I'd like to see an economic analysis done on the deal that analyzes the short-term vs. long-term economic gain for the state of Arizona (and their schools) as $800/acre for nearly 17K acres that will never again produce for the people of Arizona and may end up costing taxpayers eventually much, much more to clean-up seems to me like a very unwise (and unprofitable) deal not to mention at all the "non-economic" values this land provides. Having stated this, our lifestyles incorporate a lot of copper used on a daily basis, including electric cars, so I guess it's complicated like pretty much everything else...
AZ sells 26 square miles of State Trust Land
- Thread starter Oak
- Start date
Irrelevant
Well-known member
If I were a resident of AZ I'd be pushing for an amendment to the state land board policies (in WA it's in the State Constitution), where all proceeds from land sales must be used for additional land purchases. It's worked out well for us, allows the State to surplus in holdings within suburbia, but maintains (or actually increases) our overall state holdings. We also petitioned to have the DNR managed trust lands consider recreation a valid use of the lands, only second to revenue.
It's a bummer that many State don't seem to be playing the long game. We're not making more land.
It's a bummer that many State don't seem to be playing the long game. We're not making more land.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Matt,
Please go back read my previous post. Regarding the simple sale of the land, I assure you an economic analysis was done and the proceeds will continue to generate returns for the people of Arizona. It will just do so in a different way.
When the system that created all these State Land Trusts were created, land was how people made a living. That just isn't the case anymore. the only way to get tax payers on board is to make it worth the effort.
This is the crux of the issue related to state trust land management. There is no requirement to manage these lands for the greatest good over the greatest period of time. It's about feeding a trust to pay for schools, etc. It was an elegant solution in it's day, but it fails to live up to modern economics & sentiment about land use. Unless we want to change the constituitions of each state to allow for conservation practices to become part of the const. edict on trust lands, the idea of conserving them for the long term economic benefit of all is a legally tenuous argument to make.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Agree. An argument can be made that the system is operating exactly how it was set up to operate. As communities grow, the State Land Trusts can either use the land to build schools, sell them directly to generate funds to do the same, or find alternative uses that generate income. You can Google the various ways states generate revenue off these lands. Let me know if you see "Hunting" or "Outdoor Recreation" anywhere in the list. Placing a value on retaining them into perpetuity has to involve the assignment of value through tourism and license sales. For example, the economic reality is there is no way the state of Idaho will make more money selling timber rights on its lands than it would selling the land and investing the proceeds in the S&P 500.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
All appraisals include the potential income produced from the property.
I hear what you both are saying but I just have a hard time believing that this decision will be looked back upon by posterity seven generations from now agreeably. Leasing STL for hunting purposes is indeed a practice here in Colorado and I believe that CPW has actually matched/outbid the "going rate" in some cases to provide publicly accessible state lands for hunting rather than it being locked up by outfitters. State-sanctioned "improvements" on the land can take many forms depending on it's location, natural resources etc. and I would just love to sit on a clearinghouse of sorts where parcels of land could be evaluated and their respective potential improvements mulled; while different in many ways, I do believe there are corollaries to past land sales such as the Louisiana Purchase, Gadsden Purchase or Alaska and I believe the answer is clear as to whom benefited in the long run from such sales.
As I posted a few years ago on this forum and from Linklater's book Owning The Earth, a letter was sent in 1990 to Mikhail Gorbachev by 30 American economists from institutions such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan and MIT (including an eventual president of the American Economic Association) that urged him to not sell off government land for a number of reasons including the low return the government would obtain by selling outright and the loss of sustainable and increasing returns that these lands could generate for the government; these returns could then be used to finance public services which would then increase land value further and allow governments to collect further on these capital gains.
If you have a link to that economic study, please provide.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Every western state has a state investment committee that hires a consultant that does the analysis (for “independence”). Who sits on that committee matters. And by Who I mean if they wear a red shirt or blue shirt (there, I said it). But I will guarantee that the numbers for selling are always much more tangible and defendable than the numbers for alternative uses. I’m sorry, but there is no comparison here to the Louisiana Purchase or Russia selling Alaska or Gorbachev or anything else. Too often, the value of the land is mostly determined by the usable resources under it. See Williston ND as an example.
