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Senator: U.S. Forest Service owes state money

Samuel Wilson | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 years, 8 months AGO
by Samuel Wilson
| February 22, 2015 8:00 PM

According to state Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, the U.S. Forest Service has been welshing on its financial obligation to Montana for sales of public land spanning more than a century.

Senate Bill 298, passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday morning, would direct the state Attorney General’s office to recover a 5 percent share of those sales, which she said are owed to the state’s permanent school fund per Montana’s enabling act.

“This was a little-known kind of sidebar that we came upon when we were doing the federal lands study during the interim,” Fielder said.

When Montana was created, all federal land in the state was held by the Department of Interior, which Fielder noted appears to have continued making its five percent payments on its land sales.

However, it transferred all national forest land to the Forest Service, managed by the Department of Agriculture, in 1905. Since then, Fielder said the state hasn’t seen any money from national forest land sales.

“Presently, 17 million of 27 million acres of federal public lands in Montana are under the administration of the Department of Agriculture,” she said. “I expect that had those funds been deposited into our permanent school fund over the last [110] years, that principal would have accumulated some notable revenues for our school fund.”

The money in that permanent fund cannot be spent but the state uses the interest on the account to help fund public education.

She added that while she did not have the exact numbers, she estimated the federal agency has sold about 70,000 acres of national forest land in Montana.

No opponents spoke on the bill. Joe Balyeat, from the conservative political action committee Americans for Prosperity, commended Fielder on her bill, but the senator was quick to correct his assertion that it was part of her ongoing effort to transfer federal public lands in Montana to the state.

“This is not dealing with the transfer of public lands … this is a completely separate, obscure little thing that I discovered during our interim committee,” she said.

Responding to a question from Sen. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, Forest Service representative John Hagangruber stated the agency’s position but did not offer opposition to the proposal.

“It’s the position of the Forest Service that since the National Forest Service lands are reserved from the public domain, they are not subject to [the enabling act].”

Jon Bennion, speaking for the attorney general, said his office anticipates the bill would mean adding an additional full-time attorney and paralegal to work on the issue for four years. Fielder objected, however, saying far fewer resources would be needed to calculate the lost revenue and send an invoice to the Agriculture Department.

The committee voted 10-1 in favor of the bill, after Sands added an amendment giving the attorney general the ability to determine whether the funds are viable to pursue.


Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com

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