[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 9, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6535-S6537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mrs. Boxer):
S. 2013. A bill to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to
enter into certain leases at the Department of Veterans Affairs West
Los Angeles Campus in Los Angeles, California, and for other purposes;
to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation
to facilitate additional housing and services for Southern California's
veterans. It would allow the Department of Veterans Affairs to leverage
the resources of local governments and non-profits to build supportive
housing for veterans at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center Campus.
My colleague Senator Barbara Boxer is a cosponsor of this bill.
Congressman Ted Lieu is introducing companion legislation in the House
of Representatives.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayor of Los Angeles and Los
Angeles County Board of Supervisors all support this legislation.
Los Angeles has the largest concentration of homeless veterans in the
United States, currently estimated to be 4,300. These are brave men and
women who served our nation with honor, and I believe it is our duty to
ensure they have access to housing and the clinical services of the
Greater Los Angeles VA Health System.
This legislation would provide two authorities to the department.
First, it would allow the West Los Angeles VA to use enhanced-use
leases to engage in public-private partnerships to provide supportive
housing for veterans. Enhanced-use leases allow the department to
leverage private or local funding and partners to construct new housing
on the campus. For example, California passed a bond measure in 2014
that provides $600 million in funding for the construction of
supportive veteran housing. I want to note that this enhanced-use
leasing authority is the same authority that the department has for
every other VA campus in the nation.
Second, my bill would allow the West Los Angeles campus to enter into
out-leases to provide critical services to veterans housed on the
campus, ranging from education to recreation. Services must be provided
to create a healthy and sustainable community for veterans. Veterans
housed on the campus will need access to mental health care options,
job training, and physical recreation. These services can be provided
by community partners leasing property on the campus, such as the
University of California--Los Angeles.
I would like to make you aware of the long history of the West Los
Angeles VA campus. This campus is approximately 400 acres and is
located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Interstate 405.
The land was deeded to the Federal government by former Senator John P.
Jones, for use exclusively as a ``soldier's home.'' The beautiful
campus has numerous historic buildings, including a church.
In 2007, I included language in an appropriations bill to prohibit
the ability of the Department of Veterans Affairs to lease or sale any
property on the West Los Angeles Campus, due to reports of
mismanagement and inappropriate leasing of VA property to commercial
entities. In several cases, these commercial entities had nothing to do
with serving veterans.
After the ban was signed into law, questionable practices continued
through land-sharing agreements. This led to the American Civil
Liberties Union, ACLU, of Southern California filing a lawsuit against
the department in 2011 over its mismanagement of the campus.
In a large part due to our new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert
A. McDonald, the department reached a settlement with the ACLU earlier
this year to return the campus to its original purpose to serve
veterans. The ACLU and the department are working to create a new
Master Plan for the campus that includes community input, which I
expect will include a focus on ending veteran homelessness in Los
Angeles. My legislation will provide the department with the tools it
needs to get veterans off the streets and ensure the West Los Angeles
campus truly serves the veterans of Los Angeles.
This legislation contains important oversight provisions to ensure
the management mistakes of the past are not repeated.
First, it maintains a restriction put in place in 2007 that prohibits
any part of the West Los Angeles campus from being sold, transferred,
or otherwise disposed of.
Second, it requires the VA to report to Congress 45 days before
entering into any lease, and to provide an annual evaluation of all
land-use and leases on the campus.
Third, it requires regular audits by the Office of the Inspector
General, OIG, and restricts the VA from entering into any new leases if
the OIG finds any violation of Federal law or policy, or gross
mismanagement of the campus. The VA would have to certify to Congress
that it addressed any issues found by the OIG before entering into new
leases on the campus.
Finally, the legislation requires all land-use, including leases, to
be consistent with the new Master Plan that is agreed upon for the
campus. It also requires all leases to principally benefit veterans.
[[Page S6536]]
I believe these oversight provisions will ensure that the historic
mismanagement of the West Los Angeles campus will not recur.
Let me conclude by saying that Congress must meet its responsibility
to care for the veterans who have fought for our Nation's freedom and
security. It would be a shame to leave private resources untapped in a
city where 4,300 veterans are currently homeless. I hope all of my
colleagues will support enacting this legislation as quickly as
possible.
______
By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
S. 2017. A bill to amend the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to
recognize Alexander Creek, Alaska, as a Native village, and for other
purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation, already
pending in the House of Representatives, where it was first introduced
in 2009, 2011, and 2013 by Alaska Congressman Don Young to finally
settle a long-standing injustice to the Native residents of Alexander
Creek, a Native village built along the creek that runs into the
Susitna River near its entrance to Cook Inlet, north of Anchorage and
southwest of Wasilla, AK.
The story of Alexander Creek's Alaska Natives is a sad story, in that
it is a story of Natives whose village happened to be located at the
site of one of the State's prime salmon fishing locations, a site that
may have prompted efforts by some to deliberately prevent the village
from rightfully gaining the lands it was entitled to receive under the
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANCSA, passed by this Congress in
1971.
It is especially sad since the villagers succeeded in the Federal
courts in winning confirmation of their status as a village under ANCSA
nearly four decades ago but because of decades of mistakes and
misunderstandings, still have received only about 10 percent of the
land village residents are entitled to receive.
The legislation I am introducing today would give the Secretary of
the Interior the authority to enter into negotiations to settle
aboriginal land claims with Alexander Creek, after conferring village
instead of group status on the community. It gives the Secretary wide
latitude to find a just, environmentally acceptable, and economically
reasonable means to bring Alexander Creek to ``approximate parity'' to
the other more than 210 villages that were established by the 1971 law
that settled all aboriginal lands claims in Alaska.
Alexander Creek, whose Native name is Tuqentnu, traditionally was a
healthy Native village with abundant resources, whose residents lived
off fish traps located near the mouth of the Susitna River year round.
While its population suffered as a result of whooping cough, measles,
and influenza epidemics in the early 1900s caused by the influx of the
non-Native population into upper Cook Inlet--the village being
literally decimated by the 1918 epidemic--by 1939 the village had been
reoccupied by Native families. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement
Act passed in December 1971, there were 37 residents of the village, 12
more than the 25 needed to be entitled to form a village corporation
under the act and to be entitled to receive 69,120 acres around the
core townships of the village.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971 made that determination. But the
village had the misfortunate of being located in a prime salmon fishing
area that was sought by the State of Alaska at the time of statehood in
1959 and that was later conveyed by the State to the then new
Matanuska-Susitna Borough at the time of its creation in the early
1960s. Thus there was opposition to Alexander Creek being allowed to
claim its lands. The State, in fact, protested its eligibility for land
under ANCSA. A hearing was held before an administrative law judge on
July 11, 1974, but oddly the hearing was not widely noticed and a
number of village residents were specifically not told of the hearing,
so they were not in attendance. When the appeals board released its
decision on November 1, 1974, the board ruled that the village only
contained 22 residents--3 short of the required number for creation--
simply because 5 other families and their children had not appeared at
or testified at the hearing.
The board's decision was appealed to U.S. district court that
reversed the appeals board's decision on November 14, 1975, ordering
the reinstatement of Alexander Creek's ANCSA eligibility. While that
decision was appealed by the State of Alaska, the lower court decision
was upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on August 29, 1976, which
ordered that the case be remanded back to the Secretary of the Interior
for further proceedings. But since all of the land around Alexander
Creek had already been conveyed to the State and to the Mat-Su Borough,
the village was required to join other Cook Inlet region villages in
selecting ``deficiency lands'' near Lake Clark to the southwest of the
region. But the creation of the Lake Clark National Monument in 1978,
prior to passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
in 1980, further complicated the land selection issue for the village.
Alexander Creek villagers, who could not afford independent legal
counsel following the 1976 district court and court of appeals rulings,
did not immediately pursue their claims to full village status and
apparently did not understand the complexities of the Lake Clark land
conveyance decisions. Somehow, they instead were convinced to sign an
agreement with Cook Inlet Region, Inc., the regional corporation for
the area, and the Interior Department in December 1979, where the
village dropped its claim to be a village in exchange for receiving
``group'' status under the ANCSA, and also in return for being
guaranteed 7,680 acres of land, some of which was to come from the
State of Alaska and or the borough. While the State did provide the
village with 1,686 acres, no borough or Federal land was conveyed to
complete the 7,680-acre ``group'' agreement reached in 1979 until just
recently.
It wasn't until the next generation of Native leaders arrived in the
village that they realized that Alexander Creek never received the
lands it should have received.
Over the past decade residents of the village have been seeking to
have the original court of appeals decision affirmed and implemented.
Over the years they have been gaining support for their efforts. First,
BIA Alaska Region Field Representative Charles F. Bunch concluded after
``a thorough assessment'' that the BIA's original determination was
correct and that Alexander Creek ``met the requirement'' for village
eligibility and that the land conveyances should have been implemented.
Recently the Alexander Creek village leaders have received support from
the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., CIRI, the
State of Alaska and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, all agreeing that
the village should receive its full lands promised under ANCSA--plus
from a host of other groups.
So this legislation will reinstate Alexander Creek's eligibility,
overriding the 1979 ``group'' agreement, reached under section 1432(d)
of ANCSA, and giving the village the right to negotiate a fair
settlement with the Interior Department. Under the act the Secretary is
free, at his sole discretion, to propose what assets are to be provided
Alexander Creek to capitalize the corporation, not setting any
predetermined amount of land, cash, surplus Federal property or other
assistance. The bill does hold the regional corporation for the area,
Cook Inlet Region, Inc. harmless from any impacts of the village
corporation's creation.
The Alexander Creek case represents a sad chapter in the story of the
settlement of Native aboriginal land claims in Alaska. It is a story of
Native land owners being actively discouraged from selecting their
traditional lands, of being deliberatively misinformed about land
selection processes so they would not qualify for their lands, of being
pressured to accept inferior compromises so they would gain less land,
and of then being ignored for far too long when it came time to
consummate the inferior deal they were encouraged to accept. It clearly
is time this Congress rewrites that chapter and allows it to have a
happier ending.
______
By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
S. 2018. A bill to convey, without consideration, the reversionary
interests
[[Page S6537]]
of the United States in and to certain non-Federal land in Glennallen,
Alaska; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation to aid an
Alaska higher educational institution obtain title to property it no
longer needs, and that the Federal Government clearly no longer wants.
I rise to introduce legislation to clear the title to a 210-acre parcel
in Glennallen, AK, so that the land can be put to more productive uses
in the future.
Back in 1926 the Central Alaska Mission began operations in
Glennallen. In 1954 it received a Federal land grant from Congress,
modified in 1959, and received 210 acres in ``downtown'' Glennallen--
the current site of the hospital and radio station and former site of
the Alaska Bible College. In 1961 it actually opened the Bible College
on 80 acres of the tract, the site apparently having about 64 separate
buildings erected on it. The 1959 land grant, like many in first the
Territory of Alaska and later the State of Alaska, had a clause that
should the property no longer be used for religious/public purposes
that it would revert to the federal government. The Bible College,
because of a lack of students in Glennallen, moved into the Matanuska-
Susitna Borough, to Palmer, AK, last decade. Now it wishes to be able
to sell the property to be rid of the maintenance costs on the
facilities.
The problem is that there apparently are no non-profits or few
businesses in Glennallen that can afford to pay the officially
appraised value for the properties. The parent of the Bible College 3
years ago asked the Federal Bureau of Land Management, BLM,
administratively to start a process where it would decide the value of
the properties and what it would have to pay the government to buy out
the value of the ``reversionary clause'' so it could obtain clear title
to sell the properties for whatever amount it could get. That appraisal
was conducted mutually and came back late last year that the 210-acres,
minus a sewage lagoon on the property that has no sales value, is worth
$210,000. The college says the college can't afford that amount to buy
out the value of the reversionary clause--because regardless of the
appraisal, there is no entity in Glennallen that can afford to pay
anywhere near that amount for the properties given the level of
economic activity at present in the upper Copper River Valley in
Alaska.
The college is arguing, correctly, that the Federal Government is
wrong in setting the value of the reversionary clause as the full
appraised value of the property for tax purposes. If willing sellers
can't be found who can afford to pay the ``appraised'' value of the
property, then obviously the appraisal process is faulty. Secondly, the
college is arguing that it has fully met the goal of Congress in 1959
that the land be used for the public purpose of operating an
educational institution. For more than 40 years the property was used
by Alaska Bible College, the college only moving into a more urban part
of Alaska when student levels proved insufficient to support the
school. Clearly it makes no sense for the reversionary clause to remain
in effect in perpetuity when land use patterns have changed. Third, the
Federal Government does not need the land for any federal purpose. The
land, not located in an urban setting in the small town of Glennallen,
population, 491, is not suited for a park. The land is not needed for
any Federal facility given its location in sparsely populated east
central Alaska. Being inside the Glennallen city limits, the land can
not be allowed to revert to a natural vegetative state under the town's
ordinances. It simply makes good sense for the land to be sold for
economic purposes so it can generate more revenues for the town's tax
rolls. Given the real estate market in Glennallen, the Federal
Government will lose far more money than it will make if it has to tear
down the unwanted buildings in order to sell the property, or maintain
them until another purpose for the structures can be found, at the
current appraised tax values of the properties.
In each case, reversion of the lands to the Federal Government would
result in Federal ownership of tracts unneeded for Federal purposes,
but lands that would produce greater conveyance and management costs to
the Federal treasury than are likely to be recovered through fair
market sales. There is just no public policy purpose in the 21st
century not to permit these very limited Federal reversion
extinguishments, especially since the land did meet the purpose of the
reversionary clause for more than four decades.
Passage of this act would cost the Federal Government nothing, but
would aid the citizens of Glennallen by allowing the lands to be put to
a better use, hopefully adding to the city's economy and perhaps
increasing its future tax revenues. I hope this bill will be able to
advance and become law within the 114th Congress.
____________________