Douglas suggests time limits on land easements
Source: The Times Argus, by Louis Porter
August 20, 2007
MONTPELIER – Vermonters are no newcomers to conservation of land.
Over the last three decades the Vermont Land Trust has worked on more than 1,300 projects to help preserve roughly a half-million acres. The state and other smaller trusts have set aside land or bought development rights as well, for instance the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board has given grants which have resulted in the preservation of 427 farms comprising 118,500 acres, while the board has collaborated in the preservation of 250,000 of the conserved acres of natural and recreational land in Vermont.
But some, including Gov. James Douglas, wonder if preserving land through temporary term easements would encourage more landowners – especially farmers – to sell development rights to their property and help keep the state's landscape as open and agricultural as possible. So far such conservation efforts have been nearly always been done through the permanent purchase of development rights.
"There are some states … that also have an alternative of term easement for 20 years," John Hall, commissioner of the department of housing and community affairs, said recently. "Who knows what the world is going to look like 20 years from now. We feel that both those options ought to be available."
But some conservationists and lawmakers worry that will merely spread out the effort being made to keep land undeveloped – and make it more expensive in the long run.
That is because – presuming the land on which the conservation easements is held increases in value and that easement is renewed — the cost of preserving it far into the future also grows.
Here's an example: If a landowner sells his or her right to develop, and the value of that property grows by 5 percent a year, the cost of renewing a 20-year easement would be twice as high, according to the land trust review of the idea. So if buying a perpetual conservation easement on a $250,000 piece of farmland cost $100,000 – and buying a 20-year easement cost $67,000 – the cost of renewing a second easement after 20 years would be $177,771, according to the land trust study. In fact, if the property's worth grew at something like 10 percent a year it would be much more expensive, said Gil Livingston, president of the non-profit Vermont Land Trust.
The proposal would also circumvent the reason a majority of landowners decide to sell development rights – because they want to see their land kept in its current state, Livingston said.
"The reason people conserve their land is they love the land," he said. In fact, landowners donate about half the value of the development rights on property that the land trust buys easements on, Livingston said. They typically earn federal tax credits for doing so – something which they would not be eligible for if they sold term easements instead of perpetual easements, Livingston said.
But Hall argues that for most farmers, their land is an asset that they must manage in order to sustain their businesses. In some cases, it may make more sense for them to enter term easements, he said.
"If I was an owner of land or a farmer, I think something like a term easement would appeal to me," he said. "I see farming as a business and land as an asset a farmer has."
And shorter easements would be cheaper, meaning more land could be conserved, he added.
"You are going to pay less for a 20-year lease," Hall said. "Someone giving their development rights forever would want more financial benefit than someone who is giving it up for a defined period of time."
There is not yet a proposal on the table to change how conservation easements are done in the state, and such an idea might well get a frosty reception from the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
"Just look at any piece of property in Vermont and look at how the value has increased over 20 or 30 years," said Sen. Susan Bartlett, D-Lamoille, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. "I don't think there is anything about temporary easements that would work in the long term."
The important goal of such conservation efforts is "the long-term view of keeping farmland open, forest as forest and the Green River Reservoir as the Green River Reservoir. It is going to look like that for ever," she said.
