School trust lands

For years, local lawmakers have strained credulity in their arguments opposing a sale of state school trust lands locked within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and that is reflected once again in an Aug. 15 letter to DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen, issued by Rep. Roger Skraba and signed by Republican members of the Iron Range delegation.
For decades, this opposition has prevented the state of Minnesota from finally addressing the fact that the school trust currently derives no revenue on approximately 80,000 acres of land it owns within the wilderness, which it can no longer access for economic activity, such as logging. Back in July, the Department of Natural Resources announced that it was abandoning a decade-long effort to identify lands for a partial exchange of some of the school trust acreage for federal lands outside the wilderness. It was one of the largest land exchanges ever proposed in the U.S. and it had proven to be complex. Ten years into the effort, the two sides were still a long way from reaching any kind of agreement.
This is hardly a new issue. State officials have been proposing a sale of the school trust lands to the U.S. Forest Service since the 1980s. The state’s legislative auditor recommended a sale in an analysis of the school trust program it issued back in 1998. But opposition from northeastern Minnesota legislators has continuously blocked the school trust from receiving compensation. In doing so, their intransigence has cost the school trust hundreds of millions of dollars in lost returns over the years.
In his recent letter, co-signed by Rep. Spencer Igo and Sens. Justin Eichorn and Robert Farnsworth, Skraba argues that a sale of the land is a violation of federal law, specifically a provision of the 1964 Wilderness Act that said that state-owned lands located within the wilderness boundaries “shall be exchanged for federally owned land in the same State of approximately equal value.”
No one disputes the language of the 1964 law, but legal counsel for the U.S. Forest Service have pointed to other federal laws, such as the 1911 Weeks Act and the Organic Act, that give the forest service the authority to purchase lands as well. If Skraba and his fellow lawmakers want to challenge that opinion in court, they can have at it. Otherwise, it’s probably best to leave the lawyering to the actual lawyers.
Skraba’s arguments, unfortunately, go from legally dubious to downright false when he claims that “the value of a one-time payment pales in comparison to ongoing revenues that would be generated for the Permanent School Fund if these lands are exchanged for federally owned lands where economic activity may occur.”
Skraba has it exactly reversed. Based on records and information we obtained from the DNR and the Office of School Trust Lands, which we reported last month, it would take 40 years for the school trust to generate the same amount of revenue from logging proceeds off exchanged lands as it could obtain in a single lump sum from a sale, potentially as early as next year. Managed by the state’s investment fund, that lump sum sale price, estimated at about $33 million, would likely be worth more than half a billion dollars within that same 40-year period. Skraba, in his letter, claims he’s worried about the long-term viability of the Permanent School Fund. Denying it hundreds of millions of dollars in perpetual revenue is an odd way of showing such concern.
Skraba also argues that the public would have a greater say over the management of public lands owned by the DNR versus the forest service. In our experience, we’ve seen very little difference in the public responsiveness of the two agencies when it comes to forest management. The forest service does, however, have a more transparent process when it comes to timber sales.
If Skraba had legitimate concerns it would be one thing. But it looks more like he wants a continuing political issue that he can use to falsely pit local interests against the forest service, which has been standard practice by lawmakers in our region for far too long. We can understand that Skraba, who was convicted criminally for, among other things, breaking and entering a forest service shed and stealing a toilet, may have an ax to grind against the feds. But as a lawmaker, he’s supposed to be representing state interests, not his personal grudges.
While Skraba portrays himself as standing up for his district, the opposite is true. In his letter, he is, in effect, asking for years of additional delay in addressing the school trust’s inability to generate revenue from its holdings in the BWCAW. By threatening to block a sale, Skraba and his fellow lawmakers are asking for continuation of a failed status quo.