S O U N D   O F F

February 26, 2011

Dear Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis,

Congratulations for making it through the first step (Thursday, February 18th) regards the double/triple dipping by attorneys using Equal Access to Justice!

Your honest work is so noted and greatly appreciated!

Please let this serve as a reiteration of a commitment from LAW USA to you, to support your continuing efforts, by providing you solid, vetted scientists, educators, and policy research analysts who will testify in any committee.

A For-profit LLC., LAW USA is unusual in that it refuses government welfare or any other twist that would skew the facts and cause un-just, un-due, un-healthy influence! Our "Contributing Educators" gift their verifiable findings to LAW USA. No strings attached ever!
These volunteers are partisan only to truths and facts! LAW USA volunteers are dedicated to delivering every honorable solution to bring America back to good health.

Please consider our following request that you demand a stop order on federal land acquisitions and Department of Interior (DOI) grant money distributions.

We believe DOI should be forced to provide a complete varifiable inventory of properties it claims to control, and go through a full departmental evaluation that will thereon determine the extent of taxpayer dollars they may or may not require.

The explains some of the reasoning behind our request.

1) Figure DOI places about a $20.00 per hour value on "volunteers."
We recommend Rancher/farmers add their time - @ $20.00 per hr. to fee payments ='s X contributions to federal. Compare that to "interested public's" NON-payment to "use" and "abuse" federal lands.
This value should be higher as the Ranchers would be providing “expert” value in addition to being “volunteers”, say $35/hr – or better yet, make them equal in pay to the DOI agent’s pay as an “expert”. Figure out that value for the combined “workforce” at that rate with hours they work and see how many hundreds of millions you can “claim” like they do. Ric Frost
2) Note + budget and verbiage re: Wild Horse and Burro program. Why are they "increasing" its budget while simultaneously claiming a "move away from the concept of federally funded wild horse preserves. "
3) Looks as though they think they're going to generate new (maybe old?) windfalls through "Inspection" fees. We believe "inspection" fees could be construed as a "tax"
4) $144.3 million budgeted to "acquisition land." Note - grant monies within those...with independent state and other grants exceeding 160 million. This would be a good place to push the old concept of “no net gain of non-taxable property”. They should be made to turn property and mineral royalties loose to the private sector in exchange for taking lands off the tax base and out of production. Also, don’t forget the specific Constitutional definition of what the government is allowed to own. Plus point out the failure of the PILT program to pay counties the full tax of lands removed from the tax base. Historically, PILT has paid maybe 52% of what is promised or owed to the counties. Many years many counties don’t get even 2%. I call it the “low fat PILT”, kinda like the “2% low fat milk”. Ric Frost

Land — Interior manages more than 500 million acres or about 20 percent of the land area of the United States, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, and 53 million acres of submerged land in four Pacific marine national monuments. The Department has jurisdiction over an additional 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. {DOI should not acquisition one more acre! Instead, DOI should be forced to liquidate several million acres. Therefore, as an Appropriations condition, request (demand) DOI provide an accounting of each acre it claims to own.
Let it be known you'll initiate said liquidation process posthaste. Conditions of acreage sale should include: Land is sold at the original cost to federal. First option prospective buyers identified as: Their private property abuts federal. Their main source of taxable income has generated from said land for a period of time no less than 25 years. Buyer promises to utilize said land in similar manner to the way they use their private property.}
Parks, Refuges, and Public Lands — Interior manages 394 units of the national park system, 553 national wildlife refuges, 70 fish hatcheries, and one historic fish hatchery as well as 21 national conservation areas and similarly designated areas, and 16 national monuments in BLM’s National Landscape Conservation System. {It should be required of DOI to identify and move ownership of said properties into the competitive market of the private sector.}
People — Interior has about 69,000 employees located in approximately 2,400 locations across the United States, Puerto Rico, US Territories, and Freely Associated States. {Yet Secretary Salazar doesn't have one person in his office to return phone calls or relay messages to him.}
Volunteers — Interior benefits from approximately 301,000 volunteers who provide over 9.5 million hours of service, valued at $192 million per year. {Addressed under number 1 }
Conservation — About 249,000 acres of high-priority abandoned coal mine sites have been reclaimed through the OSM’s Abandoned Mine Lands program. {We have a real concern here, that with other federal agency's push to shut down coal plants and domestic resource production sites as a whole, they may triage around private properties and exercise condemnation or eminent domain to gain more control over more land.}
Endangered Species — The FWS acts with the DOI to protect over 1,966 endangered and threatened species; 1,372 are in the United States. {Since its inception, how many species have been declared "endangered," and how many have been "recovered?" We demand only "endangered" enjoy status of recovery in a workable agreement with property owner, and all other "look sees" not be allowed to stop "business as usual." }
Revenues — Revenues collected over the last eight years vary from $26.0 billion to $9.0 billion, including revenues from energy, minerals, grazing, timber, lands sales, and other revenue producing activities. Interior’s estimated revenue projections in 2012 are $14.1 billion. They gained these revenues and yet fail to fully compensate counties for PILT monies – counties that are now fully identified as “dying!"
Water — The Department is the largest supplier and manager of water in the 17 western States. Reclamation manages 476 dams and 348 reservoirs that deliver irrigation water to 31 million people and one out of every five western farmers irrigating ten million acres of farmland. {It's scientifically incorrect to claim Department as "supplier" of water. It may or may not assist in its management and delivery only.}
Energy — Interior manages lands, subsurface rights, and offshore areas that produce approximately 30 percent of the Nation’s energy, including 27 percent of natural gas, 31 percent of oil, 42 percent of coal, 17 percent of hydropower, two percent of windpower, and 40 percent of geothermal. {Un-tethered by government regs and taxes, domestic energy production could provide "100 percent of our Nation's energy."}
Visitation — Annually, more than 57.4 million visits are made to BLM public lands, over 285 million visits to national park units, 44.4 million visits to national wildlife refuges, two million visits to fish hatcheries, and 90 million visits to Reclamation recreation sites.
Science – Interior provides unbiased {Not true!} multi-discipline science for use in understanding, managing and protecting the landscape, natural resources, and natural hazards. Data are available to the public from over 7,600 streamgages and 900 earthquake sensors. Over one million satellite scenes have been downloaded from the LANDSAT archives since being made available at no cost. Over 61,000 publications dating back to 1882 are available through the publishing warehouse.

The budget includes a program increase of $12.0 million in the Wild Horse and Burro program for operational costs and fertility control. The request will enable a modified management strategy for this program to focus on fertility control and move away from the concept of federally funded wild horse preserves. {Please see attached letter concerning feral horses.}

• Confronting the challenges of a changing climate {Climate has been changing since millions of years before DOI. Why the sudden interest?} impacting the American landscape. Through an integrated strategy that leverages expertise across the Department, the Federal government, and with outside partners, Interior will identify resources that are vulnerable to climate change and implement coordinated adaptation response actions for 50 percent of the Nation by the end of 2012. The 2012 budget includes $175.0 million for cooperative landscape conservation, an increase of $43.8 million above the 2010 Enacted/2011 CR.

A sample of the millions of dollars spent by DOI and its Related Agencies

Fixed Costs................................................................ +30.5 Property? If so, please provide inventory.
Oil and Gas Management - Inspections............. -38.0 What?
Oil and Gas Management - Inspection Fee........ [+38.0] What? Is this a tax?
Coal/Other Mineral Resources Inspect. Fees.... [+4.4]
Wild Horse and Burro Management Program.. +12.0 An increase! Why?
Oil and Gas Management - APD Processing..... +13.0 Is this redundant?
Land - Easements and Acquisitions.................... +20.4
Operations - NLCS, Cultural Resource Protect. +29.9 What is this? Archaeology?
Leasing and Environmental Evaluation............. +19.5
Safety and Environmental Enforcement............ +26.9
Offshore Inspection Fees...................................... [+55.0]
Climate Effects Network...................................... -9.0 Why does this exist at all?
Science Support for Interior Bureaus.................. +4.0 Who supplies "science?"
Water Resources - Hydrologic Network/Anal..+6.4
Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning................. +8.0
Climate Science Centers....................................... +11.0 Who fills these positions? NOAA?
Landsat Operations............................................... +61.4 What? GIS applications?
Grant Programs...................................................... +22.4
Resource Management Operations..................... +30.5 - Is this redundant?
Land Acq. and Highlands Conserv. Grants....... +50.2
Historic Preservation Fund Grants to States, Territories, and Tribes........... +6.5
Park Operations..................................................... +72.9
Land Acquisition and LWCF Battlefield Grants................................................ +73.7
LWCF State Grants................................................ +160.0
Improving Trust Land Management.................. +14.6 What is this? Nature Conservancy and the CE/PDR Land Trusts?
Contract Support/Self-Determination Funds... +29.5 - What is this?
Wildland Fire Suppression................................ +42.8 Why not give a portion of this to loggers who understand wildland fire suppression better than any?
Valuation Services................................................. +12.9 What is this? Appraisers?
Office of Natural Resources Revenue................. +25.6 Is this redundant?
________________________________________________________________

We're here to help you achieve the possible!
Signatories will be added as this letter is posted on Land And Water USA.

Thank you,

Charles W. Sylvester
Roni Bell Sylvester
Steve Garland
Ric Frost