Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 26, 2007)

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I was going to offer an amendment today, but would like, rather, to speak on the subject of the amendment.

Madam Chair, I'd like to thank Chairman Dicks for all of his hard work on this bill.

Last week, Madam Chair, I was joined by Representative Gerlach and Representative Pitts as we relaunched the Bipartisan Land Conservation Caucus. And as one of the new co-Chairs of that caucus, I'm thrilled that the Interior Department budget that Mr. Dicks and his subcommittee have put together includes a major new investment in open space preservation funding, and I applaud their work here.

But protecting these spaces, once preserved, is a time-consuming, expensive, and often complex process. We're lucky in this country, especially in New England where I hail from, to have amazing partners in this process, which are local land trusts. These land trusts were started by community members who want to preserve and protect the regional character of their special part of the world. Since their creation, they've grown into full-fledged partners in the conservation effort. Many of these trusts across the country have expanded and now have up to 10 or 20 full-time staff members; however, many still remain very small volunteer organizations with no staff support. For example, of the 128 land trusts in Connecticut, 103 of them are comprised solely of volunteers, the largest number of volunteer trusts in the country. It's these small land trusts that do most of the on-the-ground work, saving historic sites and priceless vistas that are so important to our regional character in New England.

However, in recent years the burden on these small land trusts has grown tremendously. In addition to their original task of seeking out lands to preserve, they are also now bound by IRS red tape and heavy enforcement duties. These land trusts are now responsible for ensuring that any conservation donation qualifies for the tax deduction offered by the IRS. These tax deductions have caused legions of landowners to choose to put valuable conservation easements on their land; however, a local volunteer land trust with no paid staffers cannot be expected to do the IRS's work for them to evaluate and sign off on every donation.

In addition, these small land trusts are now required to enforce and patrol the easements that they already hold. As more and more land is put into easements, more and more burdens are put on local land trusts to make sure that these easements are enforced. In Connecticut, there are now over 24,000 acres of land with conservation easements, and more and more land is added every year.

If the government is going to rely on these land trusts to do the administrative work associated with these easements for programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Forest Legacy, it makes sense that we should partner with them to help them with these administrative duties.

I had planned on offering an amendment that would have allowed 1 percent of all land and water conservation funds appropriated by the Bureau of Land Management to be available to competitive grants to volunteer land trusts across this country. That money could be used in order to help them with some of the administrative costs that have been imposed.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Chair, reclaiming my time. I thank the chairman very much for his offer to help. This is a historic investment in this bill in open space preservation and land preservation funding. I thank the chairman and his committee for their commitment to this very important issue, and I look forward to working with him to make sure that we are doing all we can to help those land trusts make the best use of this new historic and incredibly important commitment to land preservation and open space preservation.

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