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.