The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-05-25
NEW BILL WOULD
 GIVE STATE CHOICE OF PUBLIC LANDS
Governor Tells Chamber of Improvements to State-
 hood Measure


 Alaska will be offered one-ninth of the public lands in Alaska-the one ninth it chooses, Governor Ernest Gruening said today.
 Reporting to the Chamber of Commerce on the state of Alaska's s affairs in the capital, he said that the revised draft of the statehood bill in preparation at the time he left Washington, DC, 10 days ago, provided for scrapping the present plan of turning over four sections in every township to the new state.
 He said provisions had been made in the new bill for letting the state choose those lands it wants, up to one-ninth of the public lands ex- cluding National Forest land, the land to be turned over to the state after five years during which the state will decide just what lands in the public domain it wants.
 Pointing out that there were no Alaskans on hand to oppose state hood as such during the hearings in April, he said that most of the opposition to HR 331 was based on the argument that the bill was not sufficiently generous with regard to land.
 
 Mixed Blessing"
 He said possession of large areas of Alaska land would be a mixed blessing" because of the cost of managing and surveying the land and said that under the provisions of the latest draft of the bill "the state would not be obligated to take a lot of worthless tundra land"
 The new state would also be granted 100000 acres of National Forest land to provide for the ex- pansion of cities.
 Another amendment to the orig inal bill would leave the manage ment of the Pribilof seal herds in the hands of the federal govern ment, but would provide that one half of the net proceeds from the fur seal herds would be returned to the state.
 This would mean about $750,00O for the states treasury.
 Governor Gruening said after the meeting that the new bill also pro- vides that the state would receive 371a percent of the royalties on oil taken from the public domain and 3712 percent of the money received from sale of National Forest timber.
 The figure in the early bill was 25 percent.
 He said he believed the latest draft of the statehood bill would remove most of the objections to the original bill. In the strategy behind the passage of the early bill, it was considered best to have it passed and work for desired amend ments to it when it reached the Senate.
 Sentiment Good
 Sentiment in Washington toward Alaskan statehood was friendly when he left, and the desire seemed to be to give. Alaska as good bill as possible, he declared.
 Allen Shattuck asked if there wal any discussion of the cost of ad- ministering a state should statehood be granted. Governor Gruening an swered that the general attitude seemed to be that there are suf- ficient resources in Alaska to SUD- port a state, although there were differences of opinion on the ques- tion.
 He described the alleged "nev draft" of the bill, made public by Territorial Senator Howard Lyng as museum piece"
 Goodwill Tour Set
 o. F. Benecke, member of the Chamber tourist committee, an. nounced that the Chamber of Com merce goodwill tour to Whitehorse has been set for June 2 to 5. The 30 members of the organization making the tour will erect a sign pointing toward Juneau from the junction of the Haines cutoff witk the Alaska Highway
 Acting secretary Herb Rowland announced that A members of the Portland Chamber of Commerce would visit Juneau for three days beginning July 15.