An interesting article appeared in the Brainerd Dispatch where the county board voted to ask the Association of Minnesota Counties to lobby the state Legislature to allow the Cass County Land Department to manage the state trust fund lands in the county.
The idea is that the county’s management costs are lower than the state’s forestry costs and the state’s trust fund account would show a profit rather than breaking even.
In Cass County, 150,000 acres of trust fund lands would be given to the county and only leave 41,000 acres of state land for the Minnesota Division of Forestry to manage. The big question to ask, can the Cass County Land Department take an additional 150,000 acres of forest land to manage with the present number of employees?
What would the state Division of Forestry do with the employees now not needed to manage the 150,000 acres of land given to the county? At least 60 percent of the state foresters time is spent on timber sales.
Over all management costs are lower on county lands than state lands. The counties do not have to write management plans or supervise logging operations on private forest land or make agricultural conservation program inspections on private tree planting projects. Counties do not have to invest and maintain forest fire equipment such as trucks, tankers and dozers. Counties do not have to contract for helicopters, air tankers or fire departments to fight forest fires. Counties do not have to hire crews during the fire season or pay employees for overtime. Counties do not have to pay for training fire fighters. Counties also receive several million dollars a year for in lieu of tax payments from the state. Counties also do not have to enforce forests laws.
Bruce ZumBahlen, past president of the Minnesota Forestry Association told me that revenue from trust fund lands go into a suspense account.
At the end of the year, expenses for managing these lands are subtracted from the suspense account and the remainder is deposited in the various trust funds. About $2 million, depending on the fire season, is assessed against school lands as a proportionate share of providing fire protection on all lands. It seems that an unjustifiable amount of management costs are deducted from the trust fund accounts.
Reducing these unfair overall costs of managing state lands might be preferable to turning over trust fund lands to the counties.
Ridlington is a media relations volunteer for the Society of American Foresters. He was an Aitkin County forester from 1959 to 1980 and district forester in Park Rapids for seven years.
