Keep lands in federal hands

The Utah lawmakers who are trying to sponsor a plan to make the federal government turn over some of the federal public lands to Utah to pay for public schools need to be reminded of a couple of things:

First, at the time of statehood, the federal government gave the state of Utah one-ninth of the state (four sections in each township), about 7.5 million acres to be leased or sold to support the state's public school system. This was twice as much land as most of the other Western states received (two sections per township). Utah still owns about half of this acreage.

Second, the federal government also pays taxes on the federal lands through Payment in Lieu of Taxes payments to the states. In fiscal year 2004, Utah received $19,136,869 as PILT payment plus about 50 percent of the receipts from the public lands, for a total payment in FY2004 of $87,988,015. This payment comes to the state without any costs or responsibilities to the state for management of the public lands. So reducing the acreage of public lands also reduces the federal payments to the state.

The Bureau of Land Management lands and national forest lands in Utah should stay in federal public ownership for all the public to enjoy the recreational aspects and other natural resource uses and let the private lands, the state school trust lands, the State Schools Trust Fund and PILT monies support the public schools. Financially, the states are ahead of the game with the lands remaining as federal.

---

George Lea is president of the Public Lands Foundation, whose members are primarily retired Bureau of Land Management employees.