OCR Text |
Show Many of those who appeared before the Commission testified to the drastic results that sometimes flow from the uncertainty of tenure and the insecurity of investment of public land users. Studies prepared for the Commission confirm this, despite the fact that not only individuals and companies but many communities are wholly or partially dependent for their economic life on the public lands and their resources. We, therefore, recommend that: Statutory provision be made to assure that when public lands or their resources are made available for use, firm tenure and security of investment be provided so that if the use must be interrupted because of a Federal Government need before the end of the lease, permit, or other contractual arrangement, the user will be equitably compensated for the resulting losses. The United States need not seek to obtain the greatest monetary return, but instead should recognize improvements to the land and the fact that the land will be dedicated, in whole or in part, to services for the public as elements of value received. Having determined that there should be no wholesale disposition of the public lands, we turned our attention to the impact that the retention in Federal ownership would have on other levels of government. In doing this, we made an intensive review of existing programs. Revenue-sharing programs were established for the purpose of compensating state and local governments for the fact that certain types of lands would not be going into private ownership and, therefore, onto the tax rolls. Nonetheless, we find that such programs actually have no relationship to the burdens imposed on state and local governments by the retention of public lands in Federal ownership. The continuation of the general United States policy of providing for transfer to private ownership of virtually all of the public lands would not have required consideration of a comprehensive program to compensate state and local governments for the burdens imposed by Federal ownership of public lands since such ownership was then transitory. The establishment of new programs in recent years and the administration of the public land laws generally has resulted in millions of acres of land'being set aside for permanent retention by the Federal Government throughout the 50 states with concomitant unpre-dicted burdens on state and local governments. The potential retention of additional millions of acres of public domain lands as a result of the review recommended by this Commission requires that we re- examine the obligations and responsibilities of the United States as a landowner in relation to state and local governments upon which continuing burdens will be placed. We find further that any attempt to tie payments to states and local governments to receipts generated from the sale or use of public lands or their resources causes an undue emphasis to be given in program planning to the receipts that may be generated. We, therefore, recommend that: The United States make payments in lieu of taxes for the burdens imposed upon state and local governments by reason of the Federal ownership of public lands without regard to the revenues generated therefrom. Such payments should not represent full tax equivalency and the state and local tax effort should be a factor in determining the exact amount to be paid. The statute establishing the Public Land Law Review Commission stated that, "those laws, or some of them, may be inadequate to meet the current and future needs of the American people."3 Our review has led us to the conclusion that the laws are indeed inadequate, first, because of the emphasis on disposition, second, because of the absence of statutory guidelines for administration, as discussed above, and third, because the disposition laws themselves are obsolete and not geared to the present and future requirements of the Nation. With the exception of the temporary Public Land Sale Act,4 which will expire 6 months after submission of the final report by this Commission, there is no statute permitting the sale of public domain lands in any large tracts for residential, commercial, or industrial use, and we find that the statute for the sale of small tracts has not worked well. Accordingly, we find that it is necessary to modify or repeal all of the public domain disposition laws and replace them with a body of law that will permit the orderly disposition of those lands that can contribute most to the general welfare by being placed in private ownership. We, therefore, recommend that: Statutory authority be provided for the sale at full value of public domain lands required for certain mining activities or where suitable only for dryland farming, grazing of 343U.S.C. § 1392 (1964). 4 43 U.S.C. § 1421-1427 (1964). |