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The Columbus Dispatch
www.dispatch.com
Property rights: Bill would limit landowners' options
Thursday, September 28, 2000
Some state lawmakers can't seem to decide whether they
want to preserve open space. Even as they approved a plan
to put State Issue 1 on the ballot, asking voters to OK
$400 million in bonds to preserve such space and pay for
other environmental programs, some Ohio legislators wanted
to block the Wayne National Forest from purchasing land
for the same purposes.
House Bill 441, sponsored by Rep. Nancy P. Hollister,R-Marietta,
would place a four- year moratorium on land purchases by
the U.S. Forest Service for the Wayne in southeastern Ohio.
The measure now sits before the Senate Energy, Natural Resources
and Environment Committee, having passed the Ohio House.
The bill is a bad idea -- one that would infringe upon
a property owner's ability to sell willingly to a buyer,
in this case the federal government, at fair market value.
Further, most of the land targeted for purchase has few,
if any, likely buyers other than the Forest Service.
Hollister and other supporters have tried to wrap the issue
in "save-our-schools'' rhetoric, saying tax-exempt
land in the Wayne is a cash drain for the region's school
districts. But an analysis of local tax data prepared by
the Forest Service renders that argument moot: The national
forest accounts for less than 3 percent of the assessed
property value in each of the 12 counties that have property
within the forest. Most of the land targeted for purchase
is not yielding high dollars for schools and is unlikely
to be purchased for development.
At the same time, the bill doesn't take into account the
economic benefits of forest land, from tourism dollars to
sales and income taxes paid by the staff and visitors.
Meanwhile, an associate regional attorney for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture says the bill would have no effect
on the Forest Service's ability to continue to acquire lands
for the Wayne because the state long ago reached an agreement
with the federal government for such acquisitions and cannot
unilaterally rescind that deal.
The measure should die a quiet and well- deserved death.
Property owners should be able to decide to whom they sell
their land. The U.S. Forest Service, which would like to
bridge the gaps in what is now in many places a patchwork
of private and public lands, is a deserving buyer.
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