Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

By Ms. MURKOWSKI:

S. 3175. A bill to amend the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 to require the Bureau of Land Management to provide a claimant of a small miner waiver from claim maintenance fees with a period of 60 days after written receipt of 1 or more defects is provided to the claimant by registered mail to cure the 1 or more defects or pay the claim maintenance fee, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation in the Senate that has already been introduced in the House of Representatives by Alaska Congressman Don Young to clarify federal mining law and remedy a problem that has arisen with the extension process for ``small'' miner land claims.

Under revisions to the Federal Mining Law of 1872, 30 U.S.C. 28(f), holders of unpatented mineral claims must pay a claim maintenance fee originally set at $100 per claim by a deadline, set by regulation, of September 1st each year. Since 2004 that fee has risen to $125 per claim. But Congress also has provided a claim maintenance fee waiver for ``small'' miners, those who hold 10 or fewer claims, that they do not have to submit the fee, but that they must file to renew their claims and submit an affidavit of annual labor by Dec. 31st each year, certifying that they had performed more than $100 of work on the claim in the preceding year, 30 U.S.C. 28f(d)(1). The waiver provision further states: ``If a small miner waiver application is determined to be defective for any reason, the claimant shall have a period of 60 days after receipt of written notification of the defect or defects by the Bureau of Land Management to: cure such defect or defects or pay the $100 claim maintenance fee due for such a period.''

Since the last revision to the law last decade, there have been a series of incidents where miners argued that they submitted their applications and affidavits of annual labor in a timely manner, but due to clerical error by BLM staff or for unexplained reasons the applications or documents were not recorded as having been received in a timely fashion--and that BLM has then moved to terminate the claims, deeming them null and void. While mining claim holders have argued that the law provides them time to cure claim defects, BLM has argued that the cure only applies when applications or fees have been received in a timely manner. Thus, there is no administrative remedy for miners who believe that clerical errors by BLM resulted in loss or the late recording of claim applications.

There have been a number of cases where Congress has been asked to override BLM determinations and reinstate mining claims simply because of the disputes over whether the claims had been filed in a timely manner. Congress in 2003 reinstated such claims in a previous Alaska case, and claims in another incident were reinstated following a U.S. District Court case in the 10th Circuit in 2009 in the case of Miller v. United States.

This bill is intended to short circuit continued litigation and pleas for claim reinstatement by clarifying the intent of Congress that miners do have to be informed that their claims are in jeopardy of being voided and given 60 days notice to cure defects, including giving them time to submit their applications and to submit affidavits of annual labor, should they not be received and processed by BLM officials. If all defects are not cured within 60 days--the obvious intent of Congress in passing the original act--then claims still will be subject to voidance.

The transition rule included in this measure will solve two pending cases in Alaska, one where a holder of nine claims on the Kenai Peninsula, near Hope, Alaska, has lost title to claims that he had held from 1982 to 2004. In this case, John Trautner had a consistent record of having paid the annual labor assessment fee for the previous 22 years and the local BLM office did have a time-date-stamped record that the maintenance fee waiver certification form had been filed weeks before the deadline, not just a record that the affidavit of annual labor had arrived. In the second case Don and Judy Mullikin of Homer, Alaska, is in the process of losing title to nine claims on the Seward Peninsula outside of Nome in Alaska because the Anchorage BLM office has no record of them receiving the paperwork, even though the owners have computer time stamps of them having completed the paperwork five months before the deadline, but no other evidence of filing to meet BLM regulations in support of an appeal. These are claims that have been worked in Alaska yearly since 1937 and are the main livelihood for the Mullikins.

This legislation, supported by the Alaska Miners Association, clearly is intended to remedy a simple drafting error in congressional crafting of the small miner claim defect process. While only a few cases of potential clerical errors have occurred over the past decade, it still makes sense for Congress to clarify that claim holders have a right to know that their applications have not been processed, in time for them to cure application-claim defects prior to being informed of the loss of the claim rights forever. Simple equity and due process requires no less.

Given the minute cost of this administrative change to the Department of the Interior, but its big impact on affected small mineral claim holders, I hope this bill can be considered and approved promptly this year.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source