HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guam Ancestral Lands Commission may need to pay out $7 million per year to compensate claimants for ancestral property kept by the A.B. Won Pat International Airport Authority at Tiyan under the proposal to amend the mandate for the Ancestral Land Bank Trust, according to GALC land agent Joey Leon Guerrero.
“The 2022 median price for a half-acre sold was approximately $93,000. Times two, that would be $186,000 per acre. With the Tiyan lands, there’s approximately 1,600 acres that were kept by the airport. … That would come up to $308 million. If that’s to be paid out over 40 years, that will come up to around $7 million to be paid out per year,” Joey Leon Guerrero said Tuesday during a public hearing on Bill 23-37, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero’s proposal to change the land bank statute.
Joey Leon Guerrero said he supported the measure, but didn’t see how GALC could make it work with the money that would need to be paid out, also considering that there are other claimants who may need to be paid, which would further stretch the compensation amount.
“Again, I support the intent of this bill, but I really don’t think we can make this work. Not in our lifetimes, not in a hundred lifetimes,” Joey Leon Guerrero said.
Although Bill 23 does identify funding streams, Joey Leon Guerrero suggested including a land exchange option using properties belonging to the Chamorro Land Trust Commission to help extinguish ancestral land claims.
Bill 23 initially was proposed by Gov. Leon Guerrero in 2022 as the Land Bank Reform Act, back when she was attempting to lease the Eagles Field area of Mangilao from the federal government for the purpose of constructing a medical complex. That plan fell through due to various reasons, and Eagles Field remains under federal control, to be potentially utilized for the missile defense system planned for Guam.
The 2022 version of the bill died in the 36th Guam Legislature. The governor submitted an updated version in early 2023, under the new term of the 37th Guam Legislature, which is now Bill 23.
The measure is intended to facilitate monetary compensation for original owners if their land was returned to the government of Guam, but was retained or will be retained for public use, or leased to GovGuam for public use – Class 1 beneficiaries – or if the federal government is not likely to return the land in the foreseeable future – Class 2 beneficiaries. Bill 23 is the governor’s answer to the roadblock presented by U.S. Law 106-504.
The federal law places the government of Guam ahead of all federal agencies in the return of federal excess land, but it restricts transfer of those properties to be for public use only, which is defined to exclude transfers to individuals for private use other than on a “nondiscriminatory basis.”
This has been interpreted to mean barring transfers specifically intended as land return to original owners.
In addition to the Tiyan airport properties, Joey Leon Guerrero said on Tuesday that Class 1 beneficiaries would include properties used for Route 1 and Route 4, and about 36,000 acres may potentially be claimed by Class 2 claimants under Bill 23, which presents another “huge amount” of compensation that may need to be accounted for.
The current Land Bank Trust account balance can support only between $500,000 and $700,000 in annual distributions, according to Guam Economic Development Authority CEO and Administrator Melanie Mendiola.
GEDA first became involved in understanding the land return process during the Eagles Field issue, Mendiola said.
She said her agency developed and suggested a process that included performing an inventory of lands taken by the federal government, creating a survey to determine the preferred method of extinguishing claims among beneficiaries (payment, land exchange, etc.), assessing the value of properties returned and not returned to GovGuam, and creating a budget based on estimated payouts and payout time frame of less than 20 years, before presenting the proposal to GALC.
“In the bill it says up to 40 years (for compensation payments), but I think 20 years is a good amount to strive for because many ancestral claimants and their beneficiaries are still alive and have awareness of what they’ve experienced,” Mendiola said Tuesday during the hearing.
Some other considerations for the process include court fees, survey fees, payment to realtors and property taxes, Mendiola added, stating that land transfer alone won’t be immediate and can take years to sort out.
“I think this is something we have to keep in mind as we’re developing whatever it is the final product may look like,” Mendiola said.
Compensation options include bond proceeds, giving land for land, annual distributions from the Land Bank Trust account, or a combination of options, according to Mendiola.
But with the current Land Bank Trust account able to distribute only $500,000 to $700,000 per year, GALC needs an advocate to help build the trust, she added. Bill 229 contemplates annual appropriations and funding from Section 30, as well as payments from GovGuam agencies that utilize ancestral properties to fund the land bank.
“The valuation of all the properties, I don’t think we’ve come up with a good number. … If the total sum value of all the properties on Guam is $500 million, and you want to pay it out over 20 years, that’s about a $38 million annual payout. We are nowhere near that. … So we want to reduce that amount … by saying, ‘This is the amount that we can do land for land. This is the amount we’re going to reduce because we gave you some parking spaces. So you’re not going to get (the) full value of your land.’ … Now we’re going to focus on the land bank and this is how we’re going to grow the land bank,” Mendiola said.
“This is not something we’ve completely unpacked, but this is the first step, when we decide who the beneficiaries are, and we decide this is how we’d like to extinguish their claims,” she added.
In addition to the local proposal in Bill 23, Guam congressional Del. James Moylan introduced the Guam Excess Land Return Act last year, which would replace the prohibition in U.S. Law 106-504 with language that authorizes transfers to original landowners.
Joey Leon Guerrero
Melanie Mendiola
