Bill Funding Anti-Public Land Grifter (Re)Introduced
The bill would give Utah’s Ken Ivory $250,000 - that’s Idaho taxpayer dollars - to continue his long career grifting taxpayers to fund his various anti-public land schemes, all of which fizzle out, leaving Ivory wealthy with your money.
This time around Ivory is peddling his software that appraises public land values as if they were developable private land. Idaho legislators could then use that value to demand money from the government or to demand forfeit of the land. But there are some major flaws with this line of thinking.
You might be saying, “this sounds familiar”. Well, it’s not Groundhog Day, it’s just another year in the Idaho Legislature. Last year this same bill was proposed despite opposition. Aside from freely giving Ken Ivory your hard earned tax dollars, there are a few reasons the bill is fundamentally flawed:
The attempt to tax public lands is fruitless. Twice in Idaho’s Constitution does it prohibit taxation of federal lands (Article VII, sec. 4 and Article XXI, sec. 19).
Ivory’s software is not new. The software already exists and is employed regularly.
Ivory’s software appraises all lands as developable real estate. Even current county appraisals differentiate between residential, agriculture, and timber lands. But, claiming that every square inch of public land can become a residence artificially inflates the cost.
If the legislature is not taxing private land at residential rates and they have full authority to change those tax rates, why would Idaho implement taxes on public lands? Especially when the constitution forbids it....twice!
We’ll just stick last year’s assessment of the bill here: The bill’s intent for counties to receive more PILT funding is worthwhile and the Federation has been working with our congressional delegates to explore strategies and funding mechanisms to get more, and reliable, PILT payments to Idaho counties. However, the mechanism in this concept to advocate for PILT funding is flawed since the formula set by congress does not account for actual land appraisals.
To quote the Congressional Research Service 2017 report on PILT states:
No precise dollar figure can be given in advance for each year’s PILT authorized level. Five factors affect the calculation of a payment to a given county: (1) the number of acres eligible for PILT payments, (2) the county’s population, (3) payments in prior years from other specified federal land payment programs, (4) state laws directing payments to a particular government purpose, and (5) the Consumer Price Index as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This formula is also recognized in the Federal Lands Interim Committee report to the 63rd Idaho Legislature in 2015. Nowhere in Congressional or in the Idaho legislature’s own research is it stated that PILT funding is based on land appraisals. So, this tech that HCR 38 is trying to fund is not at all applicable to how PILT is calculated and therefore, will not help with PILT funding. A quarter million dollars is a hefty price tag for a bill that cannot fundamentally accomplish what it is sets out to accomplish.
Happy Groundhog Day