To amend the Education Land Grant Act to require the Secretary of Agriculture to pay the costs of environmental reviews with respect to conveyances under that Act.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 108) to amend the Education Land Grant Act to require the Secretary of Agriculture to pay the costs of environmental reviews with respect to conveyances under that Act.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 108, which amends the Education Land Grant Act to require the Secretary of Agriculture to pay the costs of environmental reviews, is an important piece of legislation for many schools, many school districts, but most of all for many students across the United States of America.

Currently the new Education Land Grant Act enacted in the 106th Congress allows the Forest Service to convey up to 80 acres of its land to school districts to renovate, expand, or construct school facilities. The act requires that land conveyed is identified for disposal in the particular forest's plan and that the conveyance cost of the survey is borne by the applicant. The Forest Service has determined this cost to be $10 per acre.

However, both conveyance of land under this act and the forest plan amendment require an environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act known as NEPA. Presently the Education Land Grant Act and the interim Forest Service manual fail to indicate who bears the cost of the environmental analysis.

Madam Speaker, this is the crucial point today. In implementing this law, the Forest Service staff has administratively determined that schools that apply for a conveyance under this act would need to pay for various administrative costs, analyses, and environmental compliance assessment. In fact, Madam Speaker, the interim directive that has now finally been distributed states various costs to be borne by school districts, and, I quote now, ``Nominal costs includes the nominal fee of $10 per acre conveyed, plus all costs directly associated with the project that the Forest Service may incur to evaluate and process a school district's request to acquire National Forest Service lands under ELGA, such as, costs associated with National Environmental Policy Act compliance, document preparation, surveys, posting of property monuments, markers, or posts, and recordation.''

In fact, another memo mentioned that even staff time, that even staff time used to process requests will need to be paid by school districts.

Madam Speaker, my colleagues, what we have here is a disconnection. In the 106th Congress this body passed the new Education Land Grant Act unanimously. The other body did likewise. It was signed into law by President Clinton in his final days of office. Here we have a textbook example of elected officials, constitutional officers, doing their job. As the author of the new Education Land Grant Act, it was never my intent for a governmental bureaucracy to determine administratively that they were going to charge the rural school districts of America for their staff time. Indeed, Madam Speaker, if I am not mistaken, anyone in the employment of the United States Government serves the people, and here we have an administrative directive saying we are going to charge school district X staff time for Federal workers to work on this. This is a disconnection between the intent of Congress, the assent of the executive branch, and the execution by a bureaucracy.

Madam Speaker, the costs associated with the conveyance under ELGA are truly minimal to the Forest Service, a drop in the bucket for that agency. Here is the problem: Those same costs can prove absolutely prohibitive to school districts seeking to expand their facility. Indeed, Madam Speaker, the intent of the legislation was to offer this land at minimal costs to school districts, and our studies have borne out that in 44 of our 50 States this will have a positive impact primarily for rural districts, but the entire intent of the legislation was to allow those rural districts to focus their financial resources where they are best used, helping teachers teach and helping children learn, not to be caught up in a bureaucratic morass that would prove to be prohibitive to those districts.

So this particular piece of legislation, Madam Speaker, H.R. 108, will require the Forest Service to accept the full cost of the environmental analysis required by NEPA for these small land conveyances. This would free local school districts from burdensome administrative costs, allow them to spend funds again on what is most important, what goes on in the classroom for their students.

The Education Land Grant Act was initially passed by this Congress for the purpose of aiding local school districts. This legislation will simply direct the Forest Service to pay for any environmental analysis costs, allowing the Act to achieve its original intent of improving communities and benefiting school children across the United States.

Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleagues to join me in support of this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for her favorable comments.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Speaker, H.R. 108 would require the Secretary of Agriculture to pay the costs of environmental reviews conducted pursuant to the Educational Land Grant Act. The majority and my colleague have already clearly and very passionately explained the bill, and we have no objection. So we support H.R. 108.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.