Who Owns Pennsylvania?

Henry Ingram, Esq. Article Appears in the Pennsylvania Landowner - December 1992
Who Owns
Pennsylvania?

The total land acreage in the fifty states of the United States is about 2,300,000,000 acres.
The Federal Government owns or otherwise controls 623,000,000 acres, about 30 percent of the total. In western states the percentage of federal lands ranges from 28.9 percent (Washington) to 647.8 percent (Alaska). And the public lands in Alaska are over 10 percent of the entire United States total. 60.9 percent of California is federally owned.

These general facts are well recognized and everyone seems to operate comfortably under the assumption that there is nothing particularly troublesome about massive government ownership of land. However, expanded government ownership of this finite natural resource can have very serious consequences. For example, in periods when the anti-development, preservationist philosophy is in vogue politically, there is great pressure to restrict multiple uses of public land even though “multiple use” is the theoretical underpinning of the concept of “public land”. For example, preservationists usually assert that development of minerals such as oil and gas, coal and uranium for energy production should not be allowed on federal lands. The same is true for companies engaged in metal and nonmetal mining of strategic raw materials who face a constant struggle to ensure that the vast mineral reserves located on federal lands remain open to development.

It is a virtual certainty that the new Administration in Washington will be extensively pressured by the environmental lobby to curtail development of mineral resources on federal lands. These anti-development forces will doubtless argue that since the Cold War has been won, the need to extract minerals (or at least have them available for development) has lessened and the time has come for more limited, less intrusive use of federal lands.

You can almost hear the arguments now: “Why expose our vast Wilderness areas to rapacious exploitation by profit driven corporations when there is no longer a compelling national security reason to justify taking such risks with our national enviornment?” More radical, anti-development factions simply argue that land use of any kind is the functional equivalent of pollution and that it should not be permitted at all.

We had a recent manifestation of the “doomsday scenario” an example of the hue and cry which is heard when someone even suggests development on federal lands in Pennsylvania. You would have thought the world was about to end when a supervisor of the Allegheny National Forest mentioned that some coal might be mined in the forest unless the owner was compensated for being prevented from mining. We seem to be developing a national mindset that development of any kind is bad per se, forgetting all the while that over 200 years of economic development and resulting prosperity were in large measure dependant on land use and development, even the intrusive kind so decried by the anti-development/preservationist lobby.

The focus of public policy debate concerning mass government ownership of land seems to be directed primarily towards the Western states. There is a perception that there is much more land “out there” and much less population “pressure” on land use. Also, there does not seem to be quite as much opposition to development, perhaps attributable to the last vestiges of the American frontier spirit in the West and possibly a less strident anti-development bias in the media. But massive government ownership has serious implications not only in the West but also in the Eastern states.

And Pennsylvania provides an interesting case to examine the issue of government ownership and the compelling public policy questions involved.

Pennsylvania covers almost 29,000,000 acres (including “water” areas of almost a million acres) 2. Of that amount federal land comprises only 677,000 acres or just over 2.3 percent. Of that acreage the U.S. Forest Service has 512,000 acres; the National Park Service has 109,000 acres and even our old friend the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, owns about 10,000 acres. You might be interested to know that although New York has a larger land mass than Pennsylvania, it has only 234,000 acres of federal land.

The government ownership picture is not complete in Pennsylvania until you also look at the massive holdings of state and local governments. The agencies owning the largest amounts of public land in Pennsylvania are:

Bureau of State Parks……………275, 700
Bureau of Forestry……………..2,085,000
PA Game Commission…………1,355,000
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TOTAL………………………….3,715,700

Although PennDOT and other state agencies and facilities, such as hospitals and universities, and county and municipal parks swell the totals, the three agencies just mentioned are the big players in the Government owned land business in Pennsylvania.
Indeed, the acreage owned by these three agencies exceeds the total acreage of all developed land in Pennsylvania by almost 1,000,000 acres! When it is all added up, there is massive government ownership of land in Pennsylvania. Although it is difficult to come up with the precise acreage, well over 20 percent of the Pennsylvania land mass is public land owned by the Government.

What are the public policy implications of this ownership structure and the apparent trend throughout the United States, including Pennsylvania, toward rapid expansion of the amount of acreage owned by the Government? Readers of The Landowner are aware that the National Parks Service is aggressively acquiring large tracts of land both by condemnation and gift. Similarly, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, conservancy organizations are more and more frequently acquiring land from private owners and then turning around and transferring the lands to government entities such as the Game Commission. 3

At least two important public policy questions are raised by this trend. The first involves the extent to which were previously available for economic development and yes. Even exploitation of natural resources such as timber and minerals, are now going to be “off limits” for use and development by virtue of the implementation of the anti-development/preservationist policies by elected officials and other politicians in response to pressure from the environmental lobby. The transactions documented elsewhere in this issue clearly demonstrate that the transfer of public lands to the government sector is on the upswing.

The second involves the impact of this tread on the real estate tax base in Pennsylvania. Like it or not, ad valorem real estate taxation is the primary source of local tax revenues. Our municipalities and school districts live or die on real estate tax revenues. The State Tax Equalization Board estimates that there is about 78 billion dollars of “assessed value” of taxable real estate in Pennsylvania and about 20 billion dollars of “assessed value” of tax exempt real estate. If transfers to government ownership continue, this ratio will change. As noted at the beginning, real estate is a finite resource. If more and more of it is transferred to the tax exempt entities, whether government agencies or private “charitable” entities such as certain conservancy organizations, and use and development of the land is curtailed, the tax base both in terms of amount of land and value of improvements necessarily has to shrink.

It is clear that local governments can be adversely affected as more and more land goes out of taxation. A large transfer to the government side can lead to a reduction of local government services or an increase in real estate taxes for the owners of the shrinking real estate tax base if services are to be maintained. The negative impact will be compounded if the anti-development, preservationist policies are implemented at the same time and economic development of land is further impeded.

The point to remember is simple. The next time you hear about several hundred or thousand acres of land being transferred from private ownership to the government, particularly for passive or non-intrusive uses such as recreation, under circumstances where development is likely to be severely curtailed, stop and think about the bigger picture. Like so many other “government” activities, too much of a good thing is probably going to be a bad thing.

The source of these figures is the AMC Journal, Volume 78, Number 8, August 1992
2 Statistical abstract of The United States, 1992, Table 344
3 These agencies are proud of their vast holdings and a simple phone call will get you the information down to the last acre.
4 Statistical abstract of the United States 1992, Table 344 – includes urban and built-up areas in units of ten acres or greater.
5 This trend is encouraged by devices such as exclusion from the Pennsylvania Realty Transfer Tax provided for such transfers. See 72.P.S.58102-C
6 Legislative remedies such as the 560 acre Game Commission payment so local taxing bodies in lieu of taxes is probably cold comfort to local governments.

Pennsylvania Landowners’ Association, Inc.

P.O. Box 391

Waterford, PA 16441

Phone: 1.814.796.4023