Legislature(1997 - 1998)
03/26/1997 03:40 PM Senate RES
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
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+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
SB 108 STATE LAND LOTTERY PROGRAM
CHAIRMAN HALFORD announced SB 108 to be up for consideration.
Number 400
SENATOR TAYLOR, sponsor, said the west was developed by allowing
people to have a stake in property; and private land ownership of
any magnitude is virtually absent in Alaska.
One major covenant of statehood was that Alaska was granted title
to over 105 million acres of land by the federal government. To
date a minor portion of that land has been turned over to
municipalities and an even less significant amount has been put
into individual hands. The exception has been the lands granted to
native corporations under ANCSA and even that land has not been
transferred to individuals. Rather, it has been managed by the
corporate entities.
This legislation proposes to annually grant 1 million acres of land
to Permanent Fund Dividend recipients. The average parcel awarded
would be 40 acres in size. Parcels of land would be as small as 5
acres and larger for agricultural uses. Assuming 40 acres is the
average size of the parcels, an estimated 25,000 permanent fund
recipients would win parcels annually. He further outlined the
terms of the land grants. He said winners would be selected at
random and would be notified via their permanent fund check or by
first class mail.
MR. TERRY OTNESS, Staff to Senator Taylor, noted that AS38.14.020
had been left out of the bill. He explained that during drafting
the bill some significant archaeological finds, over 6,000 year-old
graves, had been discovered on Prince of Wales Island and there was
some concern that they might be desecrated. So a provision for
scientific research and transfer of land was added. The other
issue was AS 38.14.060, the retention of rights-of-ways, where
language was clarified to mean when land was put into a parcel of
property, if there was an opportunity and a municipality took over
title and ownership of that piece of road, they would be able to
retain these rights. The other significant change was providing
for an application procedure for the land on the permanent fund
dividend application, so if people fraudulently obtained land,
there would be some way of dealing with them.
SENATOR TAYLOR said he spent a lot of time trying to figure out how
to pick out the land, but he thought it was best to leave it up to
the department.
Number 335
SENATOR GREEN asked if he had considered how the land should be
priced. SENATOR TAYLOR said there was a lot of discussion on that
and the approach he takes is the land is useless at this point, as
long as it sits in State ownership, because it will take 15 years
of committee hearings before they decide to do anything other than
lock something up in a park. He also thought that as long as land
remains in State ownership, it's not a resource producer; it's a
resource extractor as we hire more and more people to study and
worry over it. There is nothing done to create wealth out of that
land.
SENATOR GREEN said she is working on changing some agriculture land
to perpetual covenant and there are a lot of hoops to go through to
get a fair price for the change in status for the ability to build
a house.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD noted that the interest on winning the lottery is
freely transferable and asked if that was before staking or filing
or at any point on the way. SENATOR TAYLOR said it was
transferable any point along the way and his concern was to help
some people who receive a couple of parcels of land and don't have
enough money to meet the additional requirements that would be
necessary to result in transference of the land.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked if he was considering 25,000 parcels.
SENATOR TAYLOR replied that was the ball park. CHAIRMAN HALFORD
asked him to explain why the parcels are exempt from AS 38.04 and
AS 38.05. SENATOR GREEN explained that was for cadastral survey.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD said he thought that the parcels, offered in
quarters of quarters of quarters of quarters within a township in
a range, in the bill would be impossible to find if a survey wasn't
required. This could be offered in an unsurveyed township in an
unsurveyed section by a parcel as small as five acres.
TAPE 97-22, SIDE A
Number 001
SENATOR TAYLOR pointed out that there are over 615,000 acres
currently sitting on the shelf aliquot surveyed by the department.
that could be half of this year's allotment.
Number 40
MS. SUE SCHRADER, Executive Director, Alaska Environmental Lobby,
said that all Alaskans currently enjoy the benefits of using the
105 million acres of State land and would be surprised to hear that
this land is useless to us. People who have enjoyed recreating,
hunting, or doing subsistence activity on State land don't consider
it useless.
MS. SCHRADER said this bill would create an unnecessary, expensive,
staff time-intensive, give-away program that may benefit a few
individuals, but would have significant diminished opportunities
for the majority of Alaskans who share in the natural resources.
The State lands are held in trust for all of us by our State
government. The Public Trust Doctrine, which contains the
legislature's fiduciary responsibilities, is a strong tradition in
Alaska's history and there are several provisions in this bill that
run counter to this provision. Specifically they are lands
exempted from AS 38.04 and AS 38.05, the planning classification
and disposal safeguards. These safeguards were developed after
considerable public participation and represent years of land
planning.
The bill makes reference to addressing the mandate of Article 8,
Section 10 of the State Constitution to provide prior public
notice. Yet it fails to acknowledge the rest of that particular
section and fails to assure Alaskans that the other safeguards of
their public interest will be met.
They are also concerned with the exemption from AS 38.14.080, the
coastal management program (ACMP). This program is very popular
with the many Alaskans who live and work in the coastal areas.
Exemption from ACMP is an affront to all Alaskans who work with
State agencies to ensure the safeguards necessary for the
responsible stewardship of our resources are observed. Just
because land is transferred into private hands does not mean these
safeguards that affect all of us should be suspended.
MS. SCHRADER said land disposal programs already exist and would
work if adequate funding were provided to DNR for implementation of
them.
Lastly, she said, this is a costly give-away program and not
fiscally responsible. When the legislature is cutting agencies'
budgets, it makes no sense to initiate an expensive program with
goals that could be met just as effectively if existing programs
were adequately funded.
SENATOR LEMAN said he thought she made many good points, but he has
a basic philosophical difference with her in calling private
ownership of land the ultimate lockup. Whenever we think the best
use of land is for it to be used communally it misses the point
that people like to have their own property. However, he thinks
that people have to be responsible with how they use that property
and there are things in the bill to make sure that takes place.
MS. SCHRADER responded that she has disagreed with many of the
comments she has heard, particularly working with Channel Island
State Marine Park, about the lock-up of land in State parks.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked if she advocated reopening the existing land
disposal programs on the books. MS. SCHRADER said she isn't that
familiar with land disposal programs and couldn't comment at this
point. She added that the Lobby is not endorsing a no-land
disposal process.
MS. NANCI JONES, Director, Permanent Fund Dividend, said she hoped
their division could have a very, very, small part in this by
simply handing the name and addresses to the Department of Natural
Resources. To be more involved would be costly and they are trying
to move away from a paper intensive operation. They handle over 8
million pieces of paper and just the application process and is
very labor intensive. She said as their application exists today
there is no more room for anything else on it.
MS. JONES said they submitted a $0 fiscal note with the
understanding that they could just give them files with names and
addresses. If they notify people on the dividend, they would have
to stop an automated process in the check run and look for
individuals throughout 500,000 checks.
SENATOR TAYLOR said that was fine with him as long as they did
random selections based on applications.
SENATOR LEMAN commented that for the first time this year he
recalls seeing the Governor's picture. MS. JONES said that was on
the cover of the application booklet which was her idea since it is
a 20th anniversary commemorative issue.
Number 260
MR. BILL PERHACH said he lives in McKinley Village and is in Juneau
for six weeks to work with the Alaska Environmental Lobby. He said
he disagrees with the finding section of the bill. He thought it
might end up reducing the quality of life in the bush and rural
communities. He explained for the Denali Borough to get their
municipal entitlement, 50,000 - 70,000 acres, the Land Use Planning
Committee had to complete their comprehensive plan. It took them
three years to put it together and in the process they became
enlightened about the importance of planning. One of the things
about this bill that bothers him is that it doesn't pay any
attention to planning. If you are going to encourage development
without planning, at the very least it's short-sighted and probably
irresponsible. He used the example of Glitter Gulch for a place
that hadn't been planned with issues like safety and access in
mind.
MR. PERHACH said if they are talking about adding large acreages to
communities and plugging into the State they are going to have the
regular services. Another big problem is access. Trails follow
the contours of land, not section lines; and none of the ones he
uses qualifies for an RS2477. He said that once a person is in a
remote area in order to survive, he has to be able to go somewhere
and get a job. Survey costs would be very expensive as there are
no markers or monuments.
The chain of title for a lot of small parcels is very clouded like
they were with the mental health trust lands. He said people in
his community want to have access to land, but not to remote
parcels. They want land they can build a home on and raise a
family. He said ANCSA picked the best lands next to roads and
rights-of-way and detailed planning was needed to work with the
access issue.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD agreed with him that there is pressure out there
for land. MR. PERHACH said this would actually add to the problem
because it's another bad plan. CHAIRMAN HALFORD said that the
development side says that planning is an excuse for inaction; and
the environmental community says that development is without
planning at all.
Number 429
MS. JANE ANGVIK, Director, Division of Land, said she would answer
their questions and would be happy to come back at another time, as
well.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD asked her to get a summary of any land offerings
by the State in any classification. She answered that she would
get that to him and they had a significant land disposal in 1995 of
over 424 parcels and 53 homesteads for about 2,500 acres. Their
problem now is that they don't have any money to implement a
disposal program right now. She thought there was room for
conversation about a disposal program between no land disposal and
1 million acres a year.
CHAIRMAN HALFORD told her to get her information together and they
would have that discussion. He then adjourned the meeting at 5:47
p.m.
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