A proposed bill that would “endeavor” to designate between 30,000 and 200,000 acres of Wyoming non-trust state lands for sale to individual families at $1 an acre might not be possible, an initial review of data from the Office of State Lands and Investments shows.
Rep. Jacob Wasserburger, R-Cheyenne, unveiled a bill last week that, if it becomes law, would require the Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI) to “endeavor” to find between 30,000 and 200,000 acres of state-held, non-trust lands, in 300-acre clusters for the state to then sell to eligible families in 10-acre lots, at $1 an acre.
Wasserburger envisions this bill as a way to ease the state’s housing shortages, he told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday text message.
“The cost of housing is crushing many young people that are wanting to live the American dream like we have in the past,” wrote Wasserburger. “We need solutions now and this accomplishes that. I campaigned on stopping Wall Street from buying single family homes and this ensures that we have homes for Wyoming residents.”
The bill would dictate multiple covenants and requirements, such as having lived in Wyoming for one year, having to promise to live on the land within 20 years, and being unable to sell it to anyone who’s not an eligible, private individual or family for five years after the initial purchase.
Wasserburger said his bill is “gaining tremendous support from across the state.”
“Some legislators are learning about it and liking the idea,” he continued. “Even made national news which tells me we’re onto something.”
As of Monday, the bill’s online profile showed no co-sponsors. Wasserburger did not respond to a follow-up question about who is interested in it, or whom to interview about it.
Maybe Not…
An initial review of data from the OSLI, which is the administrative office associated with the State Board of Land Commissioners, shows less than 16,000 acres eligible for sale under its terms.
Wyoming has a total of 3.5 million acres of surface land holdings.
Wasserburger’s bill exempts from sale parcels that include school lands, institutional lands, trust lands, state parks, historic landmarks, recreational ground, historical sites, state archaeological sites, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas - and “lands which have been reserved in any way to public use.”
A large portion of Wyoming’s 3.5-million-acre holdings is leased for grazing and agriculture – and those are governmental purposes for state lands. Lawmakers specified by passing a law last year, so that the state wouldn’t have to pay property taxes on its own grazing lands.
A State Board of Land Commissioners rule further narrows the pool of eligible non-public-use and non-recreational-use lands even further. The rule grants public access or “extends to the public the privilege of using legally accessible state lands for casual recreational day uses, unless otherwise closed by direction of the Board.”
The State Board of Land Commissioners consists of all five statewide elected officials in the state’s executive branch: the governor, state auditor, treasurer, superintendent of public instruction and secretary of state. It would have a role in helping to sell off state lands also, in Wasserburger’s bill.
If the legislature considers those recreation-designated areas exempt under the bill’s public-use and recreation carveouts, then most state lands would be ineligible – leaving about 16,000 acres, the data show.
Much of those 16,000 vacant acres are held in trust for beneficiaries, making them forbidden from sale under the bill’s language also.
In response to the 16,000-acre figure, Wasserburger said, “There is no doubt that we have an opportunity to be able to do this. I have an appropriation in the bills so we are able to study the land and see where this can be done."
The appropriation would send $250,000 from the state’s checking account, called “the general fund” into the OSLI for its study on how to survey and administer the homesteading program.
Not ‘Private Property’ Then
Ryan Semerad, a Wyoming attorney who carried a public-lands-access case last year to the threshold of the U.S. Supreme Court and won, told Cowboy State Daily the initial data review “makes me laugh.”
“I think that most of these public land sale bills are incredibly unpopular and totally undesired by the public writ large,” said Semerad, making an oblique reference to a controversial and much-larger effort to sell federal lands for housing purposes, which Congress considered and rejected last year.
“This (information) just goes to show that the people advancing these pieces of legislation have not done their homework, and have no idea what they’re doing,” said Semerad.
He added that the covenants and requirements aimed at keeping the parcels in the hands of private individuals and families for at least five years after the initial sale could backfire, and lead to legal challenges.
“It’s not ‘private property’ then, because the government has its tentacles in it in all these ways,” he said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
