Spending plan for land-sale funds to face scrutiny

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

Comments

Residents may comment on the proposal from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday in the main conference room of the BLM office, 4765 Vegas Drive. Written comments will be accepted through the close of business Feb. 25.

As the cash from federal land sales continues rolling in, officials in charge of the money are trying to figure out how to spend it.

Mike Dwyer, project manager for the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, has released a proposal outlining how federal officials will decide how to spend their share.

The draft, dated Dec. 21, is up for public scrutiny through Feb. 25. Residents can give their comments at meetings in Las Vegas on Wednesday and Reno on Feb. 10.

The selling part of the 1998 law is chugging right along. A little more than 3,539 acres of urban-locked Bureau of Land Management land in Clark County have been auctioned off for about $77 million.

Under the act, 85 percent of the money from the land sales goes into a special fund used for buying environmentally sensitive land, building local parks and trails, paying for projects within the Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan and making capital improvements on existing federal land.

Ten percent helps pay for Southern Nevada water projects, and the remaining 5 percent goes into public education coffers.

The 33-page document explains who would nominate sensitive lands for purchase and suggest capital improvements and how the projects would be ranked and chosen.

Critics say they don't have huge problems with the proposed criteria for choosing sensitive land and projects. The process of who gets input into the recommendations and when they can comment is drawing fire.

The proposal doesn't give the general public or local government officials enough say where it counts, Jane Feldman of the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada Chapter said.

"There is no place for meaningful public comment in the decision-making process," Feldman said. "It's kind of a shame to make a huge public process that's unwieldy, but it's only fair when there's so much money at stake. We want to be a part of that."

Sierra Club members were among those who attended a public meeting in May to help figure out how the process should work. The December draft does not adequately address the concerns participants raised about early public involvement in that meeting, Feldman said.

The management plan isn't the final stop for spending decisions. It is for making final recommendations to the Department of the Interior secretary, who has to give final approval for all land purchases and projects.

Cindy Trulove, of the Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan administered by Clark County, said the pecking order for making those recommendations places the local contingency at the very bottom.

That needs to change, she said. Those voices need to be heard in the working group on the process' next level. Right now the working group is composed of only federal officials.

"We need public participation in the working group that makes those recommendations to the secretary," Trulove said.

The absence of local government officials and residents among members of the working group violates the spirit of the act, which says the Interior secretary will coordinate decisions with local government, Alan Pinkerton, assistant planning manager for Clark County Comprehensive Planning, said.

"That's the heart of the issue," Pinkerton said. "The units of local government and the residents were very much responsible and involved in creation of the bill that became the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. The reason for the success of that bill was local support, and we want that support to continue."

Dwyer emphasized that the document is not a final plan and that all concerns will be heard.

"That's the reason why we've got this thing out in draft. If they've got some suggestions, that would be great," he said.

Dwyer said officials from the state Department of Natural Resources also have asked that projects receive additional consideration if they are endorsed by a state or local agency.

"That's kind of a cool idea. If we can get that kind of input in the comment process, that's what we're looking for," Dwyer said.

The proposal outlines the minimum criteria sensitive land must meet in order to be considered for purchase. It includes a scoring system where the proposed purchase parcels earn points for nine additional characteristics, after they meet the minimum requirements.

It also says up to 25 percent of the act's money may be spent on capital improvements on the 6.1 million acres in Clark County that are managed by the BLM, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Those projects also would be scored and ranked with costs being taken into account.

The point system was drawn from a similar plan used for spending federal land and water conservation money, Dwyer said. Extra points were added for projects in Clark County, because the 1998 act calls for making those a priority.

Local Sierra Club members are concerned that acquisition of land isn't given a big enough priority over construction of infrastructure, Feldman said. And she admits the organization has always been suspicious of the land management act.

Its passage and the current push for similar measures in Northern and Western Nevada suggest a trend toward placing the public's acreage into private hands, she said. Pavement and tract housing are sure to follow if aggressive conservation steps are not taken within these plans.

"We aren't sure conservation is going to be served," Feldman said. "It's almost just a huge transfer from public to private land. It looks like a push to convert federal lands into private lands for development."