Gov. Cox: How Sen. Lee's public lands proposal can get back on track
Lee submitted more restrictive language for his initiative to make public lands available for private home development on Tuesday morning, limiting the lands that can be sold to include only Bureau of Land Management lands within 5 miles of a population center.
A previous draft, which would have allowed agencies to sell up to 3.3 million acres of federally controlled land, including Forest Service land, across 11 Western states, was stripped from President Donald Trump's massive tax bill on Monday night because it did not comply with budget rules.
The governor's office is still getting updates on how the latest version would affect the state of Utah, Cox said. But he was clear that despite his shared desire to use some public lands to increase the supply of homes, Lee's initial proposal strayed from that narrow objective.
'You saw the maps. It was much broader. It could have taken in large swaths of land,' Cox said in an interview with the Deseret News. 'I don't think that was the intention, certainly not conveyed to us, and that wasn't clear. Sadly, the thread has been lost on that for sure.'
Lee's public lands proposal, a revised version of his HOUSES Act that garnered widespread support among Utah's Republican leadership, has elicited a wave of social media pushback from environmental groups, conservative influencers and lawmakers from both parties over the past week.
It has also been one of the underlying themes at this year's annual Western Governors Association conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Cox is joined by governors from Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Wyoming.
The bipartisan group of governors expressed concern during Monday morning's opening press conference that the process outlined in the bill would not directly involve states. And a crowd of several dozen protesters welcomed event attendees with signs and chants of 'Not for sale!'
'The nationwide backlash sparked by Senator Mike Lee's proposal to sell off millions of acres of public land shows just how universally unpopular his idea is,' said Scott Braden, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, in a statement.
But Cox said opposition to the proposal has just as much to do with environmental groups fomenting outrage, and a general misunderstanding of the public lands situation in the West, as it does with the poor wording of Lee's initial proposal.
The limitations public lands place on cities in states like Utah, where almost 65% of the territory is federally controlled, are hard to convey to leaders in parts of the country where public lands typically make up less than 5% of the area, Cox said.
According to the governor's senior adviser on housing affordability, Steve Waldrip, 217,000 acres within Utah city boundaries, and 650,000 acres within a mile outside of city limits, are owned and managed by the Bureau of Land Management or the National Forest Service.
'The federal government owns a tremendous amount of land within city limits and right adjacent to city limits that the average person would never have any idea was public land,' Cox said. 'That's what we're talking about. And so anything we can do to restrict that.'
There are already examples of this working in the area around Las Vegas, Nevada, where former Sen. Harry Reid secured the ability for the BLM to sell public lands to local governments at below fair-market value for affordable housing purposes, Cox pointed out.
The final version of Lee's bill should tailor public lands sell-offs to just those locations that would already 'be used for housing, but for the federal government owning it,' Cox said, with additional qualification to encourage small lot sizes and owner-occupied homes.
In addition to excluding the sale of 15 categories of land, including national parks, Lee's latest proposal would prohibit the sale of land utilized by ranchers and recreational users, and would also establish 'Freedom Zones' to ensure any lands sold are used for housing projects.
However, even with these carve-outs, Cox echoed the sentiment of his fellow governors that states are better positioned than the secretaries of interior and agriculture to determine which public lands should be sold and for what purpose.
'I think the public is really concerned about the process, and they should be concerned about the process,' Cox said. 'I mean, this idea of we don't trust the federal government to own the land, but we trust the federal government to sell the land.'
Rob Sisson, the former president of ConservAmerica, a center-right nongovernmental organization focused on conservative environmental concerns, said he believes that some version of Lee's initiative is needed, especially in a place like Utah.
When Utah was established as a state, federal policy did not foresee a time when the Wasatch Front would be home to over 2.5 million residents, surrounded on all sides by public lands, Sisson said.
'All it takes is one drive through the state on I-15 to understand there's no room for the next generation to build affordable housing and stay there with their families and communities,' Sisson said.
But as a hunter from Montana — whose GOP senators have vocally opposed Lee's idea — Sisson said any plan to transfer public lands should not include every underused patch of public lands that happens to be near private property.
The more 'specificity' Lee can bring to his proposal, the less likely it will be to anger environmentalists and outdoorsmen, and the more likely it will be to achieve its goals, according to Sisson.
Despite its rocky start, Cox believes Lee's bill can still be a great opportunity to balance community concerns with housing needs if it recognizes that federal land sits at a 'public nexus' that requires public 'support and trust.'
'It works,' Cox said. 'It can help lower the price of housing, and we desperately need more space for housing in places like Utah and all throughout the West.'
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