Review of land exchanges may put deals on hold

Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002 | 11:17 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- The Interior Department is planning a three-month review of all federal land exchanges across the West after a report sharply criticized its land-swap program.

The program, administered by the department's Bureau of Land Management, is designed in part to trade federal public lands to private owners in exchange for more environmentally sensitive property.

Six pending land deals in Nevada, including one in Clark County involving Lake Las Vegas, would be under review and may now be on hold given the new Interior Department directive, officials in the Nevada offices of the Bureau of Land Management said today. There is no evidence of anything inappropriate with the Nevada deals, BLM officials said.

The report said that the BLM's land appraisal process in some cases might have violated federal law. The report, produced by the nonprofit, Washington-based Appraisal Foundation and released last week, said the program was "rife with internal dissatisfaction, confusion, controversy, and outside political pressures."

At its heart the criticism suggests that the agency has not always gotten good deals for taxpayers in land trades.

The report prompted the BLM to announce a 90-day review of all land exchanges in 12 Western states, although the review has not officially begun or been defined, one BLM spokesman in Washington said today.

Several Nevada BLM field office spokeswomen said they are still waiting for directions from Washington headquarters.

"We're worried about the integrity of the program," Jim Hughes, BLM's deputy director for policy and programs, said last week when the review was announced. "The integrity of the program has been challenged, and we want to be sure it is preserved."

The Interior Department's inspector general requested the report a year ago, in part because of controversy surrounding some exchanges.

"We certainly felt (the report) was an appropriate measure to get our house in order," BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said.

The Appraisal Foundation recommended the Justice Department investigate the land exchanges because "it appears that violations of law may have occurred."

The foundation urged an immediate moratorium on all land exchanges and recommended that a new agency be allowed to appraise the land.

However, Hughes said the BLM handles more than 250 exchanges a year and such a moratorium "would throw a lot of (exchanges) ... into complete chaos."

"That's too drastic a step," he said, adding that he did not believe the report's conclusion that there were widespread political pressures being exerted by BLM managers on regional land appraisers.

Christopher Krupp, a staff attorney for the Western Land Exchange Project in Seattle, said he was not surprised by the latest report's findings.

"The appraisal process within BLM was highly politicized, and it just backs up what we've been saying, which is that the BLM appraisal process is fundamentally flawed and needs to be thoroughly revamped," Krupp said. "The process is broken and the public is getting harmed by this. We're losing millions of dollars every year."

The program scrutiny comes years after Nevada lawmakers sponsored landmark 1998 legislation called the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which directed the BLM to sell public lands in Clark County at auction, as opposed to trading it. The legislation was designed to both free up federal land for development and to get top dollar for taxpayers.