Michigan Law Decides Whether Keweenaw Townships Get Paid When the Heartlands Changes Hands. It Turns on Whether the Land Is Sold or Given Away.

There is a bill attached to the Keweenaw Heartlands that almost nobody has mentioned in public.

Michigan law says that when land leaves the state’s Commercial Forest program, the owner pays a penalty to the township where the land sits. The Heartlands is enrolled in that program, all of it is expected to leave, and the same law says the penalty disappears entirely if the land is donated to a public body instead of sold to one. Roughly 32,000 acres, and one distinction in one statute.

Why the land has to come out

The Commercial Forest program is a tax break for private owners. The DNR describes it as a voluntary program for “private landowners,” who pay a flat specific tax of $1.35 per acre per year instead of regular property taxes. Land owned by the state or a local government does not pay property taxes in the first place, so there is nothing for the specific tax to replace.

A correction to our own reporting. Our September 9 piece said it was unclear whether Commercial Forest enrollment would continue on the parcels the DNR buys. On the law, it cannot. Those acres have to be withdrawn, and withdrawal is where the money question lives.

What the statute says

MCL 324.51108 sets it out. Subsection (6) grants withdrawal “without payment of the withdrawal application fee or penalty” in three cases, and only three: land “donated to a public body for public use prior to withdrawal”; land exchanged for public body property that stays commercial forest; and land “condemned for public use.”

The words sold, sale, purchase and conveyed do not appear anywhere in that subsection. A donation is free. A sale is not. Note the sequence, too. The donation has to happen before the withdrawal, not after.

The penalty under subsection (3) is built in four steps: acres withdrawn, times half the county’s 2007 per acre valuation adjusted for inflation, times “the average millage rate levied by all townships, excluding villages, in the county,” times years enrolled up to a maximum of seven, times a county multiplier. Keweenaw County’s multiplier is 0.8, the highest in Michigan, shared only with Lake, Missaukee and Ontonagon.

The money goes to the township treasurer but does not stay there. Subsection (9) requires it to be distributed “in the same proportions to the various funds as the ad valorem general property tax is allocated in the township.” Schools and the county take shares alongside the township.

Which way it is actually going

Toward a sale, at least for the state’s portion. Scott Whitcomb, director of the DNR’s Office of Public Lands, told the Mining Gazette in October 2025 that the department would “purchase the land from The Nature Conservancy.” Phase I, roughly 4,494 acres, was approved in July 2026. Phase II covers about 5,476 acres in Grant Township. The remaining acreage, headed for a locally governed community forest authority, has no public answer yet.

This is not a question we are raising from the outside. Julia Petersen of The Nature Conservancy raised it with the Keweenaw County Board of Commissioners on July 16, 2025. The minutes record her saying there are “a few ways not to pay the penalty but if it isn’t paid, the county and the townships could lose money.” That was fourteen months ago, and the minutes carry no dollar figure.

How to check the number yourself

Subsection (4) of the same statute requires the DNR to publish the inputs. For every county, the department must post the 2007 valuation figure, the inflation adjusted value, and the average township millage rate. Those three numbers, plus your acreage and your years enrolled, give you the penalty. They sit under the Commercial Forest program’s local government page at michigan.gov, and questions go to program leader Jennifer Eyde at DNR-Commercial-Forest@michigan.gov or 517-930-4329.

What we are not printing

A figure of $6.2 million has been circulating in comment threads as the withdrawal cost, attached to an oddly precise 32,541 acres. We could not source either to the DNR, the county, The Nature Conservancy or any public document, so neither appears here as fact. Published acreage figures range from 32,000 to 32,600. Nor is it public how many of those acres are actually enrolled, which is what the penalty is calculated on.

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