Thursday, October 12, 2006

Costly new bureaucracy: Proposition 106

Proposition 106: Conserving Arizona's Future

While the Legislature submitted Prop. 105, an outside PAC is responsible for this one, but they cover much of the same ground; this sets up a collaboration between local and state governments to plan future use of trust land, allows land to be sold without auction for creation of public right-of-way, and sets aside over 600 M acres for conservation.

Additionally, it establishes a new bureaucracy, a board of Trustees, to oversee trust land, which should be funded by five to eight per cent of trust land revenue. It also provides a means by which the Trustees can sell land with the restriction that a portion of revenue from lease or subsequent sale will go to the State.

While I can almost get behind the royalty proposal, the expense of the new bureaucracy, in addition to the reasons I oppose Prop. 105, makes this measure unsupportable. It's worse in other ways, as well. 105 at least compensates the trust for the conservation set-aside. 106 doesn't bother.

The main opposition at saveourtrust.org provides a more in-depth look at the problems with 106.

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