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Show The legislative history of the acts providing for the sharing of receipts from forest products and oil and gas, as well as other leasable minerals, clearly reflects that the payments to the states and local governments were intended as compensation for the fact that the lands in question would no longer be available for private ownership and property taxation. Today, however, the pressure of new circumstances requires new thinking. Until comparatively recently, the cost of providing state and municipal services, especially in the western public land states whose vast spaces had a sparse population and received relatively few outside visitors, was not very great. But in recent years, a dramatic change has resulted from the greatly increased mobility of the American people. Visitors who now come in increasing numbers to public land areas from all over the country require, as a minimum, the same services that are furnished to local citizens-and sometimes they require more. At the same time, state and local government expenditure levels and revenue requirements have vastly increased. In 1940, prior to World War II, the combined spending of state and local governments was approximately $9.3 billion. Ten years later, in 1950, it had risen to approximately $22.8 billion. In 1969, the figure exceeded $100 billion. In the meantime, while state and local revenue needs have been growing, the recent years have seen a greatly expanded increase in the acreage of lands TOTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE. BY SOURCE. FOR SELECTED STATES. V Local government depends heavily on property taxes for revenue it raises from its own sources. 236 permanently set aside by the United States for various purposes. From relatively modest beginning, for example, there are now 18,564,079 acres of public domain under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, with an additional 4,735,818 acres acquired for the National Park System, or a total of 23,299,-897 acres spread among 44 states 7 and over 26 million acres set aside for the Wildlife Refuge System in all 50 states. The largest portion of the public domain, more than 465 million acres, including 295 million acres in Alaska, is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management of the Department of the Interior. Except for those lands that may be transferred to the states to satisfy land grants, this large acreage comprises, for the most part, what is known as the vacant unappropriated public domain, and was previously assumed to be destined for private ownership. But since the passage of the Taylor Act in 1934,8 the transfer of these public domain lands to private ownership has slowed considerably. In the last decade, it has dwindled to a trickle while awaiting the enactment of legislation suited to the needs of today and tomorrow. If the recommendations of this Commission are followed, additional millions of acres of public domain land will be retained by the Federal Government instead of being transferred, as contemplated until relatively recent times, to private ownership. With the millions of acres of land already reserved, plus the additional acres that probably will be set aside, the United States must re-examine its relationship to the state and local governments within whose borders those lands are located. Payments to Compensate for Tax Immunity Recommendation 101: If the national interest dictates that lands should be retained in Federal ownership, it is the obligation of the United States to make certain that the burden of that policy is spread among all the people of the United States and is not borne only by those states and governments in whose area the lands are located. Therefore, the Federal Government should make payments to compensate state and local governments for the tax immunity of Federal lands. The study made for this Commission confirms the contention of state and county government officials that shared revenues amount to much less than the 7 For breakdown by states, see Commission staff, Inventory Information on Public Lands. PLLRC Study Report, 1970. M3U.S.C. §315etseq. (1964). |