George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman will let me answer, right?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Yes, thank you.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) to use as he chooses, and he can close.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, could the chair inform me how much time we have remaining?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall). (Mr. UDALL of Colorado asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. If the gentleman will yield further, the gentleman is correct. Tracts leased after the date of enactment are not relevant to the operation of the allocation formula in either section 101(b) or 101(c).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. The gentleman is correct.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. John). (Mr. JOHN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would say this is not about pure pork, this is not to be hidden. The gentlewoman should have stood up when she opened her remarks and said that it was aimed at me and then everything would have been on the table, but we have discussed that. Many people in this county would be happy to be rid of these refineries. We have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people go to hospitals; we have had millions and millions of dollars in lawsuits. But the fact of the matter is, that is where the refineries are. We could never locate them in any other part of the United States and that is why they are treated as an impacted area. If they were on the coast, they would be treated as an impacted area. They are 30 miles from the coast on San Francisco Bay, so they are not treated as an impacted area, and this is to treat them the same as we would treat refineries in Long Beach or southern California or Louisiana or Alabama or wherever. If my colleagues do not think this is a coastal area, this is where the Naval base is. This is a coastal operation. If my colleagues want to take a potshot at me, they can take their potshot. But the fact of the matter is this is about an impacted area from offshore drilling; this is about an impacted area where many, many, many accidents have taken place. That is part of the price we pay for energy development in this country, and I ask for a no vote.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, let me state that Contra Costa County, which I represent is, in fact, qualified as a coastal county. The issue was whether or not they got that portion of funding under the legislation that dealt with the burdens, and the question there was the proximity. As the gentlewoman points out, this is not proximate to the production of the oil, but the fact of the matter is it is the home to six oil refineries which produce all of the various products from offshore oil that is drilled in California, Alaska and elsewhere. This is an area of the country that has been impacted by explosions, by leaks, by toxic leaks, by toxic pollution and so it is a part of the cycle, if you will, of developing energy in this country that goes from exploration to refining to marketing. Because it happens to be located in one central area that is not on the coast, and the reason it is not on the coast is because it is on the bay in the deep water harbor. Otherwise it would be on the coast like in Los Angeles, Long Beach or elsewhere. It ought to be treated the same, because the citizens are there, and this is what the offshore oil revenues were about, was to deal with mitigation of burdens that communities suffer as a result of that kind of activity. Here are all of the press clippings of all of the explosions, all of the toxics spills, all of the spills in the bay, the ships that have run aground, the barges that are broken open, the pipelines that have broken open, and this is just simply to provide the same kind of resources that a county would get if we had production and it was that proximate. Mr. Chairman, that is the purpose of it. I think it is clearly justified because so much of the West Coast and the Alaskan oil is, in fact, refined in this one county of California. So I would urge a defeat of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, this kind of simple prohibition simply is unworkable and takes the thought processes out of setting priorities and making determinations about different values, about different emergencies, about different situations. The fact of the matter is very often we buy some private property to relieve pressure on other private property owners. We know that a number of endangered species problems have been solved because the Federal Government was able to aggregate some areas for protection that then freed up other landowners so that they could put their lands to the productive use or the changes or whatever that they wanted to participate in. So now we would say, no, they cannot do that. We know very often that we buy property sometimes because it threatens the values and the purposes of the national preserve, whether it is a park or whether it is the forest. We buy some lands so that we can then swap those lands for some other lands that private property or a city or a county wants to put to use. They want us to buy certain lands and swap different lands with them. Those are all determinations made by elected officials at local levels and in the Congress and in the Senate and city council members. They use their judgment. Yes, there is a backlog. But let us not pretend like this Congress has been working it off recently, because the Congress has not funded that. But we should not take away those kinds of determinations. Under this thinking, what they would say is that they could not build three fighter planes at the same time or they could not build a new class of submarine until they finished the old one. No, we have different situations that emerge in the running of this Government; and the fact of the matter is that we make determinations and we use our best judgments. And so, now they want to say that they can only use this money for inholdings. But, in fact, if an emergency comes up or they have to protect a Federal asset, then they have to go through a lot of rigmarole. The fact is that this system has worked very, very well. Because we have purchased inholdings. We have purchased lands contiguous to these lands where we think they have a particular value or in some cases where landowners want out because they want to do something to the land, they want to go into some other business and the Federal Reserve is inconsistent with that. These people use it. They do not run around willy-nilly. Most of these purchases from the Land and Water Conservation Fund are made because Members of Congress go to the Committee on Appropriations and ask that they be made. Every year we trudge down there, we send letters, we get all the people in our delegation to sign them. And they come from both sides of the aisle, and they come from most of the Members who have spoken here tonight asking for the Federal Government to buy these lands. And they want to posture and put a straitjacket on these Federal agencies so they cannot provide the kind of stewardship that the Nation's lands deserve. I ask for a no vote.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. If they said they wanted to set aside 10 percent of their lottery, that would not bother you, or set aside 5 percent of the general fund revenues, as long as they have a real dollar match, is what the gentleman is saying?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Could the States if they wanted to in their normal budget process budget $50 million for matching land and water conservation funds? Would that be sufficient?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, am I correct in understanding that the purpose of the gentleman's amendment is to provide a means by which the State establishes where it is going to get the revenues from?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. So it is real money?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very much the concerns of the authors of this amendment. I come from the West. Most people do not realize how much land in California is owned by the Federal Government but it obviously is a problem for the other States that do not have the size that we have. But to put a mathematical equation on this business if you cannot increase Federal ownership, we just went through a situation in Las Vegas where they wanted a very valuable small piece of Federal land, but to swap it out and get a deal for the Federal Government, they went out and bought some lands to add to their Federal holdings which would have helped the Federal Government but was not worth very much but rounded out the holdings and the net process is you ended up with increased Federal lands but the city of Las Vegas and the county and everybody else is ecstatic about what they have got. We go through this all the time. We have people in Colorado, in the ski areas that come to us, they want to buy a couple of acres of land that may be worth millions of dollars and they know that maybe down on the stream there is an area where we could get public access, they give it to us, and it is worth a few thousand dollars. We would not mind if all this land was valuable, but a lot of it is not necessarily valuable. So trying to put a mathematical equation, over the last few years, Federal ownership has been going down because I think one of the things the members of the minority have drilled into us on the committee is that people are concerned about the increase of this where it is not necessary, where it can be swapped out, where we can unify it, where we can rationalize the ownership and this committee has been doing that under the leadership of the chairman. But to put us in this position I think is to, if it does not average out, do we have to do it on a calendar year or a fiscal year? We do not have necessarily like assets. But we know, and we have tried to encourage the various land management agencies to be more attune to rationalizing patterns and ownerships. We went through a big swap in Utah. I would oppose this amendment. I like the spirit of it, but I just do not think you can say mathematically that is the situation.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, if I might ask a question to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney) I do not quite understand. I am sure things are different in New York than they are in California. Generally on the Stateside of land and water conservation, communities have a project. They usually go out and they raise some local money or they raise private money or foundation, or individuals make contributions and then they try to get together and go to the State and ask whether they will use this or not, so if a park district does this or a city does this or a county, who gets the veto here? I do not understand. If the county wants to do this within their jurisdiction, can a city in the area say, we will not sign on to this?