For almost 100 years, Utah has failed to take seriously enough its fiduciary responsibility to protect the trust lands granted to education and other state services at statehood.
The lands were granted by the federal government to provide a source of income for the beneficiaries, primarily public education. The pitifully small amount of money the lands have actually contributed to the beneficiaries, compared with other states that had the same land grant opportunity, is reason to seriously look at alternatives.Comparisons being bandied about too often concentrate on the vast differences between New Mexico and Utah. New Mexico came into the Union about 15 years after Utah did and its enabling act was more stringent - based largely on the failures of states like Utah to protect their trust interests. New Mexico had the advantage of more mandated safeguards for the trust concept at the outset and the added chance blessing of vast petroleum reserves under its trust lands.
But if you set New Mexico aside and compare Utah with its northern neighbor, Wyoming, for instance, Utah still comes across looking pretty puny. Wyoming has accumulated a permanent trust account of $109 million. Utah's permanent account is $36.7 million. The interest generated on those accounts represents the ongoing contribution to the trust beneficiaries.
As a matter of simple fact, Utah looks bad in any comparison with any other state in the same situation. There is no valid explanation for the differences, except that Utah's land managers have done a poor job of protecting and promoting the interests of the trust. Utah's trust lands have no less potential for productive return than those in other states, according to people who have studied the lands extensively.
All other Western states have had to cope with many of the same problems Utah has, to some degree, including heavy federal involvement that complicates management of the lands. They appear to have been able to bolster their trust accounts while dealing with the same general challenges.
Some other states have successfully pushed for trades on trust land that was "captured" inside national boundaries. Utah's land managers continue to say that it can't be done - or that it is so hard to do that it isn't worth the effort.
Two years ago, then-State Superintendent James R. Moss asked Utah's attorney general's office to prod the federal government, through lawsuits if necessary, to honor statehood agreements that the state could be compensated for lands inside federal tracts.
Admittedly, the issues are extremely complex, but they aren't impossible. New Mexico proved that the federal government could be successfully sued. The state recovered a significant amount of money and valuable alternative lands for its trust properties within the White Sands military testing area.
A recent series of Deseret News articles on the trust lands indicated that abuse and neglect of the fiduciary mandate are not relegated to the distant past but continue.
While there is general agreement that the current land board has tried to be faithful to the trust responsibility, the wounds of the past may be too wide and too deep to respond to a quick fix. Besides, the nature of the board is transitory and replacement members may not have the same dedication to the trust interests. Conflict of interests among the board members is inherent in the structure of the board, which has a majority of members who represent land users. No other state has a board with the same potential for conflict.
A legislative task force studying the trust lands has an opportunity to initiate the process leading to change.
The first important thing the task force could do would be to re-establish the principles of the trust - to convince the Legislature that these lands are a trust in the same sense as a private trust and that they deserve the same careful management.
That would provide a foundation for changes in the State Division of Lands and the State Land Board to assure Utah's schoolchildren and other trust lands beneficiaries that their interests will get the attention that Utah's enabling act intended.
After nearly a century, a rededication to sound trust principles is long overdue.