It took over a year from the time Congress set up the Public Land Law Review Commission before a chairman of the 19-man panel was selected. But when one was finally picked, it was good news for the ski industry. In a surprise move, Rep. Wayne Aspinall (D-Colo.), chairman, House Interior Committee, took the job.
Aspinall is without doubt the most powerful single land law man in Congress. And he is a firm believer in mixing pure conservation demands and industry demands in setting up public land law leasing policies. He’s well remembered for his unsuccessful fight to get San Gorgonio approved as a ski area in the Wilderness Bill.
While Aspinall lost that one, he doesn’t lose many. He has a reputation as a fighter and he usually gets what he wants when he’s in command. To back him up in firmly controlling the new commission, he’s tapped Milton Pearl, his Interior Committee expert on land laws and leasing, as staff director of the commission.
The commission Aspinall will head is made up of six senators, six representatives, in addition to Aspinall, and seven public members. The top public member is H. Byron Mock, a former western regional director of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Mock now represents industries—mainly mining—in their land law problems.
These are the men that will steer the sweeping study of present Federal land laws. They are charged with coming up with recommendations for changing existing laws to best meet the nation’s needs—taking into consideration mining and other industrial needs as well as recreation and conservation.
It is generally believed that Aspinall took the chairmanship of the committee because he was so instrumental in getting Congress to set up the commission and he wants to be close to final commission decisions. The feeling is that it will be up to Congress and Aspinall’s Interior Committee to pass on any land law reform. He saw no reason to be reluctant in joining the fight from the beginning.
Ski area developers who have watched the extermination of the Area Redevelopment Administration, it technically went out of business September 1, will be interested to learn that instead of killing the ARA, the government is enlarging the concept. Congress approved the Economic Development Administration that will incorporate ARA and a lot more. Like ARA, the new EDA will be housed in the Commerce Department and it will be run by Eugene Foley, who has left his job as head of the Small Business Administration.
Unlike ARA, the new agency will look far beyond simply helping individual projects in a given depressed area. The administration says the EDA combines “accelerated public works with longer-range creation of regional planning.”
One of the biggest criticisms of ARA was the way it handed out money. And ski areas probably attracted more bad publicity than any other individual projects.
But the real problem from a spending point of view was that money was often committed without any solid planning. While the Mesabi range ore production greatly benefitted from ARA money, much of the money was handed out for hard-to-justify individual projects in depressed areas—projects that couldn’t really contribute to the overall economic conditions of a depressed area. Another problem was that financially shaky companies were forced to spend large sums of money to finance studies to prove need, yet if the application was turned down, the company was considerably worse off than before it had applied.
Presumably the EDA will take a broader look at the problems of any depressed area. EDA is expected to take more initiative in deciding what types of projects are best for an area before it lends money rather than simply handing it out to seemingly qualified recipients.
Foley made a name for himself at SBA by setting up a small loan system for establishing small businesses.
What Foley did was to agree to loan seemingly responsible individuals up to $6,000 for six years at very low interest rates to help them start a business. Almost anyone within reason is eligible, although the program was aimed specifically at Negroes and people in depressed areas who need money to get started in business. This philosophy can be expected to be continued through EDA, but with considerably more money behind the program.
