Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act Restrictions and ...

The Agencies Have Yet to
Establish Effective
Procedures to Fully
Comply with FLTFA and
MOU Provisions
a Three additional criteria are included in the Nevada state-level implementation agreement: (1)
preserves a significant natural, aesthetic or scientific feature; (2) preserves significant historic,
paleontological, or cultural site; and (3) enhances recreational opportunities or improves public
access to recreational opportunities.
When the agencies decided in 2006 to use the Secretaries’ discretionary
authority to make the initial FLTFA acquisitions, officials from all four
agencies told us they generally relied on acquisition proposals previously
identified for LWCF funding to quickly identify the parcels to acquire. 25
The agencies have systems to identify and set priorities for land
acquisitions under LWCF. These existing systems could serve as a basis
for systematically identifying and ranking FLTFA-eligible land for future
acquisitions.
With respect to FLTFA, the agencies—and primarily BLM, as the manager
of the FLTFA account—have not established a procedure to track the act’s
requirement that at least 80 percent of funds allocated toward the
purchase of land within each state must be used to purchase inholdings
and that up to 20 percent may be used to purchase adjacent land. 26 The
BLM FLTFA program lead said BLM considers this requirement when
making land acquisition decisions but has not established a system to
track it. The program lead noted that the requirement to use 80 percent for
inholdings is hard to track, as the act is written, because the acquisition
proposals are submitted in a piecemeal fashion.
With respect to the national MOU, BLM has not established a procedure to
track agreed-upon fund allocations—60 percent for BLM, 20 percent for
the Forest Service, and 10 percent each for the Fish and Wildlife Service
and the Park Service. 27 The BLM FLTFA program lead told us the MOU
allocations should be treated as a target or a goal on a national basis and
they do not apply within a state. However, officials from the BLM Division
of Business Services and BLM’s Budget Office told us there is no
mechanism to track these allocations and were unable to tell us whether
the allocations should be followed at the state or national level. Knowing
25 The BLM FLTFA program lead said that the criteria for acquisitions under LWCF are
generally broad enough to include the criteria under FLTFA.
26 BLM’s Assistant Director for Minerals, Realty, and Resource Protection confirmed that
FLTFA “provides for two separate categories of lands...that can be purchased”—inholdings
and adjacent lands—and funds must be used within these parameters.
27 The MOU also states that the Secretaries “may mutually decide to allocate funds to a
specific acquisition project, notwithstanding [these fund allocations].”
Page 44 GAO-08-196 Federal Land Management