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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Allen" data-source="post: 198065" data-attributes="member: 389">But you are OK with the teachers and garbage collectors being taxed to build farm to market rural roads for the farming community?Or the farmers for being taxed to build roads into boat ramps for us anglers?I mean, I get it, the rush to develop was dumb on so many levels that it makes my head hurt.  But the increase in sales taxes, income taxes, and royalties off of State owned land all put a significant chunk of change in the State's coffers due to oil development.Like I've said, jacking the tax burden on a few due to ????? is something I am not a fan of because it will eventually come back to haunt other people when that cash cow has its teats wore out.  I don't think it's quite accurate to say that property owners don't benefit from the oil development in western ND, or even quite a ways away from the actual oil fields.  We have plenty of people in Bismarck that work out there and because of that they have bought homes in Bismarck, sent their kids to Bismarck schools, which employs teachers from all corners of ND that went to school at ND universities.  Or for that matter, the car/boat/RV/Walmart sales in Bismarck and Minot places away from the west seem to have also boomed.  Its tentacles have reached far and wide across the state in economic activity.- - - Updated - - -That's an interesting point that has some merit.  Do you know how/why they got severed?One of the biggest reasons for the severing of mineral rights from surface owners came via the dirty 30s.  The State legislature, being fairly ag friendly, wanted to help keep farmers on the land. So when farmers and ranchers ran into difficult financial times and banks were charging too high of an interest rate (subjective for sure), the legislature swung a deal where the State would provide lower interest operating loans. The catch here is that most knew the deal was going to cost the state money in the form of defaults. So in order to help it be not a solely one-way handout, the State took what everyone generally considered the "worthless" mineral rights as payment in buying down the interest rates.  This seems to have started the generally accepted practice of severing minerals from surface lands.  Most farmers didn't care because, well...they're farmers, not oilmen.  And since nobody had successfully drilled a well in ND at the time, they considered them worthless with the exception of the gravel.That then led to a bunch of landowners in the 60s and 70s horse-trading fractions of minerals from under their land to their neighbor for some of the minerals under their land. Everyone was onboard with it then.  Heck, lots of land sales came up where the minerals were specifically listed as available with the purchase of the land, it went something like this.  For sale, 160 acres of pasture/crop land.  $400 an acre with mineral rights, or $375 an acre without minerals.  It's the kids and grandkids of the people who either chose to give up their minerals to the State in the 30s or chose to buy land minus the minerals in the 60s-80s that complain the loudest about minerals being separated. Tough to shove that genie back in the bottle now but the State gave surface landowners a way to steal the minerals a few years back.  Not sure of how successful that program has been, but it's at least legal to now steal them back if you follow the rules.- - - Updated - - -Heck, I even know of a an old electric and gas company in rural Ward and Mountrail county that used to sign deals with landowners to provide free electricity and gas (propane??) for the farmer's land upon the death of both the husband and wife.Man, I bet there were some pissed off kids over that!  But dear old mom and dad didn't think the kids either wanted the farm, or they didn't want the kids to suffer on the farm like they did.</blockquote>

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