It's not as cut and dried as you make it. As you pointed out, the Federal Government planned to sell the land - prior to the 16th Amendment, that was a major revenue source.
And that was the real reason that they kept the dirt in Utah. And the State was supposed to benefit from the sales as well - 5%.
So it was always intended that it be sold. The fact that it could not later be sold is partly due to lack of marketability but also due to Federal perfidy.
In Utah’s Enabling Act, the citizens of Utah agreed to “disclaim title” to, and agreed to refrain from taxing the public lands “until the title thereto shall have been extinguished by the United States.” Significantly, these terms for disposal of the public lands in Utah’s Enabling Act are the same terms found in Enabling Acts for many states east of Colorado where the federal government carried out a timely disposal of the public lands. This disclaimer of title was only intended to facilitate the disposal of the public lands so that, eventually such lands would contribute to the revenue bases of federal, State and local governments.
The required disposal of the public lands by the United States over time was a significant benefit of the bargain made by the State of Utah with the federal government at the time of statehood. In addition to the future expectation of taxable lands, Utah was also promised 5% of the proceeds from the sale of the public lands held by the federal government “which shall be sold” following statehood. The subsequent and unilateral termination of the disposal policy to one of permanent retention by the federal government is a repudiation of Utah’s statehood bargain. Lands which, at the time of statehood, were anticipated to be a source of revenue are now largely unproductive. The subsequent actions of the federal land management agencies have reduced the ability of the citizens of Utah to make a living from the land, denied the Nation much needed energy and mineral resources, limited the State’s ability to fund education and have led to poor stewardship of the land.
Please note this comes from the Government of the State of Utah, Constitutional Defense Council on Transfer of Lands.
There are some rather compelling counter arguments to yours which you seem to be leaving out...I assume with your knowledge of the history you must know about this.
I understand that people would like to preserver Escanlante, Kaiparowits and the drainages of the Green and the Colorado. I do too. I lived part of my life there and knew many of the people involved in the conservation wars of the 1970s. We all loved Escalante and Capitol Reef.
But brute force confiscation of the land and making any extractive industries off limits is simply anti-human. Most of the people I knew in these movements were dogmatic misanthropes and Leftist ideologues (perhaps a redundancy...). Left to their own devices they would have turned Salt Lake into a concentration camp followed by obliteration of any evidence of human habitation.
The people in places like Kanab, Panguitch and Salina were all hoping to see at least some industries come in which might improve their lives, but the Watermelons sneered at them in the first go-round of this when the power plant was cancelled.
That was when they hung Redford in effigy in Kanab.
So there are two sides to this rather long story. Everyone wants to preserve the incredible character of the West...but my experience with the Enviros is that they plan that to be for them and only them - they end up with special access rights or work for the BLM and consider themselves a specially privileged group since they are the Enlightened Ones.
Your ball.
I don’t disagree with most of what you say.
The land, or most of it, was available for sale for a century or so. Nobody bought it.
That’s very different from claiming it was federal perfidy that led to the land not being sold.
As I’ve repeatedly said, the debate over what development should be permitted and what land should be sold is a policy debate.
The state claiming that because it disagrees with the land use decisions of Congress it therefore acquires prescriptive title is an enormous jump of illogic, IMO.
Did any other state, except HI, ever get title to its land at statehood? Then why does UT believe it has that right?
If the original terms of the statehood act were to be reverted to, the feds would start selling land to private buyers, with 5% of the sale price going to the state. That’s very different indeed from the state acquiring title to 100% of the land for itself.
Excuse me but the Constitutional Defense Council is a construction of ALEC. It is the model and Utah, Idaho, Arizona, etc are using the same ALEC model.
You can say "Government of the State of Utah" but they are just the front for ALEC, Heartland, American Lands Council, etc
It is all being funded by dark money, most likely coming from the fossil fuel industry and real estate developers, and others.
Ubie; you've got feet on the ground.
Any input here?