A report released earlier this month from the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency recommends that the Commissioners of the Land Office for the state of Oklahoma divest itself from land holdings in the coming years.
Overseen by a state board chaired by the governor, the CLO manages about $2.3 billion in state land, property assets and investments in an effort to maximize financial returns for local public school districts and higher education institutions. Within its holdings, the CLO has 750,000 surface acres and 1.2 million mineral acres, along with other securities.
In 2022, the agency distributed $91.5 million to public school districts and $30.9 million to higher education entities in the state.
The Legislative Office found that the Land Office’s portfolio has “little impact” at this time given the state’s nearly $4 billion education budget, could grow in the future.
“The impact of CLO’s distributions is less due to investment strategy than it is to the growth in other state funding for education,” the report states. “At current funding levels, CLO’s trust fund corpus is unlikely to ever grow to a level that would make a significant impact on education funds, as the total value of all CLO’s permanent educational trust funds — which includes common and higher education — is less than the state’s annual legislative appropriations for common education alone.”
LOFT analyzed the impact of the CLO on property taxes in Cimarron County, a panhandle county in which the CLO owns one-fifth of all agricultural land. In that analysis, LOFT determined that Cimarron County schools would be better off if the land were taxable.
“The county’s two school districts would receive approximately $1.56 million more in annual funding than what it receives from CLO distributions if the land were generating tax revenue,” the report states.
All told, LOFT found that if the CLO divested itself of land and that land became taxable, it would increase the CLO’s distributions to public schools from about $122 million to about $175 million each year. Land owned by the CLO is not subject to property taxes and therefore does not generate tax revenue.
Click on the link below to read the full report as released by the oversight agency.
A more in depth report about the study can be read here on the NonDoc website.
