More Details Emerge Around the Public Land Sale Bill — and It's Worse Than You Think
As the magnitude of Senate Republicans' proposal to sell millions of acres of public land in the West has reverberated over the last two days, opponents are mobilizing to keep what they call a bad idea from becoming law.
They're encouraging the hunting and fishing community to flood Instagram and Facebook with 'hell no' videos and posts that denounce the Wednesday night bill introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). They're contacting congressional delegations to let them know that the mandatory sale of between 2.02 and 3.04 million unidentified acres of BLM and Forest Service land over the next five years is a political land mine.
And they're digging into the arcane and dense language of the bill to learn that it has much, much wider ramifications for Western land management than its proponents have indicated.
'Don't take the bait that this is about 'affordable housing,' as its proponent claims,' says David Willms, associate vice president for public lands with the National Wildlife Federation. 'It isn't.'
An attorney, Willms has parsed the bill's language and concluded that, in both its wording and intention, it intends to remake the map of the Western United States by allowing the sale of public lands that could be used for nearly any purpose under an expansive 'associated community needs' definition. He says that could include AI data centers, ski areas, golf courses, or consolidation of large ranches.
Willms and co-host of Your Mountain podcast Nephi Cole detail both the specifics of the bill and its potential consequences in a remarkable podcast that dropped today.
Other conservation groups have calculated the amount and mapped the locations of BLM and Forest Service land that would be eligible for sale under Lee's bill. It totals 120 million acres across 11 Western states.
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For public-land advocates, defeating the Senate Energy and Natural Resources' budget draft, which contains the public-land sale language, is the biggest fight of their careers.
'Anybody who supports this in the Senate that has any inkling that this is a good idea, they need to get their ass kicked,' says Land Tawney, the animated leader of a lobbying group called American Hunters and Anglers. 'We need to flood their social pages with comments. We need to call their offices. These folks are too scared of the public to have public meetings, but if you see them on an airplane coming home for the recess, that's a good time to remind them to keep public lands in public hands.'
Meanwhile, critter conservation groups like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation are encouraging their members to get engaged.
'RMEF is very concerned about the federal land sales provision included in Chairman Mike Lee's energy and natural resources section of the pending budget reconciliation bill and will continue to work to remove that measure from the legislation,' the foundation said in a press release. 'We encourage our members to contact their senators to express their opinions about selling two million acres of BLM and national forest lands across the West. '
Because Lee's bill draft was dropped on Wednesday evening, following an hours-long meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which he chairs, early reporting focused on the jaw-dropping acreage in play.
The bill, in a section titled 'Mandatory Disposal of Bureau of Land Management Land and National Forest Service System Land for Housing,' requires the BLM and Forest Service to 'select for disposal no less than 0.50 percent and not more than 0.75 percent' of eligible land for sale. National parks, wildlife refuges, designated wilderness areas, national monuments, and historic sites would be exempt from sale.
The bill identifies additional exemptions: lands where there are legally recognized permits or rights-of-ways are not eligible for sale. That means livestock grazing leases, mining claims, rights-of-way for a transmission line or a pipeline or an energy lease or a solar or wind project. And federal land in Montana is exempt, because that state's senior senator, Steve Daines (R), negotiated with Lee to omit Montana from the budget package in order to reduce bill-killing opposition.
In a video that discusses some of the provisions of his bill, Lee stresses that the sales would be of 'underutilized' federal land 'suitable for residential development' in order to alleviate housing shortages around fast-growing Western cities.
That's not the case, says Willms.
'You're hearing that this bill would address affordable housing. It won't,' he says, pointing to bill language that says eligible land must address 'local housing needs or any associated community needs.'
'The term 'community' isn't defined,' notes Willms. 'We know the administration has called for building data centers on public land. Maybe that's considered a 'community need'? It could be a business park. Or maybe a golf course. It's public land sale under the guise of affordable housing but it's really for economic development for any use. And land can be nominated for sale by state and local governments, but the bill also says land can be nominated for sale by 'interested parties.' That could include corporations, foreign governments, we just don't know.'
The bill also contains a provision that 'a person may not purchase more than 2 tracts of covered Federal land in any 1 sale… unless the person owns land surrounding the tracts of covered Federal land to be sold.' In other words, large landowners could use the land-sale mechanism to buy inholdings and consolidate their private holdings.
Willms also takes exception to Lee's claim that the public would have opportunities to weigh in on proposed land sales.
'The bill contains language that says all these sales are 'considered to meet the requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act,' which means that they are deemed to have already complied with all public-notice and participation requirements,' says Willms. 'It basically means the public is cut out of this. These sales will not have a public process.'
If the lands package makes it into the Senate's version of the budget reconciliation bill, and the bill becomes law, public-land sales would start quickly. The bill calls for the process to start within 60 days of passage and requires the 2 to 3 million acres to be sold within five years, with 90 percent of revenue going to the U.S. Treasury, 5 percent returned to the state of the sale, and 5 percent going to the agency that sold the land.
The upshot, says Willms, is 'they're going to try to jam this through in a week or two without public input, without vetting any of the potential consequences this bill will cause. This bill is not ready for prime time, yet it's in prime time … everybody is forced to take a vote on it. But I think that's intentional: jam this [mandatory land sale] into a big bill with a high priority in a tight time frame.'
Sources don't expect Lee's lands package to get a vote in his Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
'Under the reconciliation process, they aren't required to mark up each section in committee,' said an unnamed legislative source who wasn't authorized to speak to the press. 'They will probably not do committee votes in order to avoid taking any more hard votes than what is necessary.'
The committee's portion of the budget package, containing the land-sale requirement, will go to the Senate budget committee for review and then for a vote on the full Senate floor. That vote could happen prior to the July 4 congressional recess, says the source. The majority Republicans can only lose three votes in the Senate. If the budget package passes the Senate, then it's likely to return to the House, where it passed by a single vote last month.
'If this does pass the Senate, then I don't think the House can stomach the lands provision,' the legislative source says. 'The House language [that proposed selling 500,000 acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada] was a bridge too far for Representative Zinke (R-Mont.), among others. I think this Senate version is a continent too far for some of these folks.'
A number of sources have criticized Daines for abrogating campaign pledges to defend public land. As the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, widely credited with winning the Republican majority in the Senate, and as a ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he could use his influence to strip or moderate the lands package.
'When this lands package was in the House, we had Zinke stand up and say that selling public land was his 'San Juan Hill' and his 'red line,'' says Willms. 'But on the Senate side you don't have [a Republican] who is saying they will not vote for this.'
But critics say Daines' deal with Lee has taken both Montana senators out of the fight.
'Hopefully some Republican Senator will stand up and be that champion, but we don't have that, so there's a high risk of this provision staying in this bill.'
Which means, if the Senate passes the lands bill, the next and probably last place to kill it will be in the House conference committee.
The unnamed legislative source said that Western senators and representatives are already getting plenty of heat on the topic, and they said that continued pressure could cause them to pull the lands package from the budget bill.
'The hunting and angling community needs to keep the pressure up,' they said. 'At the end of the day, the Republican delegations need to realize that the sportsmen's community is a big voting bloc, and the broader outdoor recreation community is an even bigger voting bloc. These folks need to realize that they're messing with a $1.3 trillion industry, but even more to the point, they need to realize this is the third rail and they've been put in an untenable position by their party's leadership.'
The larger issue of disposing of the public estate without a public process or a clear public purpose isn't just a Western issue, the legislative source said.
'It doesn't matter if you live in Bozeman or Baltimore, these lands belong to you. The best thing I can advise, as someone who sees how members [of Congress] respond to stimuli, is let your Congressman know how you feel. Your members need to hear from you, and the time window is very short to engage.'
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