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Document 22 of 118.

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MAY 4, 1999, TUESDAY

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 3760 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF
SENATOR MALCOLM WALLOP
(RET.)
CHAIRMAN
FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
BEFORE THE SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT - S. 25, THE CONSERVATION AND RE-INVESTMENT ACT
S. 446, THE RESOURCES 2000 ACT S. 532, THE PUBLIC LAND
AND RECREATION INVESTMENT ACT AND
S. 819, THE NATIONAL PARK PRESERVATION ACT

BODY:

Chairman Murkowski and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting Frontiers of Freedom to testify today on these important issues. My name is Malcolm Wallop, and I am chairman of Frontiers of Freedom. From 1977 to 1995 I represented Wyoming in the Senate, where I served on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. As a rancher in Big Horn, Wyoming, I have a lifetime's experience of private stewardship and of federal land management practices. I founded Frontiers of Freedom to defend the constitutional fights of all Americans and to restore constitutional limits on government at all levels.
Frontiers of Freedom opposes enactment of the Conservation and Re- investment Act, the Resources 2000 Act, the Public Land and Recreation Investment Act, and the National Park Preservation Act. Frontiers of Freedom also opposes the Clinton-Gore Administration's Lands Legacy Initiative and any other similar proposals that would significantly increase the level of government acquisition of private land. While my remarks today are directed primarily at S. 25, most of them apply just as well to the other bills under consideration. I will have a few things to say about those other bills towards the end of my testimony.
Before discussing our substantive criticisms, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the way you and your committee staff have conducted these hearings. You have invited a broad range of witnesses, including leading opponents of your legislation. And the reports I have heard all note that you and Senator Landrieu and other supporters of S. 25 listened attentively to your critics and took their testimony seriously. The fair and open way you are proceeding should serve as a model to other committees.
I especially welcome your invitation to opponents of more government land acquisition to suggest positive improvements to S. 25. In my testimony, I try to do just that. We at Frontiers of Freedom are ready to work with you and Senator Landrieu and your staffs to make this legislation into something landowners could live with.
In regard to Title I of S. 25, Frontiers of Freedom supports sharing federal revenues from Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas production with the States. However, we think that OCS revenues should be shared in the same way that royalties from federal onshore leases are shared. If that method were adopted, then those States that have OCS production off their shores would share the royalties evenly with the federal government. These revenues would not be earmarked for any specific programs, but would be available to the OCS States to use as they saw fit. Thus if oil and gas production off the coast of Louisiana produced $4 billion in net federal royalties, then Louisiana would receive $2 billion.
That seems to us the fair and consistent way to share OCS revenues. Unfortunately, Title I doesn't follow this straightforward approach. Instead, it would share the revenues according to a complicated formula between 34 States defined as "coastal States." It would do this under the rubric of "coastal impact assistance." Although this approach may gain political support, it is such a bad idea substantively that it is hard to know precisely where to begin. How can oil and gas production off.the Gulf Coast have any but the most minimal environmental impact on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts? Why do States far from OCS production need the money? And what possible claim do they have to share in the money? They don't produce the oil and gas off their shores, and because they bear none of the burdens they have no right to any of the benefits.
This is bad enough, but there is more. S. 25 defines the Great Lakes States as "coastal States," but they are farther away from any OCS production than Missouri or New Mexico or many other inland States. Further, the Great Lakes States and most of the Atlantic and Pacific coast States are opposed to OCS drilling anywhere near their coastlines. It is my understanding that a bill has even been introduced in the Michigan legislature to ban onshore slant drilling that would go under the Great Lakes. Those States have made the decision that they do not want oil and gas production off their shores. That is their right. But they should not be rewarded by sharing in OCS revenues produced off the shores of States that are willing to help produce the energy that this country needs. It is enough reward for those States that have OCS moratoria to be provided with the oil and gas they need to run their power plants and automobiles.
Wyoming State Representative Carolyn Paseneaux has also pointed out to me that S. 25, if enacted, could threaten the current system of revenue sharing with the States that have onshore federal oil and gas leases. Once it is established that oil and gas royalties from OCS production can be earmarked for environmental programs, then it is reasonable to expect that the environmental pressure groups will use this as a precedent and demand that royalties from onshore production should also be earmarked for environmental programs. As a Wyoming taxpayer, this worries me because over $200 million was paid into the Wyoming general treasury last year as its share of federal royalties.
There is another major problem with Title I that goes to the heart of our concerns with the whole bill. That problem is land acquisition. Title I describes in vague terms a variety of environmental projects and programs that could qualify for funding. It makes no mention of buying land, but neither does it prohibit using Title I funds to buy private land. There are good reasons to think that a sizable share of the large sums that would be distributed under Title I would be used to acquire land.
Mr. Jack C. Caldwell of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources testified before the House Resources Committee on March 9. In response to a question about how Louisiana would use its Title I funds, he said that his department had never bought land. But then he went on to give as a reason the fact that his department had never had any money to buy land. If S. 25 is enacted, this situation would change dramatically--for the worse.
State fish and wildlife agencies have the same incentives as the federal land agencies to buy land. More land increases their power and the size of their budgets and staffs. Environmental problems and programs may come and go. The budget priorities of elected officials change after every election. But once an agency has land or buildings to manage, it has a permanent claim on the public treasury.
As evidence of the likelihood that much Title I money will go to buy land, I would merely point to the fate of the $900 million Exxon Valdez trust fund. No one at the time the fund was created predicted that the largest share would be used to buy land. Yet, as you have repeatedly pointed out, Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what has happened. To date, $380 million has been spent to acquire 647,000 acres. It is my understanding that this acreage is equivalent to 65% of the private, non-native land in Alaska. And buying all this land has little to do with the aims of the trust fund--to clean up the oil spill and improve environmental protections.
Our first positive suggestion for improving S. 25 from the standpoint of private property ownership is therefore to prohibit any recipient of Title I funds from using even a dollar of it to acquire land or permanent interest in land, such as perpetual conservation easements.

Frontiers of Freedom's second positive suggestion is to eliminate Title II entirely. Despite all the criticisms that can be made of congressional appropriations for Land and Water Conservation Fund acquisitions, we still believe that the annual appropriations process is far preferable to creating an automatic entitlement. If eliminating Title II proves politically impossible, then we would urge you to lower the funding levels significantly and to place further restrictions on how the funds may be used.
Government doesn't need to own any more land. It already owns far too much land and far more than it can take care of properly. The four federal land agencies, according to the BLM, control about 676 million acres or over 29% of the country. Other federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, own more millions of acres.
State and local governments also own a lot of land, although no one knows exactly how much. Several years ago, Representatives Don Young and Richard Pombo asked the General Accounting Office to compile and analyze government land ownership statistics. The two resulting GAO reports did a good job laying out the trends in federal land ownership since passage of the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965. The reports also made a stab at estimating how much of this federal land had been removed from management under the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act and placed in more restrictive categories of environmental protection. But when it came to compiling accurate statistics on state and local government land ownership, the experts at the GAO gave up simply because few state and local governments have any idea how much property they own. The records simply aren't there.
Robert J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute at your hearing two weeks ago estimated that government at all levels owns 42% of the nation's land mass. Similar estimates have been made by Jeffrey W. Goodson, an environmental consultant. These are only estimates, but it seems sensible to me that before embarking on a massive program of government land acquisition, the Congress should step back and take some time to inventory and assess the lands in government ownership. Once that inventory and assessment was completed, the Congress would be in a much better position to consider whether government needed to own more land and for what reasons.
At any rate, if government at all levels already owns over 40% of the country, then I don't think a plausible case can be made that government needs to own even more land for the purpose of environmental protection. A much stronger case can be made that private owners provide on average a much higher level of environmental stewardship than does public ownership and therefore that the environment would be healthier if we had less public land rather than more.
This is simply because private property owners have an incentive-- their own self interest--to take care of what is theirs. This incentive is usually lacking with public or common ownership. There was recent confirmation of this fact when the Iron Curtain fell. The preservationists who tout government ownership as an environmental panacea led us to believe that we would find a Garden of Eden in the land of socialized property. Instead, we have discovered one environmental horror after another: dead lakes, poisoned land, vanishing wildlife.
In this country, public accountability has prevented some of the worst consequences of socialization. But we must not be blind to the environmental degradation caused by public ownership. Even Representative Ralph Regula, a staunch defender of federal land ownership, has opposed major land acquisition increases simply because the federal government already owns far more land than it can manage properly. Representative Regula recently pointed to the fact that the four federal land agencies have identified a $12 billion backlog in maintenance and operations.
This $12 billion backlog brings me to one of the main points I want to make. While S. 25 would create a trust fund to provide up to $405 million per year for federal land acquisitions, it does nothing to provide the additional funding necessary to manage and protect these new acquisitions. Adding to the federal estate without providing more money to manage and protect those resources must lead inevitably to the further degradation of our great national parks,forests, and refuges. The $12 billion backlog can only increase. In terms of environmental stewardship, S. 25 is therefore irresponsible in the extreme.
The bill's proponents nonetheless claim that the opposite is true-- that the profits from the non-renewable resource of oil and gas production are being re-invested in the renewable resource of parks and preserves. This seems to me a misleading use of words. Parks and preserves are not renewable resources in the sense that they will provide a continuing stream of profits after the oil wells have gone dry. Parks and preserves undoubtedly provide benefits, but they don't renew themselves. They require continuing investments to maintain and protect. Rather than being renewable resources, parks and preserves are a perpetual liability on the public treasury.
Before the Congress embarks on a land-buying spree, it would seem to me prudent to consider how all this new property is going to be maintained. There are only two alternatives. Either taxpayers are going to have to pay more to maintain these new acquisitions, or the current appropriation must be stretched ever thinner to maintain more and more land. The budget for Yellowstone National Park and many of our other great national treasures is not adequate now. Adding more land within the current budget constraints means even less money for Yellowstone. Therefore if a trust fund must be created for the federal lands, Frontiers of Freedom recommends that the money should be used to clear up the $12 billion backlog in maintenance and operations before any new acquisitions are made.
Title II does limit federal acquisition authority under the Land and Water Conservation Fund by requiring that purchases be made only from willing sellers and only within congressionally-authorized units. These limitations on federal power are welcome, but as a practical matter I doubt that they will have much effect. The federal land agencies have perfected techniques involving harassment and coercion to turn unwilling sellers into willing sellers. The Park Service in particular has a long history of ignoring congressionally-enacted limitations on acquisition. To take only one of thousands of instances, at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the Park Service has twice initiated condemnation lawsuits against Tom and Kathy Stocklen's canoe rental business even though the Stocklens possess a certificate of exemption from condemnation as provided by the legislation that created the park.
The federal land agencies use land acquisition as a tool to exert control over private property owners. They regularly try to force people to sell who don't want to sell and refuse to buy from people who are desperate to sell. Abuses have multiplied over decades because successive Congresses have evaded their responsibility to oversee and investigate the land acquisition programs. In this regard, I think that another property-owner protection offered by S. 25 would actually do more harm than good. Requiring that large acquisitions over $5 million be approved by Congress would encourage the agencies to concentrate on forcing smaller landowners to sell. If congressional authorization of land purchases is good--and I believe it is--then Congress should not create a two-class system of citizens in which large landowners are protected by congressional involvement and small landowners are not.
While creating a trust fund for federal land acquisition is of great concern, the big increase in land acquisition dollars actually comes in the state side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. S. 25 would provide up to $405 million per year for state and local land acquisition and development. State and local governments would have to match LWCF grants dollar for dollar. Thus up to $910 million per year could be spent on buying private land.
S. 25's proponents deny that this would lead to a massive increase in land acquisition because historically state and local governments have used LWCF grants primarily for development projects. Comparatively few dollars have gone to acquiring land. That may be true historically, but the state side of the LWCF has never been funded at a high level. With $405 million flowing to state and local governments every year, they may end up spending a great deal of it on buying land.
Removing hundreds of millions of dollars of private land from productive uses every year would significantly reduce economic activity in many areas and consequently reduce the tax base. After that is accomplished, these state and local governments would then be burdened with the cost of maintaining their public lands. In effect, S. 25 would encumber state and local governments with a perpetual unfunded liability. It may be objected that the decision is up to state and local governments. However, the offer of matching federal funds tempts state and local governments into making that decision. To my mind, this aspect of S. 25 raises serious federalism concerns.

Frontiers of Freedom's positive suggestions for improving the state side of the LWCF would be to prohibit condemnation just as on the federal side and to limit the percentage of funds that could be spent on acquisition to the historic average level.
The LWCF trust fund created by S. 25 would also fund the Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery program up to $90 million per year. Someone from the sporting goods manufacturers, I believe, said on National Public Radio that Congress must pass this program so that the children of Minneapolis will be able to play soccer. He claimed that in all of Minneapolis there was only one soccer field and consequently 10,000 children who wanted to play soccer had no place to play. For all I know, this may be true, although I suspect that if Minneapolis has only one soccer field it's because they've built ice rinks on them.
Some of the supporters of S. 25 and S. 446 made a similar argument at the pep rally held on the Capitol steps on April 20. Supporters passed out large round stickers with a soccer ball in the middle. The stickers read: "LWCF--For Our Children." There is something highly distasteful in radical preservationists advancing their anti-people agenda by hiding behind the interests of children. But the stickers made a valid point. Parks and recreational facilities are a great asset in any community. No doubt many communities would benefit by having more parks and swimming pools and golf courses and baseball fields.
What is objectionable about including the UPARR program as part of an automatic entitlement is that the UPARR program provides a benefit to urban and suburban communities by providing funds to build up their infrastructures, whereas the massive LWCF federal and state land acquisition required by S. 25 harms rural areas by taking land out of productive use and undermining local economic activity. So if we're doing this for our children, let's think about those rural children whose parents lose their jobs when federal timber contracts are voided,grazing permits are reduced to nothing, huge areas are withdrawn from mining claims, multimillion acre National Monuments are created by executive fiat. Alaska State Senator Robin Taylor has spoken eloquently about what it's like to live in the small town of Wrangell, Alaska when the Forest Service ended timber production in the Tongass National Forest and the unemployment rate went up to 40%. What about those children? Don't they matter? Title III of S. 25 would create yet another new trust fund to provide a new revenue source for the highly successful Pittman-Robertson Fund. This title is more palatable simply because the dollar amounts are much lower. However, Frontiers of Freedom would make the same positive suggestion to improve Title III that we made for Title I. Any recipient of funds under Title III should be prohibited from spending even a dollar of the funds received on acquiring land or any permanent interest in land.
Title III has attracted a great deal of support from sportsmen, particularly hunters. I understand their reasons for being enthusiastic, but I would like to offer a word of caution. The benefits that S. 25 may provide for hunting and fishing and other kinds of recreation are far outweighed by the massive rate of increase in government land acquisition. While this may not be apparent immediately, the sad fact is that government land managers are now moving almost as quickly to restrict recreational activity on public lands as they have already moved to restrict economic activity.
Finally, let me say a very few words about the other bills that are having a hearing today. In regard to the Resources 2000 Act: if creating three new trust funds is a bad idea, then creating eight new trust funds is that much worse. I wonder whether the Congress might just as well consider creating automatic entitlements for every government program and then go home. The Public Land and Recreation Investment Act takes the most objectionable trust fund in S. 25 and makes it a freestanding bill. The National Park Preservation Act is really just a wrapper to provide guaranteed funding for the massively expensive Everglades restoration project, but at least it creates a trust fund to provide money to manage and protect our federal lands rather than acquire more land that we must then find the money to manage.
To sum up Frontiers of Freedom's objections to the massive increase in government land ownership that would occur if S. 25, S. 446, or S. 532 were enacted into law, I would return briefly to the principles upon which this country was founded. The American system of constitutionally-limited government was instituted in order to secure the blessings of life, liberty, and property to all citizens. The revolutionaries of 1776 and the delegates to the constitutional convention of 1787 were very familiar with the old political maxim that "power follows property." The more property government owns or controls, the less power the people retain. As the balance of power shifts towards government, the more difficult it becomes for the people to maintain the blessings of life, liberty, and property. For this reason, the founders would have opposed our vast federal estate just as surely as they would have opposed our confiscatory levels of taxation. As the debate proceeds on this legislation, I urge you to recall the wisdom of our founding generation.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I would be happy to answer any questions you or other members of the committee may have.
END

LOAD-DATE: May 6, 1999

Document 22 of 118.


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