Government Owned Land

The Federal Government seems to struggle with ways to balance what they spend against what they take in taxes from others. Here is another federal resource that the feds don't seem to think about when their budget is out of whack.

Our Federal Government owns nearly 30% of all the land in the country including Yellowstone National Park, the largest volcano in the world. When Yellowstone goes, so do we.

Most of you probably knew about Yellowstone, the surprising part of the previous sentence is that our Federal Government owns nearly one out of every three acres in our country. That’s a lot of land, and a huge cost to taxpayers.

In 2007 alone, the Federal Government spent $7 billion managing the 630 million acres it owns. Just for perspective, 630 million acres is slightly more than the combined land areas of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

That seems like a bit much, especially when our National debt is $16.6 trillion and growing. Maybe it’s about time Uncle Sam did a little fundraising in the form of selling some of this land. What? Obama is always talking about more revenue; it shouldn’t ALWAYS have to mean more taxes.

Of course, no one is saying that we should start selling our national parks or military bases. It’s time to realize that our land conservation dollars should be put to the best use possible.

For example, the Federal Government spends $58 million dollars implementing its federal grazing programs, while taking in approximately $12 million dollars in “revenue” from the leases to the land. They should at least break even or sell the land so taxpayers aren’t “losing” money on it anymore. New Zealand sold 99 year leases for much of their government lands. They realized billions up front and citizens can still use the land.

Another example is the US Forest service. This year, the Forest Service is expected to spend $4.86 billion, the problem is, due to decades of fire suppression policies and regulations preventing the thinning of forests, 90 to 200 million acres are in danger of catastrophic burning events. Not exactly money well spent.

Speaking of Forest Service mismanagement, Wisconsin has had its own problems with the way our natural resources have been managed in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Northern Wisconsin. The National Forest has not been meeting its harvest quotas. Resources are sitting idle and cost taxpayers instead of adding to the treasury.

Balance is also crucial at the state level.

Some people have gotten upset about the Governor’s plan to authorize the sale of land from the state holdings. What these people fail to realize is that public land already accounts for 16.5 percent of Wisconsin’s total land area (when you add in public buildings, parks, and other localgovernment owned property this percentage is closer to 25%) and these people seem to think there should be more public land.

Most of these liberals also want more government programs. The problem is, more land in public ownership means more cost for land management and more land will be taken off the tax rolls, increasing the cost to taxpayers for paying our teachers, firefighters and other important services.

Wisconsin has beautiful state parks and other state lands, and they should be kept. When 25 percent of land is already owned by governments, if we decide to add more land to government holdings, we should sell less valuable land for private use and enjoyment (and tax revenue). We should have a reasonable balance. How much government land is too much?