Senator Lee's New Land Sales Bill Specific To BLM Lands, Housing

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee has made changes to his earlier legislation allowing the sale of millions of acres of public lands in the West, but it's still drawing criticisms from some environmental organizations. It also remains to be seen whether the Senate parliamentarian, who rejected his first version, will approve of this one in the budget reconcilliation bill.

Under the revisions, Lee restricts land sales to Bureau of Land Management areas in the West, requires that they're specific to housing projects or associated infrastructure, and requires the acres put up for auction to be within five miles of a population center. Previously he had included national forest lands.

The revision also restricts sales to between 612,500 and 1.2 million acres and requires that governors, local governments, and tribal officials be consulted on the proposed sales.

“No matter how many times, or how many ways, Senator Lee reintroduces this legislation, it will not change the fact that the American people are dead set against selling off our public lands,” said Vera Smith, director of the national forests and public lands program at Defenders of Wildlife. “America’s iconic wildlife like pronghorn and sage-grouse depend on public lands and selling them off to pay for giveaways to billionaires is unconscionable.” 

Also critical of the new version was the National Wildlife Federation.

“This plan is a smokescreen to sell public lands to the highest bidder under the guise of fixing the housing policy. Millions of hunters, anglers, and other public lands users have spoken up: not one acre of public land should be sold through the budget reconciliation process,” said David Willms, associate vice president for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation.“This newest proposal confines land sales to areas within five miles of a ‘population center,’ which could include anything from a municipality to a handful of 40 acre ranchettes dozens of miles from any town. However, these BLM lands are often the most important for people that recreate, and often provide vital  mule deer, pronghorn, and other wildlife habitat – land that clearly is not suitable for housing.”   

The original measure by Lee, a Utah Republican, would have opened more than 250 million acres of Western lands to potential sale, although sales would be capped at about 3 million acres. It drew widespread condemnation from state and local elected officials, hunters and anglers, conservationists, and the outdoor recreation industry.

The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said the original version was not germain to the budget bill and said it should be removed under the Byrd Rule. That's a provision named after the late-Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, that requires that amendments are directly tied to implementing budget resolution policies. 

Lee long has pushed for the federal government to relinquish Western lands to the states. On his Senate website he says that, in the case of Utah, "much of this land should be transferred to the state as promised so that Utah’s natural resources can be better managed to conserve the land, provide for the state’s constituents, and serve its multi-use purposes."

"As Utah’s population grows, access to the land will become even more urgent and necessary," he continues. "Some will need to accommodate affordable housing, roads to ease congestion, schools, etc; other acreage that contains critical minerals and energy sources will need to be responsibly and safely tapped; and finally, others will need to be preserved for fishing, hunting, climbing, and other outdoor sports that bring families together and are simply a way of life in the West."