After nearly 100 years of delays, intransigence and lack of cooperation by federal authorities in dealing with Utah school trust lands, the state should seriously consider a lawsuit against the federal government. Negotiations, pleas, offers and threats have not produced positive results. A lawsuit may be the only alternative left to force some action.
When Utah became a state, Congress set aside school trust lands as a way to help support education, since the federal government kept most of the rest of the land - property that could not be taxed to help finance schools.Yet the trust lands have been tied up in ways that keep them from producing much revenue. In fiscal 1989, it averaged out to about $1 an acre.
The recommendation that Utah take legal action, urged this week by James R. Moss, state superintendent of public instruction, makes a strong case that the state has suffered major, unjustified losses at the hands of the federal government.
The burden of those losses has fallen on Utah taxpayers and schoolchildren. This is a double blow in a state with limited economic resources and very large - and increasing - numbers of schoolchildren.
In a letter to the state attorney general, Utah's congressional delegation and other officials, Moss pointed out four significant problems where the federal government has failed to perform properly:
-Some lands supposedly transferred to the state were not even available. They were already locked up in special federal holdings at the time of statehood. Promises to provide other lands have not been kept. Utah has not been paid for the value lost in the past 95 years.
-Much of the original trust land given to the state has been withdrawn over the years for Indian reservations, national parks, recreation areas, military uses, public water reserves, wildlife refuges and the like - in effect, granting the same land twice, the second time at the expense of Utah. Congress has failed to recognize or compensate the state.
-Attempts to buy or trade other lands for state trust lands lost as a result of federal action have met with delays, obstacles, refusals and lack of cooperation from federal officials.
-Federal agencies have coerced the state to transfer ownership of trust lands to federal ownership without fair compensation, or in some cases, with no compensation at all.
None of this is new. State officials have struggled with this issue for decades. But the response from the federal government has been glacial. For a relatively simple problem to last 100 years is ridiculous.
Given this lack of progress, a lawsuit makes sense, especially since Utah seems to have truth, justice and all the facts on its side.