The Senate has passed a bill that, if enacted into law, will require existing agricultural and grazing permits to be extended to five years. Permits are \u201cinsufficiently\u201d limited to one-year time spans, Senate Bill 19-47 says.<\/p>\n
\u201cFarmers and ranchers have been limited by Department of Public Lands and\/or Department of Lands and Natural Resources to one-year permits for agricultural and grazing use of public lands,\u201d the bill states. \u201cOne year is an insufficient timespan\u2026to provide sufficient security to any person investing capital or time in an agricultural business venture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe said departments may cease to exist sometime in the future,\u201d the bill said, \u201cleaving the fate of current permits for agricultural and grazing use in question.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill extends all existing agricultural and grazing permits that are compliant with regulations to five years. The departments of Public Lands and Lands and Natural Resources\u2014which issue these permits\u2014may charge a reasonable fee for such an extension, but the fee cannot be raised within this five-year time, according to the bill.<\/p>\n
The bill states that all permits issued after the bill is made law will be for five years, provided rules and regulations are complied with.<\/p>\n
The bill places a two-year moratorium on rental rate increases for agricultural and grazing land leased through the permit process, during which \u201clease rates for current permits shall not be raised and lease rates for subsequent permits shall be set at rates equal to the lease rates of existing permits.\u201d<\/p>\n
After this moratorium, the bill states, any increase in rental rate of agricultural and grazing land will become effective only after a public hearing is held on any proposed rate increases.<\/p>\n
The bill allows for renewal of permits upon expiration, unless holders are non-compliant with rules and regulations. It provides that permits will be immediately revoked if the permitted land is not used for agricultural or grazing, and if the property is subleased or reassigned or if the permit fees are not paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate has passed a bill that, if enacted into law, will require existing agricultural…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,346,175,2331],"class_list":["post-212601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-dlnr","tag-dpl","tag-public-lands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}