By Mari Wadsworth
SINCE ITS INCEPTION in 1990, the Heritage Fund has used a portion of state lottery money to acquire 6,634 acres in Arizona and has provided hundreds of grants to communities statewide for environmental education, habitat protection and other projects to manage natural resources.
In Pima County alone, the fund has helped pay for Colossal Cave land acquisition, environmental education programs, historic preservation projects in Armory Park and Barrio Historico, restoration at San Xavier Mission, trail improvements in Tucson and Catalina Mountain Parks, Reid Park renovations and the Sonoran Desert Harvest Project at Tucson Botanical Gardens.
And south of Tucson, the fund helped pay for the 4,900acre Sonoita Creek State Natural Area Park, which is providing an increased economic benefit from tourism and related industry estimated at $1.5 million annually.
With all of these good deeds, you'd think the Arizona Legislature would be pleased with the work of the Heritage Fund. Instead, lawmakers are working to raid the fund for their own purposes.
The first assault came in the form of House Bill 2217, which would have allowed Heritage money to be used for everyday maintenance and operations of state parks--which, of course, could allow the Legislature to justify slashing the parks budget. Sponsored by Tucson Reps Freddy Hershberger and Bill McGibbon and Mesa Rep. Russell Bowers, the bill failed to get out of the House Environment Committee. But it found a second life when it was attached to HB 2425, which would require Arizona Game and Fish to sell any lands acquired to protect endangered species once the species had reached the recovery stage--which passed with a 7-2 margin. The amended version specifies that dollars can only be used for Heritage Fund-acquired properties, but some critics are concerned that further changes could still be forthcoming.
"We're just sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop," says Heritage Alliance President Tom Woods. "Though they can't introduce any new legislation now, the risk is that they'll amend the new bill completely, in a way nobody had heard of before. They're introducing this stuff so fast, it's hard to keep up."
Also sailing through the Environment Committee last week was HB 2364, designed to give up to 80 percent of Heritage money to "Natural Resource Conservation Districts" (a.k.a. farmers and ranchers) to "acquire and manage riparian areas." Sponsored by Mesa Republicans Mark Killian and Jeff Groscost, the bill would grant these districts--whose board is comprised only of land owners from that district--money and authority to buy and sell public lands in their district without going through any public process.
The 38 NRCDs statewide are not fettered by state regulations, like, for example, the standard procurement process. If HB 2364 passes, ranchers can tell their local NRCDs that their property is being hampered by some problem related to conservation, and the district could grant them Heritage money, without any bidding process or public accountability. It boggles the mind.
Lastly, there's Senate Bill 1144, from Sen. Larry Chesley (R-Gilbert), which could kill the Heritage Fund altogether. The bill reprioritizes lottery disbursements in that $80 million would go to the general fund before the Heritage Fund would receive any money. Since the general fund received only $28.5 million from the lottery in fiscal 1994, down $10 million from the previous year, count on the Heritage Fund's "accidental death."
Woods is outraged that lawmakers are playing with the Heritage Fund, particularly since it was approved by two-thirds of the voters on the 1990 ballot.
"I think the Heritage Fund has worked exactly the way the voters intended, and the way we wanted it to," says Woods, who helped draft the initiative that became the Heritage Fund five years ago.
Woods says the effort to create the Heritage Fund was undertaken to force Arizona legislators to increase state spending on conserving Arizona's natural resources and riparian areas. Before the Heritage inception, Arizona ranked 48th lowest out of 50 in state environmental spending.
Ah, the good old days.
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