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The Administration strongly opposes the enactment of S. 1159 on several
grounds. Because the bill would set an unacceptable precedent by reopening
native entitlements under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the
Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior would recommend that the President
veto the bill.
ANCSA granted over 200 village corporations the right to select public lands in
Alaska for a variety of uses. Each corporation was required to select the
public lands within the township in which it was located. ANCSA was a final
settlement and, as such, represented many trade-offs and compromises by all
parties.
If S. 1159 were enacted all of Alaska's village corporations could argue that
they too were entitled to exchange land selected under ANCSA for more valuable
Federal land. This precedent would threaten to unravel ANCSA's historic
settlement through piece-meal amendments. In turn, Federal land management
throughout Alaska would be severely disrupted with significant costs and
consequences for all taxpayers.
Beyond the question of precedent, the land exchanges proposed in S. 1159
would not be in the public interest. The primary reason the U.S. Forest
Service pursues land exchanges is to provide more efficient land management
through consolidation of existing Federal ownership and to dispose of isolated
parcels that are uneconomical to manage. S. 1159 is in direct conflict with
these goals.
The bill is based on the premise that because some of the land that the Kake
Tribal Corporation received within the township under ANCSA is municipal
watershed land not subject to development, the United States should provide the
Corporation with replacement land elsewhere. ANCSA, however, contemplated that
villages would obtain all land within the "core" township regardless of its
development potential.
Finally, the Federal Government should not administer municipal watershed lands
in Alaska, as would be required by S. 1159. Rather, such lands should be
managed by those communities which derive benefit from the land. Federal
ownership of municipal watersheds is inconsistent with the ownership patterns
envisioned by ANCSA, whereby native corporations had to select lands within
their core townships.
Pay-As-You-Go Scoring
S. 1159 is subject to the pay-as-you-go requirements of the Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1990. The Administration estimates that S. 1159 would
result in Federal revenue losses of up to $500,000 per year, beginning in
1998. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced the PAYGO balances to zero, and
consequently, any bill that would increase mandatory spending or result in a
revenue loss would contribute to a sequester of mandatory programs as called
for in the Budget Enforcement Act. In the case of S. 1159, the Administration
opposes the bill, and notes that it does not contain provisions to offset the
net deficit increases. As a result, if the bill were enacted without further
action to provide offsets, any deficit effects could contribute to a sequester
of mandatory spending.
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