A key example of the federal government ignoring its own laws can be seen in the dispute over the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Congressional authorization for the program ended September 30.
The basic premise of the program has broad bipartisan support. It commits some funds, about $900 million annually, from royalties from offshore oil and gas exploitation to preserving natural resources and unique land areas for the recreational use and preservation.
The dispute arises in the manner in which the funds are used, and how Washington’s heavy hand abuses the program. Originally, notes the Wall Street Journal, six out of every ten dollars gleaned from the royalties were to be set aside for use by the states in furtherance of conservation goals. However, in the past year, over 80% of the cash was waylaid by the federal government, which has a shoddy record in maintaining the properties under its control. The states have their share of offenses, as well. They frequently use the program to engage in highly questionable exercises of eminent domain, violating the property rights of private landowners.
The larger issue behind the debate is the overwhelming federal ownership of massive portions of America’s land. Washington already owns about 30% of all U.S. lands. In many western states, according to Adam Freedman who writes about states’ rights in his book “A Less Perfect Union,” the amount of federal ownership is so high that the federal government substantially deprives the states and the citizens of those states’ effective self-government. According to a Big Think study federal ownership in the west is massive: Nevada, 84.50%; Alaska, 69.10%; Utah, 57.40%; Oregon, 53.10%; Idaho, 50.20%; Arizona, 48.10%; California, 45.30%; Wyoming, 42.30%; New Mexico, 41.80%; Colorado, 36.60%.
There is little reason to assume, given its poor management record, that the federal government is a better steward of these lands than the people of the respective states. A 2014 Rasmussen poll found that thirty-six percent (36%) of American Adults believe the federal government owns too much property in this country, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 11% think the government doesn’t own enough. Thirty-eight percent (38%) consider the amount of land owned by the federal government to be about right. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.
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There have been unsuccessful attempts to confront Washington. Supporters of the “Sagebrush Rebellion” of 1979, as noted in Forest History, noted that supporters believed “excessive federal control and regulation of the western public domain stripped people and states of their rights—rights to graze cattle on the public domain, rights to mine it, rights to generate tax base from it… To reverse the trend, to regain lost ‘rights,’ the Sagebrush Rebellion attempted two things: in the short run, improved, “fairer” federal management of the public domain, and in the long run, cession of federal lands to the states in which they lay. In the end, it got neither…”
In 2014, a “Second Sagebrush Rebellion” took place. The International Business Times describes the movement: “The Bureau of Land Management sent a long overdue letter to Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy informing him that his 900 cows would be impounded and he would have to pay $1.2 million in fees for grazing on federal land without payment since 1993. When officials held true to their threat … Bundy made some threats of his own, propelling the spat onto the national stage…The way Bundy frames the argument, the fight is about states’ rights and the feeling some in the West have that the federal government is oppressing their privilege to mine, log and farm on American soil…This ideology recently gained some ground in Arizona with Proposition 120, the Arizona Declaration of State Sovereignty Amendment, which declared ownership of ‘sovereign and exclusive authority and jurisdiction over the air, water, public lands, minerals, wildlife and other natural resources within [the state’s] boundaries.’ The controversial 2012 ballot measure, backed by Republicans in the state legislature, would have essentially transferred control of parks like the Grand Canyon from the federal government to the state if it had passed, which it didn’t….Federal land was never actually meant to exist in the early days of the United States. It was seen as an asset to be distributed for the growth of the economy…”
The legal problem with vast federal land ownership is substantial. Following a states’s admission to the union, to insure that it is placed on an equal footing with existing states, federal land is to be sold expeditiously, with 5% of the proceeds going to the new state government.
Freedman describes what has happened instead: “Predictably, once Congress created federal bureaus whose very existence depended upon federal land ownership, the government lost all interest in selling the land…in 1976, Congress gave up the pretense that it was ever going to sell its western possessions by passing the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.”