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Show prove intergovernmental coordination in planning, particularly for Federal grant-in-aid programs. We fully endorse the intent of these efforts as they apply to intergovernmental coordination in public land use planning. However, there are several steps that can be taken to further the 1968 Act with regard to public lands that would assure early fruition of its intent with regard to bringing state and local government into the planning process. To encourage state and local government involvement in the planning process in a meaningful way, as well as to avoid conflict and assure the cooperation necessary to effective regional and local planning, the Commission believes that consideration of state and local impacts should be mandatory. To accomplish this, Federal agencies should be required to submit their plans to state or local government agencies. State and local zoning usually specifies uses permitted in designated areas. However, such zoning does not require any land owner to put his land into one of these uses against his interest or personal desire. Similarly, federal land agencies should not be required to permit a given use merely because the area has been so zoned by state or local authority. On the other hand, federal agencies, as a general rule, should not allow uses on public land which are classified as undesirable under state or local zoning. There may be exceptions, however, and the federal agency should be authorized to allow such a use, but only when the agency makes a finding that overriding national interest requires the use. The coordination which will be required if the Commission's recommendations are adopted is so basic and essential to effective public land use planning that it should be mandatory. Procedural requirements which are of sufficient importance to be dignified by statutory enactment should not be a matter of choice with the administering agency. If the adoption of such procedures is discretionary, and an agency chooses to ignore them, even the ability of the courts to intervene will be severely limited. The Commission recommends, therefore, that Congress provide by statute that Federal action programs may be invalidated by court orders upon adequate proof that procedural requirements for planning coordination have not been observed. Financial Assistance to States Recommendation 14: Congress should provide additional financial assistance to public land states to facilitate better and more comprehensive land use planning. If the public land states and local governments are to play a significant role with respect to Federal land use planning, their planning will have to be far better than it is today. The Commission study found an uneven performance by state and local governments in conducting their own planning programs. The nonexistence or low calibre of some state and local planning may be attributed among other things to budgetary problems. While some funds are made available to encourage planning activities by state 63 |
