April 1995: Fuzzy Math

by Jim Stiles

     When the Republican Congress failed to pass the Balanced Budget Amendment by a single vote last month, it was by no means the end of efforts to bring the federal deficit under control. Newt Gingrich has pledged to deliver a balanced budget by the year 2002, with or without the amendment. He thinks he can do it without raising taxes. He can't. He thinks he can do it by cutting discretionary programs. He can't.

     What scares the hell out of me is another revenue-generating option that hasn't been given much attention yet. And it conveniently coincides with a movement in the West that, on the surface at least, appears quite compatible.

     If the Congress can't reduce the deficit through spending cuts, and it won't raise taxes, the U.S. Government is still the largest landlord in the country.  In Utah, almost two-thirds of the state is administered by agencies of the federal government. Because much of the acreage is publicly owned it cannot be taxed by local county governments. As a result the federal government pays out millions of dollars in compensatory funds to counties. Grand County received $306,000 in what are called PILT payments (Payment in lieu of taxes) for 1994 alone.

     But what if the federal government decided to give all this land back to the counties? Such a move would free them from making any further payments to the states and counties and would require those counties to generate their own revenues from the land. It's something that many rural western counties say they want.

     In fact Nye County, Nevada demands it. They refuse to recognize the federal government as anything but interlopers and have threatened to arrest federal land managers if they interfere with the use of the land as the county sees fit. Now, the Justice Department has taken Nye County to court to settle the issue. I called the BLM in Tonopah, Nevada and learned that although Nye County considers itself sovereign from the federal government, it still collects those PILT payments, right on schedule. In addition the county government has received millions of dollars from the Department of Energy in compensatory funds for development of the proposed Yucca Flats nuclear storage facility.

     But imagine what counties would do to generate revenues if they could do as they pleased? Especially if they were trying to make up for lost PILT payments? (PILT doesn't include mineral lease money which comes back to the counties from the federal government as well.) We could see the wholesale sell-off of vast tracts of public land to people who have the money to buy those kinds of parcels. In addition to corporate purchases, there are enough private individuals with ample financial resources to put an end to freely accessible public land as we now know it. Jeepers and other outdoor recreationists worry that proposed wilderness areas will restrict the use of some roads? They haven't seen anything yet. Imagine the public lands fenced off and road use restricted or prohibited.

     We have already recently seen Utah state school sections sold to the highest bidder. How many of you realize that the state land adjacent to Highway 191 on top of Blue Hill (about 13 miles south of Moab) was bought by private interests a couple of years ago and is being developed as a subdivision? In fact, the State of Utah has been actively engaged in the real estate business lately. You may recall it even wanted to sell off sections of state land in Arches National Park a couple of years ago. Anyone willing to sell a portion of a national park will sell anything.    

     (Now, as the Zephyr is about to go to press, news reports indicate that Representative Jim Hansen plans to introduce legislation giving public lands back to the states. A study suggests that Utah would lose $21.9 million in federal funding if such a transfer were to occur. Which is all the more reason to fear such a sell-off)

     There is a certain irony to all this. The anti-fed conservatives, most of them middle-income types, have historically resented the presence of federal government administrators. Yet the restrictions inflicted upon them by the BLM and other agencies will pale in comparison to the "Private Property...Do Not Enter" signs that could flourish if a public land sell-off becomes a reality. It's doubtful that many rural Westerners will have the financial resources to buy a chunk of the West for themselves. They'll have to be content to stand on the outside of the fence looking in.  And while they'll only have themselves to blame for turning the wide open range into a patchwork of fenced private parcels, I can imagine them still turning desperately to a familiar scapegoat. In fact, I can almost hear the Western Mantra..."Damn environmentalists."

     Which proves we enviros get the blame for everything.             

     But in this Brave New Republican World and in a sort of perverted way, I have to give credit to the Conservative Movement and the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm. Their strategy has been brilliant. They've made it fashionable to be a narrow-minded bigot again. And they've done it by appealing to peoples' darker side. Many of us who constitute the vast middle class consider ourselves the true victims of our society now, not the poor and the elderly and the children and the very land upon which we live. Many of us can, with a straight face, proclaim that America has been victimized by those wicked self-serving citizens who demand clean air to breathe and clean water to drink and who see beauty in the natural world and who come to defense of those who cannot defend themselves. I call it Greed Rationalization. 

     There is much wrong with this political system that attempts to provide these services and right these wrongs in our society. I don't doubt that a bit. Sometimes I am disgusted by it. But to even suggest that the best way to face those challenges is to ignore them...it is a grave mistake that will haunt you and me for years and decades to come.