Since this is a New York Times article concerning Land Disposals in the
Carson City BLM office, it may be of interest to the Work Group.


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>
>
> In Land Exchange With the U.S., a Developer Shares Its Employee
>
> June 17, 2002
> By JOEL BRINKLEY
>
>
>
>
>
>
> RENO, Nev., June 14 - David Buhlig's business card shows
> him to be an employee of the Nevada Land Resource Company,
> a major developer and the largest private landowner in
> Nevada.
>
> But the phone number on the card is for his office in the
> federal Bureau of Land Management in Carson City, where Mr.
> Buhlig works as a quasi-federal employee, arranging to
> acquire public land for his company.
>
> It is a novel arrangement - and troubling to some people in
> Washington. But John Singlaub, manager of the federal
> agency's Carson City office and the one who devised this
> plan, calls it "a great success."
>
> "The beauty of it is, it frees up my existing staff so they
> can do other work," Mr. Singlaub said.
>
> Told of this arrangement, which agency officials defend as
> legal, Representative George Miller, a California Democrat
> who is an expert on land exchanges, gasped and declared,
> "Somebody ought to call the U.S. attorney."
>
> Mr. Buhlig is managing a land exchange between his employer
> and the B.L.M., as the federal agency is known. The company
> is trading an undevelopable and inaccessible square mile of
> steep, hilly desert land in a remote area near here for an
> equal-sized parcel of virtually flat federal land about 75
> miles north of Las Vegas. That, too, is desert, but it is
> reachable by road. The company wants to build a power plant
> there. The official, agency-approved appraisals of both
> plots - ordered by Mr. Buhlig and paid for by the developer
> - show them to be nearly equal in value, and the exchange
> is due to be completed in October.
>
> Federal land exchanges have long been a source of
> controversy and complaint. Repeatedly in recent years,
> federal auditors have shown that developers bilk the
> bureau, costing the government tens of millions of dollars.
> In one land trade in Nevada several years ago, a developer
> acquired 70 acres of government land that the bureau had
> valued at $763,000, then sold it the next day for $4.6
> million. The auditors' reports usually conclude by saying
> that land exchanges ought to be halted.
>
> Mr. Singlaub grumbled, "If we stopped work every time the
> inspector general or the General Accounting Office said
> something, we'd never get anything done."
>
> While bringing Mr. Buhlig into the office was Mr.
> Singlaub's idea, Robert Abbey, the agency's state director,
> signed the agreement. "It just makes sense to partner up
> with the N.L.R.C.," he said.
>
> Within the Carson City office, Mr. Buhlig is called a
> volunteer. But the agency has agreed to pick up the cost of
> his salary and expenses by giving his employer a credit in
> that amount as part of the land exchange - meaning that in
> the end, the Bureau of Land Management will pay a
> developer's representative to work in the agency's office
> and manage land acquisitions for the company.
>
> Mr. Miller probably knows more about land exchanges and the
> Bureau of Land Management than anyone else in Congress.
> While he was ranking minority member of the House Resources
> Committee, which has jurisdiction over the agency, he
> ordered two major General Accounting Office investigations
> of land exchanges. The results were scathing, and he pushed
> the bureau to change. "But they have refused every effort
> at reform," he said. "They continue to operate absolutely
> contrary to the public interest."
>
> When something like the Carson City situation is
> discovered, he added, "These people look straight at you
> and say, `What's wrong with that?' because they have been
> doing it the same way for 30 years."
>
> The agency's Washington headquarters approved the Carson
> City arrangement as soon as it was proposed. On Friday, Ray
> Brady, manager of the bureau's lands and realty section,
> said: "I see no problem with that. There is always a
> sharing of responsibilities with the proponent."
>
> "There may be an appearance issue," he added, "but that
> does not mean it is illegal or not allowed by the
> regulations."
>
> Mr. Brady said the agency had taken important steps to
> improve oversight of land exchanges, including the
> establishment of a national committee that reviews
> exchanges. In addition, he said, "We have revised the land
> exchange handbook."
>
> The Bureau of Land Management was formed in 1946 by
> combining the General Land Office and the United States
> Grazing Service. It was given responsibility for managing
> 262 million acres of federal land, most of it in the West.
> Virtually all the land had been set aside for homesteading
> in the 1860's, but most was never purchased or claimed
> because it was inhospitable.
>
> Much of this land is commingled with properties awarded to
> the railroads in 1862. As an incentive to build the first
> transcontinental railroad line, the Lincoln administration
> gave the railroads every other square mile of property
> stretching 10 miles or more on either side of the tracks
> from the Midwest to the Pacific. That created a
> checkerboard pattern of public/private land stretching
> halfway across the country.
>
> The idea then was that the railroads would sell the land to
> homesteaders, one square mile at a time, to pay for the
> railway work. But instead they sold most of the saleable
> plots to mining companies and timber barons and held on to
> the rest, in many cases to this day.
>
> Many of the bureau's holdings are the odd squares of
> federal land surrounded by the former railroad holdings.
> The agency has long complained that these disconnected
> checkerboard properties are difficult to manage, and it has
> frequently used land exchanges to consolidate its holdings.
>
>
> The Nevada Land Resource Company was formed in 1995 and
> purchased more than 1.3 million acres of checkerboarded
> property from the Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company. Nearly
> all of it was commingled with B.L.M. land. When the company
> approached Mr. Singlaub about three years ago, saying it
> wanted to work out numerous land exchanges, the agency was
> quite receptive.
>
> "They said B.L.M. could have absolutely anything they had
> if they could have land that was good for development and
> mining in exchange," Mr. Singlaub recalled. "It seemed like
> a good match."
>
> The bureau's mission in trades is to acquire land for
> recreation and habitat protection. So it is not surprising
> that, in a land trade, the government would choose to
> acquire property that is virtually worthless from a
> developer's point of view. But numerous federal audits over
> the years have complained that the agency has not received
> adequate payment, either in money or in additional acreage,
> in these exchanges.
>
> In this case, the Nevada Land Resource Company, eager to
> pursue exchanges of its undevelopable land, was worried
> that each exchange would take several years. Mr. Singlaub
> said he suggested that the company "provide staff support"
> to speed things up.
>
> So Mr. Buhlig and another person were hired. They worked at
> the agency as regular employees, with unfettered access to
> its computer records and files. The information available
> includes confidential appraisals of bureau property and
> mineral-deposit assessments. As part of their employment
> agreement, they agreed to keep this information
> confidential. (The second employee, Thomas Burke, finished
> his work on the exchange and took a regular job with the
> bureau last year.)
>
> When Mr. Buhlig, 55, started work two years ago, he said,
> "Initially some people were skeptical, but now I am treated
> as any other B.L.M. employee." He manages all work related
> to the developer's land exchange project.
>
> The developer paid the bill for all of this; that is
> standard practice in Bureau of Land Management offices
> everywhere. Occasionally, Mr. Buhlig said, his employer
> calls to complain about one development or another. "They
> say, `Jeez, Dave, that seems out of whack,' " he said. "But
> I tell them I can't do anything; I am representing B.L.M."
> By all accounts, Mr. Buhlig is conscientious and a straight
> shooter.
>
> The agency, officials said, approved the choice of
> contractors for each of the assignments and reviewed the
> results. "I don't see anything wrong with this," Mr. Abbey,
> the state director, said. "We review everything that's
> done."
>
> The agency's Mr. Brady said: "We have to sign off on
> everything. There is oversight and control."
>
> But in at least some circumstances, the quality of the
> oversight is in question. In Reno, the agency does not have
> enough staff to review appraisals performed by contractors.
> They are farmed out to other contract appraisers for
> review, said Meg Jensen, the deputy state director. An
> agency appraiser then reviews a review of the appraisal.
>
> Mr. Buhlig ordered appraisals of both properties, using
> appraisers approved by both the developer and the agency.
> His company paid for both of them. For the federal land
> that the company wants to acquire, Mr. Buhlig used an
> appraiser from Utah. The developer had chosen this plot
> because it is reachable by road and has gas and electrical
> lines running through it.
>
> But the property is in the middle of a vast stretch of
> B.L.M. land. As a result, no comparable nearby land has
> been sold.
>
> Instead, the appraiser compared the property to rural land
> in Arizona and Utah and concluded that it was worth
> $128,000. That compares to $101,500 for the appraised value
> of the property the federal government would receive in
> trade. That land is reachable from the closest rutted dirt
> road only by a difficult 40-minute uphill trek through the
> desert.
>
> Federal rules require that appraisers assume the "highest
> and best possible use" for the property to be appraised.
> That means, Mr. Brady said, that "if an appraiser
> determines that it is reasonable to assume that development
> will occur, the appraiser is required to assign that
> value."
>
> In the Nevada case, the bureau agrees that the land it is
> acquiring is unlikely ever to be developed. But the Nevada
> Land Resource Company has stated publicly that a power
> plant will be built on the lot it is to get in trade.
> Nonetheless, the appraiser gave that property a value only
> $26,500 higher than the value assigned to the undevelopable
> lot.
>
> When questioned about the appraisals, Mr. Abbey said they
> might benefit from further review.
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/17/national/17LAND.html?ex=1025296889&ei=1&en
=9baa301c09784e16