By Billy Arnold
Jackson Hole Daily
Via- Wyoming News Exchange
JACKSON — The Wyoming Legislature has made the first move in what’s sure to be a protracted debate this winter about the future of the Kelly parcel.
In a mid-January meeting, Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, convinced the Joint Appropriations Committee to formally propose a minimum price tag of $100 million for the square mile tract of state trust land that state elected officials considered auctioning to the highest bidder this fall.
Gov. Mark Gordon and the state’s four other statewide elected officials ultimately opted to table a decision on an open-market option, in part to explore trading federal oil and gas development rights elsewhere in Wyoming for the parcel, and in part to give the Legislature time to act. Gierau argued he’s doing that.
Thousands of Wyomingites spoke in support of selling the Kelly parcel to the park and protecting it from development.
“I heard 10,000 people going to public meetings, saying, ‘Don’t make this political football.’ And ‘Make it go to the national park,’” Gierau said. “I thought this is the way we could achieve that.”
The state has sold three other tracts of land in Teton park to the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service. But direct sales of state land require a legislative OK.
The measure Gierau proposed in mid-January tacked the price tag and authorization for state land managers to sell the land onto a draft of a larger budget bill. That bill now has to be approved by the 90-person Wyoming Legislature.
The Joint Appropriations Committee voted 7-5 in favor of Gierau’s language. The senator was optimistic that a similar result could be achieved in the full Legislature, pointing out that the majority of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees both voted for the bill.
“If the bodies in total do the same thing, we’re doing just fine,” Gierau said.
Sen. Dave Kinskey, R-Sheridan, argued that a “public sale” of the parcel would generate far more revenue for the state. Wyomingites almost unanimously opposed an auction.
“I still remain convinced that a public sale is going to generate a lot of money for the schools,” Kinskey said. “We have a fiduciary obligation not to limit what our opportunities are.”
A private developer could buy the Kelly parcel, divide it into 35-acre ranchettes and sell each individually. Doing so would damage the ecological value of the Kelly parcel but create an economic windfall for the developer.
The most the Department of the Interior can spend on the parcel is $62.5 million, its appraised value.
If the $100 million price tag sticks, that leaves a roughly $40 million gap that would have to be filled by private philanthropy.
In 2016, when Wyoming last sold a square-mile inholding to the federal government, Teton park, the National Park Foundation, and the Grand Teton National Park Foundation paid $46 million. The Department of the Interior paid half, and the nonprofits the other half. Forty million dollars would roughly double that amount of fundraising.
The Kelly parcel is undeveloped and sits in the foothills of the Gros Ventre Range. Mule deer and pronghorn migrate across its 640 acres every spring and fall, coming and going to verdant summer ranges in Teton park, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department considers it crucial winter range for elk.
It’s also home to 87 animals that the state considers “species of greatest conservation need,” including moose, bald eagles, bighorn sheep, Brewer’s Sparrow and American kestrel.
