Wednesday, May 24, 2000 (Washington)

RE: HR 701 - S25

Outer Continental Shelf Revenue Sharing Land Acquisition Trust Proposals Views of Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition (Chuck Cushman, Coordinator) June 6, 2000

The leading organization educating the public about the harm expected from enactment of HR701/S25 is the Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition. The individual with the greatest knowledge in the country about the problems with this bill is undoubtedly their coordinator, Chuck Cushman. Mr. Cushman has over thirty years experience representing landowners in federally managed areas. He founded the National Inholders Association and is now also Executive Director of the American Land Rights Association.

He prepared a superb history and analysis for the June 1999 House Resources Committee hearing on HR701 in Salt Lake City. Not only was Mr. Cushman not allowed to testify, his testimony wasn't even printed in the hearing record! The proceedings were heavily slanted in favor of hearing instead the pleas of agencies and organizations that were to receive the largesse of funds to be distributed under the bill certainly self serving testimony of highly predicable and minimally informative content.

This suppression of an outstanding scholarly treatise on the subject of federal government land acquisition and accompanying destruction of communities and citizen abuse has deprived the Congress and the public of critical information needed to evaluate and improve the subject bills. Grave doubt is cast on the credibility of the process in the House when a hearing is slanted in this way.

I have faith that the Senate will do a much better job of thoughtful deliberation on such a fundamental matter as buying massive amounts of private land with off budget trust funds.

I ask that the attached testimony of Mr. Cushman be included in the printed record of your committee hearing.

Sincerely yours,

Lee Ann Gerhart 3818 Clay Products Road Anchorage Alaska 99517

KEEP PRIVATE LANDS IN PRIVATE HANDS COALITION PO Box 423, Battle Ground WA 98604 (360) 687-2471

Testimony by Chuck Cushman, Coordinator Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition Executive Director American Land Rights Association (Formerly the National Inholders Association) House Resources Committee US House of Representatives Honorable Don Young, Chairman Honorable Jim Hansen, Presiding June 12, 1999 Salt Lake City, Utah Conservation and Reinvestment Act (HR-701) Permanent Protection for America's Resources 2000 Act Clinton/Gore Lands Legacy Initiative

We regret that we were denied the opportunity to testify in person at the hearing in Salt Lake as were many other organizations that requested to testify. We will share our concerns about HR-701, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 1999, HR-798 and the Clinton/Gore Lands Legacy Initiative. We have considerable personal on the ground experience with how the Land and Water Conservation Fund really works, and the policies and practices of the Federal land agencies as they carry out their land acquisition programs. If HR-701 or any of these other bills and initiatives become law it will make land acquisition in America far more threatening to the future of America. We compliment Chairman Don Young on his most distinguished career in Congress and the good he has done for multiple use and conservation in general. We feel, however, that HR-701 is a misguided response to a demand by several powerful special interest groups for a new entitlement and subsidy giving them a disproportionate share of our country's natural resources and an automatic yearly hand in the Federal treasury. I am Charles S. Cushman, Coordinator of the Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition and Executive Director of the American Land Rights Association. My father was a ranger for the National Park Service and I served the Park Service in the second Student Conservation Corps in Olympic National Park in 1959. I also served as a volunteer with the Audubon Society at what is now known as Channel Islands National Park. My son worked for the Park Service in the living history center in Wawona, Yosemite National Park and I served as a member of the National Park System Advisory Board from 1981 to 1984. I have personally visited most Park Service areas where land acquisition has taken place in recent years as well as many other Federal areas.

The Keep Private Lands in Private Hands Coalition opposes HR-701, HR-798 and the Lands Legacy Initiative. It has over 600 organizations supporting it including the following:

Citizens for a Sound Economy

Americans For Tax Reform

 Independent Forest Products Association

 National Tax Limitation Committee

Alliance for America National Wilderness Institute

American Agri-Women Defenders of Property Rights

 Pennsylvania Landowners Association

 Private Landowners of Wisconsin

 Riverside Farm Bureau CA

Schohrie Farm Bureau NY

Republican Party of Riverside County CA

Women Involved In Farm Economics -WIFE

Stop Taking Our Property - IN

Niobrara Basin Dev. Association NE

Small Property Owners Association

American Policy Center

Mt. St. Helen Trackriders WA

Multiple Use Association ME/NH

Associated Industries of Vermont

Frontiers of Freedom

American Land Rights Association - WA

Citizens For Constitutional Property Rights FL

People for the Constitution NV

Public Lands for the People CA

Competitive Enterprise Institute DC

New Mexico Public Lands Council

Environmental Conservation Organization

Frontiers of Freedom WY

Property Rights Foundation of America - NY

Alabama Family Alliance

NY Blue Line Council

Property Rights Alliance WA

Klamath All. for Resources and Environment CA

Eastern Oregon Mining Association

Citizens for Private Property Rights MO

Keep ME Posted ME

Maine Property Rights Alliance

NW Council of Governments WA

Riverside & Landowners Protection Coalition TX

Clearwater Resource Coalition

MT Montana Women Involved In Farm Economics

Take Back Kentucky

High Desert Multiple-Use Coalition

CA People for the USA

Rio Virgin -- UT

American Agriculture Movement, Inc.

Common Sense for Maine Forests

Washington Contract Loggers Association

Exotic Wildlife Association

TX Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise

Northeast Regional Forest Foundation VT

National Taxpayers Union

Montanans for Multiple-Use

Grassroots ESA Coalition

U. S. Taxpayers Alliance

Communities for a Great Northwest Black Hills Women In Timber --

SD Property Owners Standing Together -

VT Citizens for Private Property Rights

CA Fairness to Land Owners Committee --FLOC

Vermont Forest Products Association

Montana Mining Association

Illinois Agri-Women

NM Woolgrowers Action Committee

East Mojave Property Owners (CA)

Bootheel Heritage Association -

TX Fire Island

Nat. Seashore Adv. Board NY

California Outdoor Recreation League

People for the USA - Dent County, MO

People for the USA - Lander Valley, WY

Keep Maine Free

Washington County Alliance --

ME Blue Ribbon Coalition

Western Mining Council

CA Chamber of Commerce,

Wrangell AK

Arizona Trail Riders

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Assoc.

New Mexico Cattle Growers

New Mexico Woolgrowers

Maine Conservation Rights Institute

League of Private Property Voters

Texas Wildlife Association

Nat Assoc of Reversionary Prop Own. WA

Idaho Cattle Association

Curry County Oregon Project

Vermont Cabinet Makers

Clallam County WA

Adirondack Solidarity Alliance

Unorganized Territories United, Maine

Columbia Basin Environ. Council -- WA

People for the USA

Beaverhead MT

Pennsylvania Landowners Association

Rhode Island Wiseuse

Pennsylvania Forest Industry Association

North Shore Association -- MI

Wind River Multiple Use Advocates --

WY Family Water Alliance -- CA

Take Back Arkansas

Citizens Against Refuge Proposal -- OH

Hill Country Heritage Association -- TX

Kankakee River Prop. Rts. Task Force -- IN

Davis Mountains Trans-Pecos Herit.

TX Trans

Texas Heritage Association

The American Land Rights Association, formerly the National Inholders Association, represents private landowners throughout the United States. Of special interest are those people owning private land or other interests within Federal boundaries or who are affected by Federal statute such as the Endangered Species Act and various Wetlands regulations. ALRA has over 18,000 members in 50 states and over 200 Federally managed areas. There are an estimated 1.2 million inholders nationwide. Many of these live in communities in National Forests who have now idea they are now threatened by a massive increase in land acquisition caused by HR-701.

Inholders are landowners in National Parks, refuges, forests and other Federal areas, recreation residence cabin owners and other special use permittees in National Forests, ranchers in areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, small miners on Federal lands, all kinds of inholders in and adjacent to FWS Wildlife Refuges and many other types of rights holders. They are also people who are impacted by the management, regulation of and access to Federal areas.

The American Land Rights Association also works to support continued multiple-use and productive contributions from our Federal lands. Recreationists, miners, hunters, sportsmen, ranchers, landowners, permittees, handicapped, elderly, and many others are encouraged to cooperate to support access and multiple-use on our Federal lands and to oppose selfish single-use designations that limit access to millions of American families.

American Land Rights, National Inholders Association as it was called then, made a fateful decision in 1980 with the proposal by former Senator Alan Cranston to make Big Sur, California into a National Park. The idea of opposing parks was foreign to my personal beliefs but in the two years since our association was formed in 1978, we had been unable to stem the tide of abuses against landowners inside Federally managed areas. We had reduced them and stopped some when we heard about them in time, but overall, the wave continued.

We made a conscious decision that since we could not get the Park Service, and to a lesser extent other agencies, to stop abusing inholders inside Federal areas, we would begin to fight to keep people from becoming inholders. It was not an anti park decision. It was a pro people decision. Simply put, if we couldn't get the Federal Government to take care of the inholders they already had, we would try not to let them have any more inholders. HR-701 clearly justifies our decision. If HR-701 passes, any families we had allowed to become inholders would now be subject to being aggressively eliminated over time. HR-701 is actually anti-conservation because it says that if people do a good job of taking care of nice places, they will be rewarded by being thrown out of those places.

"Those That Fail to Remember History Are Bound To Repeat It" To date little has been done by the Congress or the Federal agencies to respond to the following reports by the General Accounting Office critical of land acquisition policies and practices carried out by those agencies. In large measure, the response by Congress has been to give the Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management less money to buy land. That greatly reduced the problem. More money will start the problems all over again. We're reminded of the Clinton campaign motto in 1992, "It's the Economy Stupid." In the case of land acquisition, "It's the Money Stupid." The scope and harm caused by land acquisition is simply a function of how much money the Federal agencies get and the type of oversight they receive. HR-701 over time will increase the money and reduce the oversight. The result will be severe economic and cultural damage to rural America.

(Note: This is only the first part of the testimony. Please visit the website below to read the entire text.)

http://www.senate.gov/~epw/cus_0524.htm