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SALT LAKE CITY — Rep. Rob Bishop said he wants to use his leadership of the House Committee on Natural Resources to convene a series of hearings this spring and summer on the challenges of federal land ownership in Western states.
Bishop, a Utah Republican who took over the chairmanship this year, said the idea is to better educate his East Coast colleagues and others on the plight that Western states face when it comes to control of public lands.
"The sad thing is the states, the counties and the tribes in the West are far more effective in how they manage lands than the federal government," Bishop said.
The congressman is readying draft legislation and a map that proposes to carve out land uses for some 18 million acres in eastern Utah, designations that would include new wilderness areas, so-called energy development zones and better protections for high-value recreation lands.
More than a half-dozen counties in Utah are involved in the planning process for what has been dubbed the "Grand Bargain," which Bishop said ultimately will be full of compromises intended to settle contentious disputes over land use.
Although draft legislation and a map were supposed to be released last week, planners said more time is needed to put on the finishing touches and shore up the details in the latest areas added to the plan. There's been no new timetable announced.
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Beyond this public lands initiative process, Bishop said Utah's "take back" effort when it comes to federal land ownership is moving in the right direction, bolstered by specific statutory steps Utah leaders are taking along the way.
"Utah is taking a very intelligent approach passing legislation and ramping up the government structure on how you would manage the lands," he said, pointing out that previous proposals were flawed because they lacked an actual "remedy" to propose to judges or Congress.
Bishop added that there is congressional and legal precedent for such a fight, noting that Congress passed laws in the 1840s compelling relinquishment of federal lands in states such as Florida and Arkansas, and the U.S. Supreme Court issued rulings forcing the action.
The problem, however, is finding sympathy from states east of Colorado, where federal land ownership hovers in the 5 percent range, he said.
"Most judges and eastern states don't care about being fair to the West," he said. "But there are two arguments that do resonate in the East."
Bishop said the inequities are apparent when potential detractors learn that East Coast states have been able to "grow" education funding by about 68 percent over the past two decades, compared with Western states that have only seen those budgets grow about half that much.
The sad thing is the states, the counties and the tribes in the West are far more effective in how they manage lands than the federal government.
–Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah
"Our kids are hurt by this massive amount of federal land being controlled by the federal government, and there is no way of getting around that," he said.
In addition, Eastern states flinch when they learn the price tag of federal land management, even in the face of royalties and revenues that come back to the U.S. treasury.
"The East has to cough up $8 billion a year out of their own pockets for the right to tell the West what to do," Bishop said. "For some reason, that resonates with them as well. They would just as soon keep their money and we would just as soon keep them out of the control."
Critics of the movement wrongly believe the federal public lands would cease to be "public" under such a transfer, he said.
"Utah is a public lands state and always has been public lands state," Bishop said. "To us, public lands means local people get to make decisions on how the public land is used. Federal management means it is owned and controlled by someone here in Washington, and that is big difference."
The Transfer of Public Lands Act was passed in 2012 by the Utah Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert. It demands the federal government cede title to 31 million acres of land within Utah's borders.
Contributing: Dennis Romboy
