JOAN BARRON Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Thursday, April 17, 2003 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - Sublette County cannot give taxpayer money to a nonprofit land trust for purchase of conservation easements from ranchers to control development without either a change in the Constitution or new legislation, said an opinion from Attorney General Pat Crank.
The opinion, which also was signed by Deputy Attorney General Michael Hubbard and Senior Assistant Attorney General Barbara Boyer, said the Wyoming Constitution prohibits a county from spending money in favor of a private or nonprofit entity, unless the county receives a product or other adequate consideration in return for its outlay of money.
It isn't clear, the opinion said, what "consideration" the Sublette County Board of County Commissioners would receive in return for the taxpayer money funneled to the land trust.
The opinion throws a wrench into Sublette County's proposal to control development of subdivisions by buying up developmental rights through a land trust.
Crank issued the opinion Monday at the request of Sublette County Attorney Van Graham.
"Essentially they said 'no,' " Gordon Johnston, chairman of the Sublette County Board of County Commissioners, said of the opinion.
The county's plan, he added, "will have to go in the file for awhile," although it may be resurrected later.
The county, Johnston said during a telephone interview late Tuesday afternoon, has been working for a couple of years on a plan to control development subdivisions by buying up ranchers' development rights and holding them in a land trust.
Sublette County would be the first entity in Wyoming to be involved in such an arrangement, although such projects have been handled successfully in Colorado and Montana, Johnston said.
He said that the Sublette County commissioners are scheduled to hear an official presentation today from a group of people appointed to work on the plan and develop a pilot project.
It's possible, he said, that someone may want to push for legislation to authorize conservation easements and define them as a public benefit.
"It is one way to prevent the black-topping of some of our most beautiful country," Johnston said.
Sublette County, Johnston said, has a big problem with people coming in and buying up ranches and subdividing the lands.
As a result, the county is losing some of its prime pieces of land "at a rapid rate," including wildlife migration routes, he said.
Opponents to the land trust idea objected most strongly to using tax money to pay for the easements, he said.
Sublette County, Johnson noted, is financially comfortable thanks to the mineral development in the Jonah field and the Pinedale anticline.
The idea for the conservation easements came from ranchers, primarily members of the Green River Valley Land Trust, including Jim Baker, former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, he said.
Baker bought the old Tibbals Ranch on Silver Creek near Boulder, about 12 miles south of Pinedale in 1988.
As an example of how the program would work, he said a rancher with a 100-year-old family ranch who has struggled through a couple of drought years and low cattle prices could sell his development rights to a land trust. The rancher then could use the proceeds to improve his irrigation system or to upgrade his herd. The development rights would be held in trust in perpetuity and the land never could be developed and would remain open space, Johnston said.
The opinion concluded, "At a minimum it may be necessary for counties, cities and towns to seek either an amendment of the Constitution to allow exemptions for conservation easements or adoption of some type of legislation defining and authorizing conservation easements before funding of such land trusts is permitted."