Two Sides to John McCain’s Land Swap Deals
May 9th, 2008 by JAZZ SHAW
The Washington Post has further information on an unfolding story regarding several “land swap” deals endorsed by presidential hopeful Senator John McCain, at least one of which seems to be producing a financial windfall for one of the Arizona Senator’s largest fundraisers.
PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
This certainly seems worthy of investigation, but as I will point out, there are two sides to every story. The “land swap” involved a deal where individuals would be able to exchange rugged, undeveloped land primarily owned by Fred Ruskin and the Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership. This property included some rare, desert woodland ecosystems including habitat for the pronghorn antelope. The land would be folded into the existing Prescott National Forest. In exchange, the owners would receive land which was more accessible and ready for development.
The controversy comes from the fact that Ruskin’s group wound up getting land valued at $120,000 per acre in exchange for land previously worth $2,000 per acre. They then turned around and handed a deal to develop 12,000 homes in this area to SunCor Development, run by Steven A. Betts who has raised a great deal of money for Senator McCain. In his defense, the McCain campaign has released answers to a series of questions on these land deals stating that there were no prior agreements between the Senator and the other parties involved.
There does not yet seem to be conclusive evidence of any sort of quid pro quo here, but since it at least provides the possible appearance of impropriety, a full investigation should begin with the results provided to us. However, as I said earlier, there are two sides to a story like this.
Such “checkerboard” land distribution arrangements are not uncommon, and I’ve observed quite a few of them over the years here in Upstate New York. (They are also commonly referred to as patchwork land deals, and have happened with the Adirondack Park here in the Empire State.) When sections of private land become “trapped” inside of sections of public parkland, problems come up on both sides. Simply put, the most efficient way to manage, patrol and protect the wilderness areas is to keep them contiguous. Anything else leads to zoning problems and dangerous situations for certain animals who may be crossing from public to private property and back again. For the owners, there are even more issues. Development of roads, utility lines and other required infrastructure can prove to be impossible when crossing park lands. Often the only reasonable solution is to fold some of the contiguous land into the park in exchange for accessible land suitable for development being given to the owners.
Further, the idea of trading land worth $2,000 for property valued at $120,000 may sound suspicious, but the true “worth” of the parklands should be measured in more than terms of hard cash. These parks belong to all of us, providing not only habitat for endangered flora and fauna, but wonderful opportunities for hikers, campers, scientists and students. Surely that has some value beyond what can be measured in hard dollars and cents for development deals.
This is an interesting story to be sure, and worthy of further investigation. But we may not want to be too quick to rush to judge Senator McCain’s involvement until we have all the details.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 6:53 am and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, John McCain, 2008 Elections, Politics. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
