On Thursday, the Alabama Senate Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry committee gave a favorable report to a Coosa County Constitutional amendment after heavily amending the House-passed bill.
The Forever Wild program allows the state to purchase land from private landowners so that Alabamians can have public lands to hunt and fish in perpetuity whether they are private landholders or not. It also protects species’ habitats. One unanticipated side effect of the program is that those preserved properties no longer contribute anything to local county tax collections. On Wednesday, the House passed a bill to reverse that for Coosa County.
House Bill 463 (HB463) is a Constitutional amendment sponsored by State Rep. Ben Robbins (R-Sylacauga).
“Coosa County has the right to life,” Robbins said. “A rural poor county has a right to exist.
“No county in Alabama has been more impacted by Forever Wild than Coosa County,” Robbins said. “This program has a lot of merit, but by taking land off of the tax rolls,” it is adversely affecting rural counties like Coosa County.
“Since 2009, Coosa County has lost $645,000 in tax revenues due to Forever Wild,” Robbins said. “This [bill] creates a carbon credit program.”
Robbins explained that Coosa County would get the money from any sale of carbon credits off of Forever Wild lands in Coosa County.
According to the fiscal note written by Sen. Larry Stutts (R-Sheffield), “House Bill 463 as passed the House of Representatives proposes a Constitutional Amendment which, if ratified, would increase the administrative obligations of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to market carbon credits for at least 50% of all Forever Wild Land Trust property located in Coosa County. This bill would also increase receipts to the Coosa County general fund by an undetermined amount dependent on the amount of income from carbon credits generated from the management of Forever Wild Forest resources located in Coosa County, as provided by this bill.”
The Senate Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry Committee, chaired by Stutts, greatly altered the Robbins bill. Where the version passed by the House gave Coosa County at least 50% of the revenue from the sale of carbon credits, the Senate committee amended version decreased that to at least 10%.
During the House floor debate, State Rep. Ralph Howard (D-Greensboro) said, “We have Forever Wild properties all across the state. We need to do this statewide."
“I had a bill to do this statewide,” Robbins said, but that bill failed to get out of committee. “Coosa County is a test case to see if selling carbon credits actually work.
“We need to see how much a carbon credit in Coosa County sells for. People don’t realize how poor Coosa County is. We are the only county that does not have a health department.”
Robbins explained that this is a Constitutional amendment that the voters of Coosa County would have to pass.
“We are not talking about taxing Forever Wild,” Robbins explained. “What we are talking about is that the money generated by Forever Wild in Coosa County goes back to Coosa County.”
The Alabama House passed HB463 95-3. The local application resolution so that it does not appear on the ballots in the other 66 counties passed 93-0.
Forever Wild supporters argue that stripping the program from being able to make money off of the lands in its domains would make it more difficult for Forever Wild to effectively administer and maintain its properties.
The Alabama Senate could consider the amended version of HB463 as early as Tuesday.
Tuesday will be day 27 of the Alabama Regular Legislative Session. There are a maximum of four legislative days left in this year’s regular session.
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