Possible solutions to problems with land exchanges
Even with all the problems and abuse in the federal land-exchange program, Congress is considering relaxing the laws that govern trades, not firming them up.
The goal, according to politicians and lobbyists on Capitol Hill, is to make land trades easier to finish fast, and harder for the public to challenge.
Lawmakers are being pushed by executives from the timber and mining companies that own much of the West's wild lands. They're telling Congress: We want to trade more land with the government. And we want to do it quickly.
"We simply cannot tie up our land in a proposed trade forever," said Bill Brown, vice president of Plum Creek Timber, the firm that has lobbied hardest. "Two years seems adequate, five years is a stretch and 10 years is irrational."
Trades now can take so long that private landowners are guaranteed "an endless appeals process and litigation battles that could go well into the next century," said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who is trying to speed up a proposed trade with Plum Creek in the Cascade Mountains.
The changes Congress is pondering would cancel the requirement that large land trades be studied for environmental consequences. Federal agencies would be required to complete trades within a year, regardless of whether the details were adequately researched in that time.
But even as companies complain the trading process is too onerous, they're the ones who aggressively pursue the deals, critics say. The companies do it to get valuable old-growth timber or mineral resources so they can continue logging or mining at a more rapid rate.
Even if some trades are fair, the proposed changes reflect a broader trend of Congress "turning public assets into corporate profits at the taxpayers' expense," said Ned Daly, of the Taxpayer Assets Project, a consumer watchdog group created by Ralph Nader.
"The deck is already stacked in favor of the corporations," he said.
So how should the government balance these competing interests? Distilled to its simplest form, trading land is a business deal, negotiated over the boardroom table. How can agencies negotiate extraordinarily complex deals with private companies, in a reasonable amount of time, while also allowing citizens a hand in managing their own land?
Here are some ideas that might improve the land-trade process, culled from interviews with government and corporate land managers, environmentalists, federal investigators and others.
1. Trade land to the highest or best bidder after holding a competitive auction.
Most trades involve no competition. A private party typically approaches the government, in private, to propose a trade for specific pieces of government land.
As an alternative, government audits repeatedly have urged land managers to solicit trade proposals from multiple bidders.
In recent years, the U.S. Forest Service has tried a half-dozen competitive trades. In some of these deals, the government got more than three times the land's appraised value, said Mike Williams, a top Forest Service manager.
In one case, the Forest Service preserved 160 acres bordering Grand Teton National Park - land that would have been developed - in exchange for public land next to a ski area.
However, competitive land exchanges work best in hot real-estate markets, such as ski towns, where federal land attracts multiple bidders.
2. In booming real-estate markets, sell surplus public land instead of trading it.
Experts say the government can save money and avoid controversy by selling land it no longer wants in fast-growing markets such as Las Vegas or near ski areas.
The trouble is, the Forest Service is not allowed to sell land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) can sell to private parties, but there is little incentive to do so because the agency can't use the proceeds to buy lands elsewhere. The money typically must be returned to the general treasury.
In the Las Vegas area, that may soon change. Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan has crafted a program, expected to pass Congress this week or next, that would end most land exchanges there. Instead, the BLM could sell land and keep 85 percent of revenues to purchase more land in Nevada for recreation or wildlife habitat.
3. Buy land the public wants instead of trading for it.
In most large trades, the ecologically sensitive land conservationists want to acquire is part of a much bigger package of less-valuable private lands - increasing the amount of public acreage that must be traded to get it.
The government could, instead, target the ecological gems for purchase and avoid entering into the bigger, more unwieldy deals that are prone to manipulation and abuse.
Congress appears less likely to buy land now than at any time in decades, however. Annual financing for the land-purchase program, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, is at an all-time low.
The fund gets $900 million a year from leases sold for oil-drilling. Previous Congresses believed that revenue from an activity harmful to the environment should be used to pay for something good for the environment, namely parks. But recently, lawmakers have diverted three-fourths of the oil money to other programs.
Many conservative politicians believe the government already owns too much land and should not acquire more - especially productive land that could be used by a private owner.
A provision inserted into a pending budget bill by Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski, a Republican, would bar the government from buying any more land in Alaska without first attempting a trade. This would have the practical effect that the government could add land in Alaska only if it gets rid of some at the same time.
"In today's budgetary and political environment, it's a pipe dream to think there's going to be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for land purchases," said Bob Harris, a lobbyist for Plum Creek. "Congress is moving in the opposite direction."
4. It's a business negotiation, so the government must match experts with experts.
The BLM has trimmed its land-appraisal staff by one-fourth since 1990. The Forest Service has lost two-thirds of its appraisers in that time while the workload has increased by a half.
Employees at both agencies complain they cannot compete across the negotiating table with corporate-paid experts. In some states, third-party organizations have virtually taken over the land-trade process from shorthanded and under-trained bureaucrats.
"No matter how good the process we have in place, people don't have the expertise to do the job," said Jim Lyons, the deputy secretary of the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service.
Neither agency is expecting any money from Congress to enlarge its lands staff. So, as an initial step to stem abuse, the Forest Service is considering better training - particularly for its appraisers - and the BLM next month will debut a national land-exchange team.
The team will consist of one high-ranking official in Washington, D.C., and two in the field. The team will travel to the scene of any trade that appears controversial or that involves more than 50,000 acres. That will cover only a handful of the 70 trades the agency does annually. Pat Shea, BLM director, said he will limit the team's review to two weeks at the beginning and two weeks at the end, to mollify landowners who worry it will slow down the trades.
Another problem is that many government appraisers, including the chief appraiser at the BLM, are not state certified. That's a requirement under federal law for private appraisers. Forest Service appraisers are certified, but Lyons said the agency's certification standards may need upgrading.
5. Invite independent, expert scrutiny.
Some land managers say it's important to have experts who are not connected to either side of the deal review the details and even monitor the trade as it is being negotiated. At some national forests, supervisors have experimented with setting up independent commissions, composed of university professors or other technical experts, to oversee all aspects of a trade.
Because of a recent scandal involving a trade with an environmental group in Nevada - a case in which the public lost millions of dollars - the Forest Service has ordered that all sales and trades that use a third-party broker must now be reviewed by a national team of agency land managers.
In the same vein, the independence and integrity of appraisers are key to making trades fair. Appraisers set the price, the bottom line, on both sides of a trade.
Many government appraisers report to supervisors who are under orders to complete land deals. When the appraisers are seen as getting in the way, they are sometimes taken off the job. One solution could be establishing an independent appraiser chain-of-command, even a completely separate government appraisal board. That's being studied by the Forest Service.
6. Make the appraisals public before the deal is done.
The Forest Service waits until a deal is done to let the public examine the documents that show how much the land, timber and other assets are worth. The BLM recently started releasing them earlier, but only after the agency was caught in the Nevada scandal. The National Park Service recently refused to release an appraisal to The Seattle Times three years after a controversial Arizona exchange was finished and archived.
Executives for big companies say they prefer that the appraisal information remain secret because it can be used by competitors whenever the company tries to buy or sell land. For publicly traded companies, the information also might affect a stock price, they say.
But the document is so important for the public to judge whether it's getting a fair deal that some activists say: tough.
"If anybody wants to engage in a land exchange with the public, they should have to . . . allow all of the appraisal data to be made available to the public before the land exchange is completed," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Land Exchange Project. "If they don't want to make that information public, they just can't do a land exchange."
7. Give the public a seat at the negotiating table.
This is the most obvious solution, but, paradoxically, also the most problematic and controversial.
In practice, the public hears very little about most trades. Even with big ones, the public might be notified a year or more after negotiations began. By then, important decisions already have been made about the identity of the lands to be traded, who will appraise it and how the negotiations will proceed.
Some government officials say the secrecy surrounding land trades is a problem.
"It's crucial that the public be able to see inside what is now a black box," said Mike Curran, a 30-year Forest Service supervisor, now retired, who handled the agency's biggest trade ever - more than 350 square miles in Arkansas and Oklahoma in 1996. "I don't think the Forest Service is being upfront with people around the country about these land exchanges."
Shutting out the public has the effect of subtly encouraging government employees to err on the side of the private companies, others say. And officials from both Plum Creek and the Forest Service agree that the relatively open proceedings of the proposed Interstate 90 land trade have caused it to be substantially altered to the public's benefit.
But land managers say there may be no way to give people a direct hand in land-trade talks because the public speaks with so many voices it might make a deal impossible to negotiate.
For instance, the Western Land Exchange Project this week asked the Forest Service to declare a moratorium on all land trades larger than 200 acres. But another environmental group, the Alpine Lakes Protection Society, actually proposed a version of the massive I-90 exchange to Plum Creek and wants it to go through. Plum Creek has conducted one of the most open trades ever, allowing some environmentalists to pick and choose land parcels, but its executives are certain the deal will be challenged in court, regardless.
"From the beginning, we have invited the public to review all aspects of this deal," said Plum Creek's Brown. "Most think it's a good deal, but we will never please everyone. We can't keep trying forever."
