http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...y-owned-now-some-states-want-their-land-back/
More than half the West is federally owned. Now some states want that land
By Niraj Chokshi, October 15, 2013
The federal government shutdown proves, once again, that states should control public lands within their bounds, Utah’s attorney general says.
“
n these days of federal austerity, we assume substantial risk by relying too heavily upon the federal government to fund and administer programs that directly affect us in our businesses and daily lives,” Attorney General John Swallow and Assistant Attorney General Anthony Rampton argue in a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed.
It’s hardly a new complaint from Utah, which last year passed a law asking the federal government to hand over about 20 million acres of public lands, which together make up most of the state, by the end of next year. In light of Supreme Court precedent and the Constitution, that demand was largely an empty threat, the state’s legislative counsel noted at the time.
“[T]hat requirement, and any attempt by Utah in the future to enforce the requirement, have a high probability of being declared unconstitutional,” the state Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel noted in its review.
But that hasn’t stopped Utah and other western states from trying.
The nation’s 13 western states are home to 93 percent of federal land, according to 2010 agency data compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Almost exactly two-thirds of Utah land—66.5 percent—is federally owned, making it second only to Nevada’s 81 percent.
At least seven western states have demanded that the federal government return public lands, according to a March report from the liberal Center for American Progress.
“In the past year, legislatures in seven western states—Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho—have passed, introduced, or explored legislation demanding that the federal government turn over millions of acres of federal public lands to the states,” CAP researchers wrote at the time. Utah’s bill was introduced by state Rep. Kevin Ivory, who is also a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative bogeyman to liberal groups who despise it for its role in influencing and crafting state and local policy.
CAP called such efforts a “losing battle that amounts to little more than political grandstanding,” and Utah’s own legislative analysts argued that the bill’s demand interferes “with Congress’ power to dispose of public lands.” But the federal government shutdown has presented lawmakers with another opportunity to beat the drum and rally support for the idea.
“The last few weeks show Utah can and should have an enhanced role in its citizens’ affairs and in the uses of its land. The long-term public health, safety and economic welfare of Utahns depend on it,” Swallow and Rampton write in their op-ed.
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Why did national parks close? Ask the Republicans.
By Editorial Board, Published: October 17, 2013
YOU MIGHT think that House Republicans would have shown at least a touch of embarrassment after needlessly shutting much of the federal government for more than two weeks. Sadly, that proved not to be the case, as evidenced by Wednesday’s inquisition into the closure of national parks. The spectacle of a career government official being berated by Republican members of Congress for cuts in service that they had caused presented a nauseating coda to this dispiriting spectacle.
“What in the world are we doing here?” was the apt question from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) at Wednesday’s joint hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Natural Resources. While their colleagues in the Senate were hammering out an agreement to end the shutdown and avoid default, House Republicans were hammering on National Park Services Director Jonathan B. Jarvis for doing his job.
Mr. Jarvis, who started his park service as a seasonal interpreter in 1976, likely had better things to do, given that nearly 87 percent of his agency was on furlough. Instead he was subjected to a five-hour hearing in which he had to explain the obvious: No money equals no people equals no services.
Most disturbing were the insinuations by lawmakers that Mr. Jarvis’s decisions in closing the nation’s 401 parks, monuments and other sites were unnecessary and politically motivated to inflict the most pain. “Drastic and unprecedented,” said oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), while natural resources chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said sites were not closed by the Clinton administration during the last shutdown.
Wrong. Denis P. Galvin, deputy director of the park service during the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations, said that shutdown plans — “done hastily, because you’re always hoping the closure won’t happen” — were in keeping with past practices. In 1995 and 1996, he said, the Lincoln Memorial was closed, as were the Statue of Liberty, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and other monuments around the country. Indeed, Post accounts of those shutdowns detailed the frustration of tourists who found monuments and museums closed, campers evicted from national parks, the governor of Arizona ordering National Guard troops to the Grand Canyon in an attempt to keep it open and two teams of 7-year-old soccer players evicted from a national park in Anacostia. “The children pleaded. The parents pleaded. The coach pleaded. The answer? Closed,” read a Nov. 20, 1995, article.
No doubt there are differences in some restrictions, most notably the use this time of barriers, but there are new security sensibilities in a world after 9/11. The park service, largely due to Republican-imposed budget constraints, had lost staff and maintenance funds even before the shutdown. Republicans who suddenly developed such tender concern for the parks would do better to ensure that the government doesn’t close again — and that the agency charged with protecting America’s treasures has the resources it needs to serve the public.
