Posted on 12/06/2014 7:23:46 AM PST by HomerBohn
The federal government has 31.2 million acres of Utah's land, and Utah wants it back.
According to the Washington Times on Wednesday, in three weeks, Utah plans to seize control of its own land now under the control of the federal government. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, in an unprecedented challenge to federal dominance of Western state lands, in 2012 signed the “Transfer of Public Lands Act,” which demands that Washington relinquish its hold on the land. The land being held represents more than half of the state’s 54.3 million acres, by Dec. 31.
State Rep. Ken Ivory, who sponsored the legislation, isn't deterred even though the federal government hasn't given any indication that it plans to cooperate. “That’s what you do any time you’re negotiating with a partner. You set a date,” said Ivory. “Unfortunately, our federal partner has decided they don’t want to negotiate in good faith. So we’ll move forward with the four-step plan that the governor laid out.” That plan involves a program of education, negotiation, legislation and litigation. “We’re going to move forward and use all the resources at our disposal,” stated Ivory, who also heads the American Lands Council, which advocates the relinquishing of federal lands to the control of the states.
One might ask why Utah wants it's land back now. Well, it seems there’s hydrocarbons in those hills. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on Tuesday that an analysis from three state universities states that Utah can afford to take over more than half the state from the federal government, and may even be able to make more money on it than the feds have. It should be noted that the transfer would require either an act of Congress or a successful lawsuit.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I agree that deserts and mountains are not that desirable, but I still maintain that title should have passed to the State, but didn't because of some change in legislation.
” Anyone who can hold and defend the land from all comers owns it. ”
That is the definition of ownership of everything - you only own that which you are willing and able to defend, by whatever means at your disposal.
Most of us use the power of the state (police) and the rule of law to defend what we own. But what happens when the rule of law no longer works as it happened in Ferguson?
Yo! I loves yo like a brothah, and would never do anythang to hurts yo, but yo are standin’ where I intend to set off a claymore!
The word you're looking for is "transfer," not "revert." Using revert is every bit as false as Muslims using the same word to refer to converts.
You are correct.
I agree with you, but I wasn’t a history major.
Federal ownership of Indian lands were not authorized or intended.
This was done because Washington didn’t believe it could sell the lands to the Native Americans who owed it.
We should to allow the Native American tribes to take full ownership of their own lands. If they still want to claim communal ownership they can create their own cooperation or Government body to take ownership. It is not necessary for Washington to hold formal title over their lands.
Its rather simple, Their vote is probably 80 times more effective in its control over the state than it is over Washington.
Well looks like SLC is doing something right.
I’ve got a post upthread about the OH Enabling Act, which served as the model for admission of later states. Title remained with the US till sold.
Some of the funds from land sold was turned over to states for purposes of road construction and later education. Possibly other purposes.
But AFAIK the big difference in federal land ownership pattern is not a difference in legislation, it’a difference in the land.
If anybody can demonstrate significant differences between the way eastern and western states were treated legally with regard to land transfer, I’d like to see it.
Unlike quite a few who discuss the issue, I’ve got probably close to a year of experience in total tramping around the deserts and mountains of the publicly owned West.
While I enjoy the land immensely, for most of it I fail to see why anybody, even today, would want to own it. Much is highly scenic, but there’s at least as much that looks more like an abandoned construction site than anything else.
The average stocking rate for cattle in the West ranges from 7 to 20 acres. At the NV rate to run 100 cow/calf units, you’d therefore need to own 2000 acres. Since the government presently charges ranchers the immense fee of $1.35 per month per cow/calf, I fail to see any economic incentive to buy land instead of paying that fee.
Found a source for private land grazing fees in MT. $23.60 per month. http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Montana/Publications/economic/prices/grazefee.htm
Some land has oil or gas or other minerals, and that land should perhaps be auctioned to the highest bidder. But I just don’t see any reason most of the public land in the West would attract a buyer.
I helped provide documentary research for this claim. The land is not a federal enclave. It is part of the state and general state laws apply to persons on it. Only some Indian lands and certain lands in Alaska were actually reserved from state boundaries as federal enclaves in the West.
“Public lands” by definition used in Supreme Court cases, are lands surveyed and “open for disposal” into private hands under various homestead acts.
If you look at the Taylor Grazing Act (1934?) you will see language referring to the federal management of the land until final disposal (by homestead or similar act.) It was not until FLPMA in the 1970s when the federal government declared its intent to retain ownership of the “public lands.”
East of the Mississippi, the federal government received cessions of title from the original states of their “western wastelands.” These were to be surveyed and sold to pay the mutual revolutionary war debt as a condition of agreeing to the new federal Constitutional government. All of these lands were sold into private hands. National Forests in the east were created by donation or purchase.
West of the Mississippi, lands were acquired by prescription - acts of discovery, occupancy and continued beneficial use. This was a universal acquisition method under Roman/Mexican law also used for mining. It was formalized by the Homestead Acts.
The land patent is a tribunal judgment by the Bureau if Land Management and its predecessor that the claimant had shown in state processes that he had the better right (if contested) and that there were no treaty obligations - international or Indian, that had claim on the land. It is not title but evidence of title. What the feds did was to reserve land for forest reserves from the homestead and patent process for itself. In doing so, it violated the fiduciary trust it had in holding the lands for the people of the state pending final disposal. There has been one mining case I know of that forced the federal government into a patent process that it had been withholding.
The conditions found in enabling acts have been found to have no force on subsequent state legislatures. One required a state capital to be located in a certain place and the legislature was able to decide otherwise. The only part that would apply is that the Commerce Act reserves the ability to treat with tribes to the feds and international treaties also would have precedence supporting the continuing patenting authority.
The practice of holding vast federal properties in the western states is obscene and renders western states to a second class status. In effect, natural resource/land management decisions on a huge amount of western land is being decided by all 50 states. Living in Forest or BLM communities can be pure hell. It is fundamentally wrong that the these kinds of decisions that so intimately effect the economies of the west should be decided by people with no substantial stake in these decisions.
I quite agree that landuse policy in NV would better suit the desire of inhabitants of Nevada, I just don’t see any reason to assume that the 6% of the inhabitants who live in rural areas would be any happier with policies controlled by the 94% of Nevadans who live in urban areas.
I doubt this will be peacefully resolved should Utah aggressively pursue this course of action (of which I agree wholeheartedly. I’m just sayin’...) as the trend today, the trek is toward dissolution of national sovereignty, and the placement of governance to the U.N. control.
A two party dispute therefore is actually complicated under the circumstances by a third party, the U.N.
This should be interesting. GO UTAH.
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.
just like the feds say states cannot enforce immigration law as the feds have jurisdiction over the exterior of the country... the states have full control over everything within their borders. this is why sheriffs have jurisdiction over feds while in their counties.
Do you have evidence of the federal government transferring, with the exception of Hawaii, all or even a major part of public lands to state ownership?
That’s what is being claimed as a right by this article. Your comments are a nice general summary, but they involve transfer of title to private ownership, not to the states.
It is possible to make a historical and constitutional argument that the federal government should open public lands back up for private purchase. That’s very different from claiming that state governments have some right to title to the land. AFAIK, that has never been the case.
There was a large section of Utah that Clinton grabbed to put it off limits to mining. This land has the largest reserve of low sulfur coal (clean burning) in the world. This was done to pay back some illegal campaign contributors outside the country. “
The Escalante Staircase. Clinton went in there with some feds and seized it. The governor at the time did not even know that it was in the works.
You are going to have to cite a law for me about the state’s right to hold all lands, or the right of the federal government to own land. How can you have statehood without sovereignty over the land? I’m telling you something changed, otherwise the western states would have looked like the eastern states on that map.
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.
Here's a hint. Compare this map to the ones showing federal land ownship.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/pcpn/us_precip.gif
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.