Bill Seen As a Compromise to Save Land Looks to Be Dead
By Aaron Mackey and Tim Ellis, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
May 17–A proposal billed as a compromise to preserve sensitive state land around Tucson appears doomed because it doesn’t do enough to satisfy conservationists or education lobbyists.
It’s unclear whether the measure, which would set aside 68,000 acres on the Northwest and Southeast sides for conservation, or any other state land reform will be taken up again next year.
Nicole Fyffe, executive assistant to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, said county officials are aware the legislation appears dead for this year.
“We had been told at the beginning that it was a long shot,” Fyffe said Tuesday.
House Continuing Resolution 2039 was viewed by its author, Rep. John Nelson, R-Phoenix, and supporters as a slimmed-down version of past land-preservation proposals rejected by Arizona voters.
The proposal would have given local governments and conservation groups a chance to buy state land without having it go to a public auction, which is how state land is currently sold.
The State Land Department is required to sell the land to make money for a number of state programs, including public education, so department officials try to get as much money as possible from selling state land.
That makes it expensive to buy land for conservation — and that’s why Pima County officials are disappointed at the apparent demise of the legislation, Fyffe said.
County officials will resume other efforts to acquire land for conservation, such as buying development rights to lands, which would preserve them from development, she said.
But State Land Department officials are reluctant to do that, because the agency earns less money that way than selling land outright in auctions, Fyffe said.
County officials try to avoid buying state land from the department in auctions, she said, because “chances are, we’d be outbid” — by developers.
The county does not have enough money to buy all the ecologically sensitive lands around the county that could be in the path of development, Fyffe said.
It still has bond funds to buy land in a few high-priority areas, including Tumamoc Hill, west of Tucson, and the Tortolita Fan, on the Northwest Side, she said.
The amount of land that would have been set aside for preservation under the legislation — 196,000 acres — was much lower than sought in past referendums, and the bill didn’t create complex changes to the State Land Department.
However, it appears the bill has been held up by opponents because it wasn’t comprehensive enough. Lukewarm support — and, in some cases, opposition — from conservation groups didn’t help, either.
The resolution passed through the House earlier this year but has since been stalled in the Senate.
With the legislative session dragging into summer and a state budget still needed, lobbyists said the bill likely won’t move before the session ends.
Calls to the bill’s sponsor and Senate President Tim Bee, R-Tucson, were not immediately returned.
The proposal’s biggest opponent — the Arizona Education Association — has serious concerns about whether the sales would generate enough money for education and the lack of oversight in those transactions.
“We were never fully satisfied that the long-term financial interest of the trust was served,” said Andrew Morrill, vice president of AEA, about the State Land Department’s trust.
Also, because the bill didn’t help the State Land Department by creating more staff or long-term planning, it set a very dangerous precedent for meddling with the state constitution, Morrill said. “It just wasn’t comprehensive enough.”
But the simplicity of the bill is what others had banked on, as past proposals to change state land have been viewed as too complex for voters to digest, said Sandy Bahr, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club. That includes last fall’s failure of Propositions 105 and 106.
The Sierra Club took a neutral stance on the bill because it had flaws but represented a way to conserve land.
The measure has never satisfied conservation groups, including the Nature Conservancy, because it didn’t preserve enough land. But it was a good start, Bahr said.
“The thinking behind it was, let’s see if we can do a relatively narrow proposal and demonstrate that land could be conserved,” Bahr said. “If you could show that, we could come back in the future.”
Bill Adamson, a Green Valley resident and chairman of the Committee to Save the West Desert Preserve, was in favor of the proposal for the very same reason.
His group got the West Desert Preserve — a 2,073-acre swath of land just west of Green Valley — added to the measure.
“This was an opportunity to take a small step forward in being able to conserve some state land,” he said. “Some people were against it because it didn’t go far enough, and some were against it because they didn’t want even that small step taken.”
But Morrill said there’s an opportunity to sell voters on future proposals that may be more comprehensive.
“The answer is not to rush some sort of piecemeal approach onto the ballot,” he said. “Voters understand the value of protecting a valuable asset.”
Bahr said another proposal may never see the light of day because comprehensive change requires a broad coalition between lawmakers, conservationists, developers and the education lobby.
“The problem is that when you put something in there for everyone to love, you put something in there for everyone to hate,” she said.
–Contact reporter Aaron Mackey at 618-1924 or amackey@azstarnet.com. Contact reporter Tim Ellis at 807-8414 or tellis@azstarnet.com.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.