Who owns Arizona land?  Who benefits? Taxpayers?  Arizona?  The Feds?

Who owns AZ land?  The land belonged to no one for millions of years.  Thousands of years ago people began living on the land: hunting, fishing, farming, and fussing with one another as people do.  All that changed a couple of hundred years ago when government came to the land; Arizona became a territory, then a state, then a mess.

To see why I say it is a mess, take a tour, real or imaginary, around Arizona afoot, on horseback, on 4 wheelers, on township or  county roads, on state roads, on federal highways.  Look around.  Ask questions: “Who owns this bit of land?”  Travel a bit farther and ask again: “Who owns this bit of land?”  In some parts of AZ the answer will be Jose Garcia or John Jones or some such private citizen.  In other parts of AZ the answers will reveal a nice, orderly, checkerboard pattern of ownership.  In other parts the answers will change only after many miles: “The Tohono O’odham Nation” or “The Feds” or “The State of Arizona” or “Pima County.”

Ask another question: “Does the owner pay taxes?”  Most often the answer will be “No.”  That’s a problem for AZ.  It might help us understand the problem better if we reflect on why the answers are what they are.

The orderly checkerboard pattern came about when alternate sections of land along railroad rights of way were designated “public land” or “railroad land.”  At the same time, parts of townships in AZ were designated “for the schools.”  Lawmakers in Washington DC thought it important to do it that way because schools and railroads needed the land or money that could be earned from sale or use of the land.  (The Feds had a legitimate interest in educating the citizenry and in providing transportation resources, right?)  The checkerboard pattern and the township designations were easy to make into law from thousands of miles away.  Few people even knew about it and even fewer thought much about it at the time.

It seemed only just that the Feds made treaties to give the Tohono O’odham Nation and the White Mountain Apache Nation and the Navajo Nation and a few other native nations a lot of land in the Arizona Territory because, after all, the Native Americans had lived there for thousands of years.  Tribal land is shown in big chunks of no particular size or shape because hunting grounds and maize fields were sized and shaped by the habits of game animals and the wanderings of rivers and streams.  The concept of “this bit of land is my property” was not one that Native American cultures embraced.  The notion that anyone could own the water, grass, and trees, the earth below, and the sky above was not in their cultures.  But cultural beliefs that land could be owned yielded decisions by distant bureaucrats that explain why the answers to simple questions (“Who owns this land?” and “Does the owner pay taxes?”) get messy in Arizona.

How messy do they get?  I learned part of the answer from Gary Kiehne, a rancher who lives near Eager, AZ.  I was one of a group of people who were listening to Kiehne because he is one of 6 people who are candidates in the Republican primary race to become the Representative from Congressional District 1.  (Bias disclosure: I voted for Kiehne in the last election AND think any of the 6 would serve us well.)

Gary and other ranchers learned all about land ownership while seeking grazing land for their cattle.  It takes a lot of grazing land for one baby steer to grow into beef-on-the-hoof.  Grazing land, often not for sale at any price, can be leased from the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the AZ Department of Land Management (State Trust.)

Ranchers must lease to earn a living and, like almost everyone who pays taxes, think taxes are too high.  Government officials in AZ and everywhere else often find that taxes are too low to support their spending habits.  Gary understands the problem and talked about creative common sense solutions so that the rest of us could understand, too.  Part of the problem is the fact that our state government has to somehow meet all its obligations to Arizona citizens with one revenue generating hand tied behind the back.

Here is what I mean by one hand tied behind the back: about half the land in western states is owned by the Feds, not the states.  It ranges from 84.5% in Nevada down to 29.9% in Montana.  In Arizona 42% of the land is owned by the Feds.  Some of it can be leased for grazing or entertaining tourists but none of the 42% is part of the tax base.  Thus almost half of Arizona land is not available for revenue generating purposes.  Nor are most of the rights to the minerals underlying the land or the forests growing on it. Those who love to protect trees and endangered species love it but other citizens ponder the meaning of “fair use” of public lands.  I believe we have not reached the perfect balance.

Leaving it to a bunch of politicians with skin in a different game, getting reelected, is has not been a prescription for success in managing scarce land resources in Arizona. The citizens of Arizona, including the ranchers who are among our best conservationists, might do a better job than the Feds.

Click on image to enlarge
Click on image to enlarge

The actual complexity of the issues surrounding productive use of Arizona land can be seen by examining a surface map of Arizona. The map reveals who owns what land.

The map shows several things:

  1. The white spaces show all the privately owned land in Arizona. There is not very much white space.  (I gulped when I saw the map, thinking at first there must be a mistake.  There is, but not with the map.)
  2. The big orange chunks show Indian Reservations. If using the word “Indian” is an issue for you,  take it up with the Bureau of Land Management.  (I am part Osage and part Cherokee and won’t be offended either way.)
  3. The pale green areas are for parts of AZ owned by the Feds and managed by the Forest Service or Fish and Wildlife. (I wish they managed it better.)
  4. Yellow is BLM managed land. BLM consumes much money and generates little revenue.  BLM is dazzlingly not for profit.  They spend a lot more taxpayer money than they generate in revenue.  (In my opinion it is a blessing that they do not have enough money to do everything they want to do.)
  5. The gray areas are municipalities in which many for-profits and not-for-profits function and most Arizonians live. (Sanctuary cities occupy most of the gray and are not especially good at collecting taxes from people “living in the shadows.”)
  6. All the checkerboard or solid areas in bluish green are managed by the AZ State Department of Land Management. There are about of 10,000,000 acres intended to generate revenue to support public education for AZ citizens.  Revenue was about 140 million dollars in 2014. (Land Management’s 2015 annual report https://land.az.gov/about/annual-reports  tells where it came from and where it went.)
  7. Persons concerned with border issues, please notice the tiny bit private land along the southern border. The ranchers who own that land welcome and allow the Border Patrol to patrol there.  The Border Patrol is not so freely welcomed along the rest of the border.  (I still have trouble believing how little of the border our Border Patrol officers have such complete access to, but that’s another story.)

There is more information on the AZ Department of Land Management website (see the link above.)  Here is link to the 2012 New York Times article that has the percentages of the total land in western states that is owned and managed as only the Feds can.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/23/us/western-land-owned-by-the-federal-government.html?_r=0   When I learn more from Kiehne, other candidates, or my own digging I’ll pass it along.

About Dale Brethower 12 Articles
Dale Brethower is a Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Western Michigan University. He currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.