[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 16953-16954]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



   MORATORIUM NEEDED ON FEDERAL LAND EXCHANGES UNTIL SYSTEM IS FIXED

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 27, 2000

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, land exchanges between 
private parties and the federal government have long been a source of 
contention in Congress and in local communities. Exchanges are supposed 
to provide the federal government a valuable tool to acquire lands with 
high public interest values, such as enhanced recreational 
opportunities or wildlife habitat, and to dispose of lands with less or 
limited public value.
  According to a new General Accounting Office study that I 
commissioned, however, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. 
Forest Service have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars swapping 
valuable public land for private land of questionable value, and the 
Bureau may even be breaking the law. In response to this report, I have 
called on Interior Secretary Babbitt and Agriculture Secretary Glickman 
to immediately suspend all land exchanges until the exchange programs 
can be fixed.
  The GAO report was prominently covered earlier this month by NBC 
Nightly News, CBS Radio, the Washington Post, and other media outlets 
across country. Subsequently, my call for a moratorium on exchanges has 
received strong support from newspapers, organizations and individuals 
from across the country as well.
  I commend to my colleagues three of the newspaper editorials that 
have appeared so far endorsing the call for the moratorium. I hope that 
my colleagues will review the GAO report and the call for a moratorium 
and will support such a move. The public is being taken advantage in 
these deals and their wallet and the environment are paying the price. 
``Let's Make a Land Deal,'' The Washington Post, July 15, 2000; 
``Public Land Deals Better Not Cheat The Public,'' The Bozeman (MT) 
Chronicle, July 20, 2000; ``Land Exchange Programs Troubled, But Well 
Worth Fixing'', Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune, July 24, 2000.

               [From the Washington Post, July 15, 2000]

                         Let's Make a Land Deal

       It seems like a simple idea: If the federal government owns 
     some land it doesn't necessarily care to keep, and a private 
     landowner has some land the government wants, and the two are 
     roughly equal in value, then make a trade. The Forest Service 
     and Bureau of Land Management have had the authority to make 
     those kinds of deals for years, with the idea that the 
     exchanges would help the agencies consolidate federal lands 
     and acquire important resources. But the transactions are 
     often far from simple and, according to a General Accounting 
     Office report released this week, the land-exchange program 
     has shortchanged taxpayers by millions of dollars by 
     undervaluing federal land or overvaluing private land in some 
     of its deals.
       The GAO said there are so many inherent difficulties in the 
     land-exchange process that Congress should consider giving up 
     the program altogether, opting for more straight-forward 
     sales and purchases. The Forest Service and the Bureau of 
     Land Management reacted sharply to the report, contending 
     that GAO looked at too few transactions to justify its broad 
     recommendation and that many of the cases it cited are old 
     and have already been addressed. They say significant reforms 
     are already underway.
       Properly handled, land exchanges give the two agencies 
     resources (public lands suitable for exchange) that they can 
     use to acquire valuable and useful lands, including habitat 
     for endangered species. If they lose that resource and wind 
     up having to compete for funds for every proposed purchase, 
     the likelihood is that their ability to obtain important land 
     or consolidate holdings will be curtailed.
       But it is important to be sure that those purposes are 
     being served by the land swaps and that the public's interest 
     is protected, both in terms of what land is being traded away 
     and what value is being obtained for it. Rep. George Miller 
     (D-Calif.), who requested the GAO report, has called for a 
     moratorium on land exchanges until each agency ``demonstrates 
     that it can insure all exchanges are in the public interest 
     and of equal value, as required by law.'' That's a challenge 
     they ought to be able to meet.


[[Page 16954]]


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              [From the Bozeman Chronicle, July 20, 2000]

             Public Land Deals Better Not Cheat the Public

                         (By Chronicle Editor)

       Intelligent, well-meaning people can disagree over what's 
     the appropriate amount of land for the federal government to 
     own. But when the government strikes a deal to buy, sell or 
     trade land, there should be no disagreement on the necessity 
     of making certain the public is getting a fair deal.
       That apparently has not been the case.
       A recent General Accounting Office audit found that the 
     Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have lost 
     millions of dollars from land exchanges by either buying too 
     high or selling too low. This is a serious indictment of 
     public land stewardship that should not be taken lightly.
       Exchanges have become an important part of Western public 
     lands policy as land managers seek to consolidate fragmented 
     holdings, increase wildlife winter range and improve access.
       All of these are important public benefits. But it is a 
     serious breach of the public trust if land deals aimed at 
     accomplishing those ends cheat the taxpayers out of land 
     values that are rightfully theirs.
       Several major land exchanges have involved Gallatin 
     National Forest in recent years and have accomplished some 
     important land management goals. The problem arises when 
     negotiations and appraisals involved in these land deals are 
     kept secret. Public land managers argue they must be kept 
     secret because revealing proprietary business information 
     from private parties involved in the negotiations could kill 
     the deal.
       But if the GAO report is correct in its dismal assessment 
     of the outcome of many of these deals, maybe we'd all be 
     better off if the deals were killed.
       Public land managers need to find ways to conduct these 
     negotiations in the open where all can see. If the lands 
     involved are of sufficient value to arouse private parties' 
     interest, then conditioning a trade on open negotiations and 
     publicly revealed land appraisals will not kill deals.
       Public negotiations allow anyone with an interest to step 
     forward and point out aspects of the proposed trades that 
     might be overlooked by agency officials. Open negotiations 
     only invite more complete information about factors 
     contributing to land value and reveal the public's priorities 
     for managing these lands.
       Public land managers need to remind themselves occasionally 
     that the land they manage is not theirs; it belongs to the 
     citizens of the United States, and those citizens are 
     entitled to a say in how it's done.

                                  ____
                                  

        [From the Minneapolis [MN] Star Tribune, July 24, 2000]

         Land Exchange Programs Troubled, But Well Worth Fixing

       There are outrages aplenty in a recent congressional audit 
     of federal land-exchange programs: Nevada acreage valued at 
     $763,000 was transferred by the government to private owners, 
     who resold it the same day for $4.6 million. A 4,300-acre 
     Douglas fir forest in Washington state was swapped to a 
     timber company for 30,000 clearcut acres near Seattle.
       These are patently bad deals. But do they, and others 
     documented by the General Accounting Office in its recent 
     report, justify ending the programs?
       The GAO's auditors think so. Arguing that land-swapping is 
     inherently problematical, they urge Congress to consider 
     abandoning the practice--perhaps replacing it with a cash-
     purchase system, wherein the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau 
     of Land Management simply sell parcels they don't want and 
     use the revenue to buy others they do.
       But it's unclear how this approach would ease the key 
     bedevilment of the exchange programs: the difficulty of 
     establishing fair value for tracts of land that may be 
     remote, undevelopable, depleted, largely unmarketable to 
     private buyers--or all of the above. Appraising such land is 
     a wholly different task from pricing a farm, homestead or 
     business based on recent sales of comparable properties.
       This doesn't excuse the agencies' worst flubs, of course, 
     but it does argue for some tolerance in reviewing their 
     overall, performance--3 million acres of unwanted federal 
     land traded, since 1989, for 2 million desirable acres whose 
     acquisition protected habitat, improved recreation, 
     consolidated fragmented holdings, buffered parks or 
     wilderness from incompatible development. The GAO has 
     carefully measured taxpayers' losses in a few dozen swaps, 
     but not their gains in thousands of others.
       Moving to a cash-purchase system would almost certainly 
     slow the agencies' acquisition of valuable lands and subject 
     their work to congressional micromanagement. Congress has 
     long been reluctant to fully fund its own land-conservation 
     commitments; in recent years the budgets for the land-owning 
     agencies have come under increasing pressure, reflecting a 
     sentiment against acquisition of public lands--especially in 
     the West, where most exchanges occur.
       Moreover, the Forest Service and BLM have adopted 
     significant reforms since 1998, prompted by newspaper reports 
     exposing their failings. Though the GAO audit was 
     commissioned in part to review the effectiveness of these 
     changes, most of the truly terrible transactions cited by the 
     auditors--including the aforementioned Nevada and Washington 
     deals--occurred before they were adopted.
       It is certainly true, as the auditors observe, that the 
     agencies' clearer policies, better training and more 
     stringent review of proposed deals can't guarantee perfect 
     performance. But it is also true that the agencies deserve a 
     better chance to show results.
       Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat and public-
     lands advocate who asked for the GAO study, isn't persuaded 
     that the programs ought to be scrapped, but he has called for 
     a halt to new swaps until the agencies can show they have 
     shaped up. There's little chance that Congress will adopt 
     such a moratorium this session, but the agencies shouldn't 
     take that as a reprieve. Having overhauled their procedures, 
     they must now strive to regain the public's trust in the 
     outcome.

     

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