Garfield wants to give U.S. lesson in land use

WASHINGTON — Garfield County Commissioner Maloy Dodds has a proposal for Congress: Use Garfield County as a national experiment and turn over to private ownership all federal lands not in national parks or monuments and test the arguments as to who better manages the lands.

"I offer Garfield County as a field laboratory for an experiment to do just that," Dodds told a House oversight committee on the impacts of federal land ownership on communities and local government. "If the federal government would work with us on a thoughtful and realistic plan to privatize the non-park land in the county, I can guarantee that, if we were to convene here in 20 years, I could report a much different and much more prosperous picture of Garfield County."

Garfield County, like dozens of other rural counties throughout the West that are dominated by federal lands that cannot be taxed, is groaning under the combined effects of limited property tax revenue, increasing demand for services from visitors to federal lands and a federal bureaucracy that has stifled traditional grazing, mining and oil and gas development, Dodds said in formal testimony presented to the House Forest and Forest Health Subcommittee.

Only 4 percent of the 3.4 million acres in Garfield County is privately owned, and there are simply not enough people or enough private lands generating property taxes to fuel the county's $3.5 million budget, he said.

Making matters worse, the increased public visitation to national parks and monuments — it is home to Bryce Canyon and much of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — has resulted in increased sanitation demands, increased costs for search and rescue, and increased costs for personnel to meet federal planning demands.

"We believe we are subsidizing the federal government and all of the rest of the American people who own these lands," Dodds said.

The county receives some federal funds through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program, but Dodds told the committee it has never been fully funded and is not enough to cover the actual costs the county incurs. "In my opinion, even full funding of PILT would not pay the true costs of federal ownership in counties such as mine, but we would take it and not quibble about the difference," he said.

Dodd's testimony reflected a growing frustration among some members of Congress from Western states, including Reps. Chris Cannon and Rob Bishop, both Utah Republicans, who bristle at the inequities in a system where the federal government owns most of the land but expects local governments and local school districts to pick up the slack.