BLM: Deputy to lay out 5 agency priorities to House appropriators
Scott Streater, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, April 4, 2014
When Neil Kornze, the Bureau of Land Management's principal deputy director, appears today before House appropriators to defend the agency's proposed fiscal 2015 budget, he plans to lay out five priority items that BLM wants to focus attention on in the coming year.
"It's our overarching vision of some of the areas we want to focus attention," said Celia Boddington, BLM spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. "These areas provide focus on some of the key areas of where we want to go as an agency."
The top priority that Kornze plans to lay out as reflected in BLM's proposed $1.1 billion budget request is the establishment of a new congressionally chartered foundation to help generate private funding and raise public support for the agency's stewardship mission of nearly 250 million acres of public lands.
Bob Abbey, BLM's former director, has said such a foundation could help bring recognition to the importance of public lands, particularly as many state legislators in the West are pushing to have federal lands managed by the states (Greenwire, March 5).
Other priorities Kornze will lay out at today's hearing before the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee include relatively noncontroversial items like $2.8 million to continue implementing National Academy of Sciences recommendations to improve wild horse and burro management, mainly population control, and $3.8 million to establish a new geospatial mapping system that could help the agency better manage its lands.
A fourth priority highlighted in the budget is continued resources for BLM's sage grouse initiative. The Fish and Wildlife Service is under a court-ordered September 2015 deadline to decide whether to propose listing the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, a move that would create a lot of concern for landowners across the bird's 11-state Western range.
But the last priority item has already raised the ire of House Republicans, who have long complained that bureaucratic red tape has stalled energy development on federal lands, killing jobs and tax revenues in mostly rural areas of the West.
BLM wants to shift a share of the cost of oil and gas inspections to industry fees, expanding onshore oil and gas inspections and oversight capability through fees similar to those assessed for offshore inspections.
The budget requests $48 million in new oil and natural gas inspection fees, a proposal that has sputtered on Capitol Hill for years but that enjoys the support of Democrats and conservationists (E&E Daily, March 31).
Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, said last month that the idea is "akin to charging taxpayers for filing their income tax returns."
"The oil and gas industry more than pays for the cost of all leasing, permitting, monitoring, and inspecting activities by returning $88.76 for every dollar BLM spends administering the onshore program," she said in a statement.
Boddington said the proposal aims to save taxpayers money.
Overall, the five budget priority items are also designed to give the public a better idea of the breadth and scope of the agency that employs more than 10,000 people.
"We want the public to know who we are," Boddington said. "We raise direct revenue for the taxpayers. We want the public to know more about who we are and what we do."
