Ruling Opens Swap Documents Decision May Change How Land Deals Are Made

A recent court decision may help open up documents related to public-private land exchanges before the deals are made.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ordered the U.S. Forest Service this month to promptly turn over appraisal documents to the Western Land Exchange, a nonprofit watchdog group based in Seattle.

The documents were part of a deal in the works between the agency and Micron Technology co-founder Tom Nicholson, concerning property within the Boise National Forest.

Controversy over the proposed exchange killed it, but the Western Land Exchange still pursued its Freedom of Information Act request through the courts.

Zilly ruled that withholding the appraisal documents amounted to a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. government has 60 days to decide whether to appeal, said U.S. Justice Department attorney Harold Malkin. If no appeal is made, the documents will be handed over immediately, he said.

Now appraisal information on Forest Service land exchanges is only available after the fact. The agency has recently discussed the possibility of opening them up prior to sealing a deal, but that carries with it certain problems, said Dave O’Brien, a Panhandle National Forest spokesman.

“Big land exchanges have so many different moving parts to them,” he said. “Frequently, you’ll have a package that’s a really good package, but somebody doesn’t like one of the parts of the exchange.

“My concern is that folks who are not appraisers will look at those smaller parts and argue that the U.S. isn’t getting a fair deal.”

Some appraisal information also contains sale information that timber companies or other private landowners would like to keep confidential, O’Brien said.

The agency argued in court that opening up appraisal documents to public scrutiny could have a chilling effect on land exchanges in general.

Overall, O’Brien predicts that if the documents are open, the biggest impact will be to slow the landexchange process down.

“We want to share with the public as much information as we think we can,” he said. “My fear is we get more folks who want to stop an exchange for a very personal reason that isn’t really in the benefit of the whole.”

While the Forest Service was contemplating a policy change, the director of the Western Land Exchange, Janine Blaeloch, said the court ruling will force a policy change.

“The more information the public has in these exchanges, the less likely a huge mistake could be made,” she said.

Zilly’s ruling comes on the tails of a scathing report from the Government Accounting Office, which called for a halt on public land exchanges.

The report found that government land swaps often benefit private companies at taxpayer expense, a charge that Blaeloch and her group have been making for years. Without access to appraisals, however, it’s difficult to back up such claims.

O’Brien said land-exchange boondoggles are the exception, not the rule.

“When we get those kinds of allegations that involve money, we stop everything and investigate,” he said. “We are very careful with our exchanges.”

The agency is involved in 27 proposed land exchanges in Idaho, Montana and Washington.

A decision is expected next month on the proposed Chain Lakes land exchange, which would trade 1,235 acres of federal land containing 14.2 million board feet of timber for 1,749 acres of land mostly owned by Idaho Forest Industries with just over 10 million board feet timber.