Alaska, one of the richest states in the union, is presenting Washington with a bill for more than $29 billion.
Gov. Walter J. Hickel said he would file a lawsuit Friday accusing the government of repeatedly violating the law that granted Alaska statehood in 1959 by closing millions of acres of federal land to mining and oil and gas drilling.Hickel, a political independent with a flair for the grand gesture, said $29 billion is a conservative estimate of the revenue Alaska was denied in the past 34 years. Last month, he said the lawsuit could be worth $70 billion.
Kevin Sweeney, a spokesman for Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, suggested the lawsuit will not be taken very seriously in Washington.
"There may be a political basis for the suit, but there clearly is no legal basis," he said.
At issue are lands designated since statehood as national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife preserves and refuges, where drilling and mining are banned.
The governor alleges Congress induced Alaska to ratify statehood in 1958 by promising broad opportunities to develop federal lands. Instead, Hickel said in a statement Thursday, "Congress has withdrawn more than 100 million acres of federal land, forever preventing it from producing any income to the state."
Despite the federal land withdrawals, Alaska has profited handsomely from development of its oil deposits. Oil taxes and royalties pay for about 85 percent of the state budget. Each resident gets oil dividends of more than $900 a year. Alaska has no income or sales tax.
Oil production is on the decline, however, and many state officials fear the cost of running the government will far exceed its revenues by the end of the decade.
The lawsuit is the fourth in a series Hickel has filed against the federal government. The others assert the state's claim to its navigable waterways, assert the state's right to manage fish and game on federal lands, and seek to overturn the federal ban on export of North Slope oil.