new funding would not take their home. They had to go.
And so it goes... in hundreds of "preservation" areas across the country. Rare and beautiful cultures and lifestyles are broken up and destroyed. In America a culture must be 100 years old to be valued. The Park Service has committed "cultural genocide" or "cultural cleansing" over and over and Congress often has seemed not to care. But we fight on.
We can't say we have stopped the carnage every time. But we have stopped it, slowed it, made it more fair and made the bureaucrats think twice about doing it again, just about every time.
Park service bureaucrats talk in jargon that makes people feel stupidreal stupid ... and intimidated. They do that without maliciousness these are not bad people, but they are people. Even ranchers, miners, and truckers have jargon... we all do it... it's human.
But it does make it hard on ordinary citizens... and it does make the bureaucrats see the world in a special way. They come to see their actions as part of a huge complex operation of which they are only a part. To them, as to us, their job takes over their life.
Help us keep the system fair... help us protect the rights of rural Americans. Don't give the giant environmental industrial complex free access to the Federal treasury with an unappropriated trust fund. Why do they need a subsidy or entitlement?
Write strict protections for families and communities into HR-701 defeat this bill. Don't discriminate against certain groups of people because of where they live. Remember that the issue is not just a few people in one place, it is the freedom of us all.
We do what we do because we believe that this system, this country, is based on some remarkable ideas, principal among which is that individuals and individual rights are important. Our Constitution was designed to protect the individual against the overwhelming power of a huge government that would take away rights and property.
We are Americans who are willing to work for our belief that it is individuals... and individual rights... who make this country important. We must never allow the single-use people to make their world better at the expense of the rights of all Americans. That's what this country's about.
Please... we cannot afford to buy all the nice places in this country. Try making landowners into partners... not enemies. HR-701 will not help this country... it will destroy the fabric of its rural communities.
Suggestions to Improve HR-701
Often when legislation is introduced that has the potential to cause adverse and sometimes unintended consequences, we may make recommendations. In the case of HR-701, these suggestions to improve the bill should not be taken as ANY support for this bill. HR-701 is so dangerous that we are unalterably opposed to it. But in the off chance that it does pass, the suggestions below will at least mitigate to some degree some of the terrible damage this bill will cause.
1. The Land Protection Planning Policy of the Interior Department was created in 1982 and is still place and should be included in HR-701. While this is still the written policy of the Interior Department and Agriculture Departments, a good many of the regulations have been ignored. Also the Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service implementing regulations should be included as amendments to HR-701.
The Land Protection Planning Policy for the first time got the agencies to create a Land Protection Plan in each park or management area. That plan set priorities for which parcels were of high priority and which were of a lessor priority. Before that, the agencies didn't bother, feeling that they would ultimately buy it all so who cared.
The Land Protection Plan also had each agency identify the least amount of interest in the land that needed to be purchased to meet the intent of Congress. In some cases fee acquisition was recommended while in others it was easements, purchase and sell back, memorandums of understanding, cooperative agreements and other less invasive agreements. Before Land Protection Plans, the agencies had just purchased in fee title with little thought to alternatives. This dramatically raised the cost of many projects by hundreds of millions of dollars. Congress should instruct the agency to buy the least expensive alternative that meets Congress' intent unless the landowner wishes to sell a higher interest.
The Land Protection Planning Policy also requires the agencies to hold public hearings (not workshops) so that local elected officials and landowners can be involved and know what is going on.
2. Another amendment to HR-701 should require that each Federal area be required to hold a public hearing once year on their Land Protection Plan, what they purchased during that year and what interests were acquired. That way the public and local officials can see if the agency is following their Land Protection Plan. This provision in the current policy is usually ignored by the agencies which is why making it part of HR-701 would increase its strength.
3. Another amendment should require that the agencies not buy land inside unincorporated and incorporated communities and seek ways to protect the local community and culture. Otherwise the agency checkerboards the community undermining its social function and tax base and ultimately destroys it.
4. The agency using Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) money funds should be required to notify the local county of any acquisitions of developed property, either a home or business, at least 60 days before closing and be required to seek approval from the local county or other elected body. Notice should also be required of any acquisition of undeveloped land of over 100 acres. That way the county could monitor their tax base and object to the agency action in time to make a difference if they felt that economic damage was taking place.
5. HR-701 should be amended to require all acquisition funds to go through the appropriations process. There should be no entitlement. The existing $1,000,000 threshold protects larger landowners to some degree but ignores the needs of smaller landowners that constitute 99% of the land purchases. The bill should specify that there will be no net loss of private property. If the agency wants to buy private land, they should be required to identify land that will be sold to off-set the loss just like Congress does now in the budget process.
6. The LWCF should be amended to allow monies to be used for maintenance and rehabilitation. Right now the Appropriations Committee has said that the four key Federal land agencies are $12 billion behind in maintenance funding. We should take care of what we have before buying more.
7. Another amendment should say that the agencies may not buy any land where the government already owns over 70% of the land and that they must get permission from the local county in order to buy land where the government owns a minimum of 20% of the private land. This way the local county can be involved in protecting its tax base and making sure there is enough private land to support basic economic services to the people who live within the county.
8. An Environmental Impact Statement amendment should be included in the LWCF to require an EIS for any area where the Federal Government is carrying out large scale land acquisition and the Federal Government already owns 40% of the land base.
9. Every landowner should be given a copy of a booklet with his or her rights. They should be guaranteed a life tenancy if they choose that option. At the present time the agencies do not always follow the Uniform Relocation Act (91-646) and often deny the landowner the option of staying on his property for 25 years or life. The agency goal, of course, is to get the landowner off the property as quickly as possible.
10. No LWCF funds should be allowed to buy mining properties with documented reserves. If the agencies are allowed to buy the mining properties the country is deprived of new wealth and possibly important strategic minerals. Where would the country be today if the Free World's only supply of Rare Earth in the California Desert had been purchased by the Park Service before it was developed? It was years before we learned how important these minerals were to saving energy and lowering the weight of electric motors and much more.
11. LWCF funds should go to the state and local governments with the restriction that they can only be used with willing sellers. As of now, HR-701 allows the states and local jurisdictions to use condemnation.
12. Any lands purchased with LWCF funds must remain open to hunting, fishing and trapping. The irony of HR-701 is that the exact people who are pushing the bill are people who stand to lose a great deal in the long run. You can't hunt where you can't go. For example, the millions of acres of Forest Service lands now checkerboarded with private land will become targets for land acquisition for the first time. Many hunters and fishermen use these lands now. In the long run, HR-701 will Federalize those lands.
13. The Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program should be amended into the LWCF so that the full PILT payments are made to local counties before any land acquisitions take place.
14. The Tauzin amendment to the California Desert bill should be added to the LWCF. This amendment was adopted by a large majority in the 103rd Congress. It prohibited the Federal agencies from using environmental regulations such as the Endangered Species Act when appraising property for potential Federal acquisition.
15. The LWCF should be amended to lower the authorization to the historic level of appropriations, $200 to $300 million per year.
16. Another amendment should say that any lands purchased outside existing designated Wilderness with LWCF Funds may not be put into Wilderness in the future or put into any Wilderness Study category.
17. Land trusts that convey land to the Federal Government should be required in the LWCF Act to provide a complete accounting of how much the land cost and what kind of tax deductions were taken in the acquisition. That is the only way Congress can know what it is really spending on a piece of property. The land trusts should be limited to making no more than 10% profit on sales to the Federal agencies and that any purchases must fit into that agencies Land Protection Plan.
ALRA
Assorted reading opportunities: (Available on the ALRA WEB site at http://www..landrights.org )
A SOCIO-CULTURAL ASSESSMENT OF INHOLDERS ALONG THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL IN THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE by Kent Anderson. A report funded by the American Land Alliance located in Mountain View, California in 1983. Copies may be obtained through the American Land Rights Association, P. O. Box 400, Battle Ground, WA 98604. (360) 687-3087. FAX: (360) 687-2973.
PEOPLE OF THE BLUE RIDGE: A SOCIO-CULTURAL ASSESSMENT OF INHOLDERS ALONG THE BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY by Kent Anderson. A report funded by the Institute
For Human Rights Research located in San Antonio, Texas in 1980. Copies may be obtained from the American Land Rights Association.
THE PEOPLE OF THE BUFFALO: A SOCIO-CULTURAL ASSESSMENT OF INHOLDERS ALONG THE BUFFALO NATIONAL RIVER by Kent Anderson. A report funded by the Institute for Human Rights Research in 1981.
A SOCIO-CULTUREAL ASSESSMENT OF INHOLDERS IN THE MOUNT ROGERS NATIONAL RECREATION AREA (US Forest Service) by Kent Anderson. A report funded by the Institute for Human Rights Research in 1980.
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF VOYAGEURS NATIONAL PARK by Donald D. Parmeter. Mr. Parmeter was Executive Director of the Citizens Committee on Voyageurs National Park under the State of Minnesota. Copies may be obtained from the Committee in International Falls, Minnesota.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE LAND ACQUISITION HEARINGS, SUMMER 1978
These were the only real hearings ever held on land acquisition by the Park Service. Former Congressman Sidney Yates Appropriations Interior Subcommittee took away the authority of the Park Service to use condemnation until they held hearings. The agency expected just a few people to show up but hundreds attended nationwide.
The hearings were held in Fresno, California; Seattle, Washington; Denver, Colorado; Atlanta, Georgia; and Washington, DC. Verbatim transcripts are available from the Park Service.
Books
The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. By Robert Caro. 1974, Vintage Press, New York. Originally published in 1974 by Alfred A. Knopf. Still in print. Winner of the Frances Parkman Prize and the Pulitzer Prize in 1975.
Wilderness Next Door by John Hart. Foreword by Cecil Andrus. 1979 Presido Press, San Rafael, California.
The Adirondack Rebellion by Anthony N. D'Elia. 1979 Onchiota Books, Glens Falls, New York.
The Taking by Joseph Gughemetti and Eugene Wheeler, 1981 Hidden House Publications, Palo Alto, California.
At The Eye Of The Storm, James Watt and the Environmentalists by Ron Arnold, 1982 Regnery Gateway, Chicago, Illinois.
Playing God In Yellowstone by Alston Chase, 1986 Harcourt Brace Javanovich, Orlando, Florida.
Wake Up America, They're Stealing Your National Parks by Don Hummel. 1987 Free Enterprise Press, Bellevue, Washington. Mr. Hummel was the former mayor of Tucson, Arizona, an Assistant Secretary in the Kennedy Administration and former concessionaire in Glacier National Park, Lassen National Park and Grand Canyon National Park.
Cades Cove, The Life and Death Of a Southern Appalachian Community by Durwood Dunn, 1988 University of Tennessee Press.
A Rage for Justice, The Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton, 1995, University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.
Films
"For The Good Of All", an episode of the Public Television "Frontline" series first aired on June 6, 1983. Copies are available.
"For All People, For All Time, a film by Mark and Dan Jury that documented land acquisition in the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in Ohio. Portions of this film were used by Public Television when they produced the "Frontline" episode above. Copies are available.
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