"The fact we will have friends in senior positions will be a great help to us," said the former trade ambassador to President Bush. Huntsman also previously was ambassador to Singapore for former President George H.W. Bush and was an aide to former President Ronald Reagan.
"Whether it's on education policy, negotiating with [Education Secretary] Rodney Paige on No Child Left Behind, or whether it relates to how we can squeeze more value from our public lands to help our schools, to have Vice President Cheney and President Bush and others as friends is going to help us," Huntsman said in an interview.
His "first and foremost" priority working with Congress will be passing legislation to consolidate state-owned school trust lands through exchanges with the Bureau of Land Management and to increase the federal funds received by states through the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program.
Created by Congress in 1976, PILT reimburses counties in 49 states for public lands that are not on property tax rolls and therefore do not contribute to the local tax base. Lawmakers from Western states such as Utah, where 65 percent of all land in the state is federally owned, have long complained PILT payments don't come close to making up the difference in lost tax revenues that go toward schools, roads and other public needs.
Periodically, Western lawmakers have added money to the Interior Department's annual appropriation to provide one-time boosts to PILT payments. But the Western Congressional Caucus now is pushing legislation that would phase in permanent increases to ultimately close the gap between the PILT payments and the estimated lost tax revenues.
But Western lawmakers will have to overcome Congress' growing worry over the record deficit and the escalating cost of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to get any permanent PILT hike passed.
"I'm going to work with [3rd District Rep.] Chris Cannon and [1st District Rep.] Rob Bishop, and they are ready to introduce legislation," said Huntsman. Second District Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is also supportive of PILT reform legislation.
Huntsman also is supportive of the Utah delegation's recent proposal to swap parcels of state-owned school trust lands that are surrounded by or adjacent to popular federal recreation areas along the Colorado River in southeastern Utah. In exchange, the state would get federally owned parcels elsewhere that can be leased, developed or sold to generate revenue for state schools.
