Utah, as all western states, has large holdings of lands granted to state government by the feds in the process of settlement/attainment of Statehood. Here the managing entity has the acronym of SITLA, and it is charged with maximizing value from said lands for public schools. (Coincidentally, a story in the Salt Lake Tribune today tracks how this duty was violated by Utah for 120 years until an activist public school teacher named Margaret Bird compelled compliance.)
Anyway, it has become routine for congressional delegations all over the west to enable federal/state land swaps at "equivalent values". And one of those land swaps is coming closer to completion in Utah, except that some fuzzy math has now been applied to the deal, to the benefit of Utah. The proposal was for Utah to give up some 46,000 acres of "scenic lands" in return for "only" 35,516 of federal lands sought by oil and gas developers.
But the deal is not working at the moment because the appraisals obtaned show that poor old Utah was again being taken advantage of. The proposed adjustment to the deal calls for Utah to come into closer parity on a total acreage basis, or, in other words, to keep around 10,000 of the acres originally offered.
And what I find inexplicable is that the appraisals relied upon say that these lands, neither oil lands, nor places with scenery that calendar pages are made of are worth even so much as $1,000 per acre. Now, scenery, I understand how that can be subjective.
But oil and gas no longer having value?
Is there some game playing going on here?