Universally reviled legislation that will sell up to 1.25 million acres of BLM land around the West starting this fall has been placed in the Senate’s final budget bill which will face floor votes as early as today.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that oversees the Interior Department’s budget, released new language Friday night that doubles down on his longstanding desire to reduce the federal estate, using veiled language that justifies land sales to alleviate housing shortages in fast-growing Western cities.
The bill’s latest draft tightens problematic language of earlier versions that risked being flagged by the Senate parliamentarian as non-conforming for a reconciliation bill, say sources who reviewed Lee’s draft late last night. But it contains the most unacceptable provisions to public-land advocates, and could open some of the West’s most remote and cherished public lands for sale. Because it now includes unallocated mineral leases, it could also balloon the amount of land eligible for sale.
Specifically, the final draft expands the definition of eligible BLM land, which Lee says is designed to promote affordable housing and urban infrastructure, by prioritizing federal land sales within five miles of the border of “population centers.” Instead of using the commonly accepted definition of a population center as a municipality of 2,500 or more people, the new draft defines a population center as “a census-designated place or incorporated municipality with a population of not less than 1,000 persons.” This provision greatly expands the eligibility of BLM land that could be sold surrounding unincorporated rural communities.
Last night’s draft also now allows leasing of some previously protected lands, omitting national preserves, national seashores, lakeshores, national historic sites, and national memorials and battlefields from the categories of land that could not be considered for sale. It includes unallocated subsurface mineral leasing as a qualifying covenant for land sales, along with earlier drafts that omit active surface uses and BLM land with active livestock-grazing leases from sale consideration.
This allowance of unsubscribed mineral rights could greatly increase the number of eligible acres for sale to something over 3 million, say sources. That’s because the BLM administers subsurface mineral rights on some 700 million onshore and offshore acres. If millions of those acres now qualify for sale because of Lee’s new language “we could be talking about the sale of way more than 1.25 million acres,” says a land-use expert who was still researching the question as of this morning. “We could be talking 3 million and more, depending on the answer to the question of whether the BLM owns those rights or simply administers them.”
Lee’s latest draft also changes the definition of who can bid on this “surplused” public land. Nominations for tracts can come from what Lee defines as “qualified bidders.” That term is not defined in the bill.
The bill extends the mandatory sale deadline from five to 10 years and increases the amount of federal money that will be used to execute these sales from $5 million to $15 million.
But what’s especially galling to critics of the bill, who note the many loopholes that allow disposal of federal land for purposes other than affordable housing, is that the new draft adds criteria for disposal of our most valuable lands to include a mechanism for consolidating large ranches and for including “isolated tracts that are difficult to manage.” That last provision could list for sale some of the most valuable hunting and fishing acreage in the West.
Sources noted, with rising alarm, that Lee’s latest draft appears to be calibrated to make it through Senate parliamentary scrutiny.
“This appears to be an effort to try and survive parliamentarian review,” says David Willms, associate vice president for public lands for the National Wildlife Federation. “Adding a priority of selling the highest value lands, and including subsurface rights along with the surface rights seems to be an effort to sell the provision as one with primarily budget impacts, which is necessary to survive the Byrd Rule” that requires items in reconciliation bills to have budgetary, rather than policy, implications.
“Obviously, to anyone that cares about public lands, however, that’s simply a smokescreen to sell an area more than twice the size of Rocky Mountain National Park to an as-yet-undefined ‘qualified bidder,’” says Willms. “But it’s also an indication of the sloppy and haphazard nature of this latest bill.”
Lee’s new draft is so contrary to and tone-deaf to the hundreds of thousands of calls, letters, and emails to congressional offices over the past week that some critics of the bill suggest that it’s designed to fail in full Senate voting that starts today. In an Instagram reel, New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) noted that the groundswell of calls to congressional offices is the “broadest and deepest coalition that I have ever seen for public lands in my life. Keep it up. We are winning.”
Fellow Republican Senators, including Montana’s Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Idaho’s Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, have publicly stated their opposition to the bill. The news site NOTUS yesterday reported that Daines has the votes to kill Lee’s draft in the budget reconciliation process. That’s the expedited process that requires only a simple majority in both the House and Senate for passage. Republicans hold a 3-vote majority in both chambers.
At least five Republicans in the House of Representatives have said they won’t vote for any version of the budget bill that contains the land-sale provision. They include Montana’s Ryan Zinke, Mike Simpson from Idaho, Dan Newhouse from Washington, Oregon’s Cliff Bentz, and David Valadao from California — all Westerners with large public-land holdings in their congressional districts.
“At the end of the day, I would bet on this [bill language] getting kicked out, but it’s gonna be a slog,” says a public-land advocate who asked not to be named as they were still reviewing the bill draft. “I’m still wondering if, in the long run, Lee is doing more to help public lands, by inspiring so much advocacy, than to hurt them.”
Land Tawney, whose group American Hunters and Anglers has been a vocal opponent of the land-sale legislation, says the latest draft confirms Lee’s inability to read the national mood.
Read Next: Silencer Deregulation Plan Fails in the Senate
“Regardless of how Mike Lee polishes his public lands sell off proposal, it’s still a piece of shit,” says Tawney. “Not a square inch of our public lands should be used to pay off tax breaks for billionaires.”
Read the full article here
