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Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act Restrictions and ...

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Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, <strong>and</strong><br />

Methodology<br />

BLM field offices that had not conducted a competitive sale under FLTFA<br />

as of May 31, 2007 (as shown in table 11). From the field offices with no<br />

competitive sales, we choose at least one office from each of the ten state<br />

offices under FLTFA <strong>and</strong> we considered the proximity of l<strong>and</strong>s managed<br />

by field offices to urban areas. For California, we selected two additional<br />

field offices—Palm Springs <strong>and</strong> Eagle Lake. We chose the Palm Springs<br />

Field Office because it planned a major sale during our review <strong>and</strong> we<br />

chose the Eagle Lake Field Office because, although it is located in<br />

California, it manages some l<strong>and</strong> in Nevada <strong>and</strong> has had no competitive<br />

sales. Because all of the Nevada field offices have had competitive sales<br />

<strong>and</strong> four Nevada offices were among the high revenue offices selected, we<br />

decided to select the Eagle Lake office. To analyze the narrative responses<br />

to some of the semistructured interview questions, we used the web-based<br />

system to perform content analyses of select open-ended responses. To<br />

conduct the content analyses to develop statistics on agreement among<br />

the answers, two reviewers per question collaborated on developing<br />

content categories based on survey responses <strong>and</strong> independently assessed<br />

<strong>and</strong> coded each survey response into those categories. Intercoder<br />

reliability (agreement) statistics were electronically generated in the<br />

coding process, <strong>and</strong> agreement on all categories were 90 percent or above.<br />

Coding disagreements were resolved through reviewer discussion. In<br />

addition, analyses of the closed-ended responses were produced with<br />

statistical software.<br />

Table 10: The Seven BLM Field Offices Selected That Have Generated 97 Percent of<br />

FLTFA Revenue, as of May 31, 2007<br />

State BLM office<br />

Nevada Carson City Field Office<br />

Nevada Elko Field Office<br />

Nevada Ely Field Office<br />

Nevada Las Vegas Field Office<br />

New Mexico Las Cruces District Office<br />

Oregon Burns District Office<br />

Wyoming Rock Springs Field Office<br />

Source: GAO analysis of BLM Division of Business Services revenue data.<br />

Page 51 GAO-08-196 <strong>Federal</strong> <strong>L<strong>and</strong></strong> Management

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