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Utah Deals: Are Ripping Off The U.S.? Ex-Appraiser at BLM Says Trade Values Not Equal
Utah Deals: Are Ripping Off The U.S.? Ex-Appraiser at BLM Says Trade Values Not Equal
Utah Deals: Are Ripping Off The U.S.? Ex-Appraiser at BLM Says Trade Values Not Equal
Edition: All
Page: A01
Two massive land deals between the state and federal government -- trumpeted by Utah
Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as models of state-federal
cooperation -- have become the target of two federal investigations.
And another land deal, the recently proposed exchange involving West Desert wilderness
areas, could fall under similar scrutiny.Federal investigators with the Interior Department's
Solicitor's Office and the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, are
looking into whether American taxpayers were or may be left holding the bag for deals
whereby the state received or will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal assets in
return for state lands worth only a small fraction of that.
"Regardless of the goal, the end result should never justify unethical or illegal means in our
society, especially when the true costs of the lost public assets are so terribly disproportionate
to the benefits of the project," said Jack MacDonald, the recently retired chief appraiser for
the Utah office of the Bureau of Land Management.
MacDonald prompted the federal investigations, alleging that American taxpayers were
shafted in state-federal land deals that skirted federal laws and regulations.
According to Allen Freemyer, staff director for the House subcommittee on national parks
and public lands, the Utah investigations are extensions of a much larger probe into deals
for federal land in the Las Vegas area.
"It was a natural extension for those teams of investigators to come up to Utah," he said,
At issue is the value of hundreds of thousands of acres of state school trust lands that
were or may be traded for cash, minerals and federal land as part of three separate and
much-publicized land trades. The deals involve:
16,000 acres of private and state lands in Washington County to be acquired by the
federal government for habitat preservation for the endangered desert tortoise.
250,000 acres of state school trust lands isolated inside national parks, forests and Indian
reservations, and another 200,000 acres within the recently created Grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument.
107,000 acres of state trust lands locked inside proposed West Desert wilderness areas.
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MacDonald was a BLM insider during the first two of those deals, and he has, over the
course of his three-decade career as a federal appraiser, conducted appraisals on many of the
parcels involved in the third deal. He says the BLM and the state of Utah are embraced in a
conspiracy -- one where the state is walking away with assets worth as much as 50 to 100
times the lands it gave up.
Interior Department and state officials have dismissed MacDonald's claims. In fact, they
have characterized MacDonald as a malcontent who single-handedly brought major land
trades to a standstill because of his intransigent appraisals. Once he completed an appraisal,
neither hell nor high water would change his mind.
And, until he was pulled off the land trades, his was the last word.
Remembers one conservationist involved in negotiating the desert tortoise exchange,
"Everybody knew if you didn't get Jack MacDonald to sign off on the appraisal, the deal was
dead in the water. His word was final."
In fact, MacDonald's approval could make a deal happen as much as his disapproval
would kill it, much to the frustration of those involved in negotiating the trade. That
frustration boiled over when one deal after another was stymied.
Those involved in trying to make the deals happen -- state and federal officials,
conservationists and local county commissioners -- became increasingly outraged. Letters
were written to Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, pleading for help
to break the logjam.
And political fingers were pointed at MacDonald as the reason why the deals had stalled.
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The accusations are also being investigated by Janine Blaeloch with the Western Land
Exchange Project, a Seattle-based watchdog group that monitors land exchanges in 11
Western states. The group was organized to probe questionable land transfers involving U.S.
Forest Service deals with timber companies but has since expanded its focus to examine all
of the more than 300 government land trades conducted every year in the Western states.
"The Utah exchanges are the worst" of any in the country, Blaeloch said. In fact, she says
Utah is "making out like a bandit" in deals where it gives up relatively worthless lands in
exchange for high-value, high-potential lands owned by the American public.
"There is so much anti-government sentiment it is easy for politicians to make these quick
deals to resolve conflicts. And frankly, the Clinton administration has been very amenable to
placating those sentiments in doing those deals knowing full well the American public is
being ripped off. Yet it is a price they are willing to pay to resolve these conflicts."
The conflicts are being resolved at the expense of the public, Blaeloch said.
Not only were appraisals not done in the case of the Grand Staircase-Escalante exchange
(nor for the pending West Desert trade), but the public was excluded from any participation.
No analyses were conducted of environmental impacts, no surveys were conducted to
determine what resources were present on the lands and no Utah public hearings were
held, she added.
A fair deal?
"I can't honestly believe someone is saying the federal government is being screwed," said
Brad Barber, deputy director of the governor's Office of Planning and Budget, as well as
Leavitt's chief negotiator in the land trades.
"If it was not a fair deal, it was not going to happen," he added. "Was it a fair deal?
Absolutely."
But what is a fair deal?
Barber insists a fair deal comes about when both sides sit down at a table and negotiate a
middle ground between what each side thinks the land is worth. And both sides came out
of the Utah land negotiations feeling good about the deals that were reached.
In the case of the 200,000 acres of state lands traded out of the Grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument, Barber admits that no official appraisals were conducted. Nor
were they done for the West Desert wilderness deal announced May 4.
But what negotiators in both cases looked at was value, both in terms of "comparable sales"
and the value of the state lands as developable cabin sites if they had been sold by the state
vs. the value to the federal government to preserve those lands as park or wilderness values.
It's something called "public interest value," and in the parlance of land traders it means
that lands that may appear worthless because they seem to have low development potential
actually have very real scenic and wilderness values.
"We have people protesting in Washington saying what great value these lands have to the
people of America as wilderness," Barber said. "Then it should be worth something (to the
American people) not to have these lands developed."
But was it an equal trade?
MacDonald has estimated the value of the 450,000 acres of school trust lands involved
in the Grand Staircase exchange to be $70 million to $80 million. But Leavitt boasted at the
time of the trade the school trust could see a return of as much as $1 billion from the deal
over the next 30 years.
"Who came up with the determination that that was of approximate equal value?"
MacDonald said.
At the time, Babbitt even joked he should fire his negotiators because the state got such a
good deal -- a joke opponents of the deal point to as tacit acknowledgment that the
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Words: 2268
Section: Local
Illustration: (Caption #2: James MacDonald)
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