In the face of a backlash, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee has revamped his public land sell-off measure to target only Bureau of Land Management holdings while also declaring, “we’re just getting started.”
A reconciliation budget proposal revised by Lee’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee targets BLM land within five miles of undefined “population centers.” It puts checkerboard BLM holdings back on a priority list for his “mandatory disposal” measure and takes lands under permit for grazing off the auction block.
The revision would shift 15% of revenue to local governments and conservation. The bill would appropriate $5 million to carry out the mandatory sales, which are designed to be offered within 60 days of passage and regularly thereafter.
Lee has not said or mapped how much land must be sold, ostensibly for affordable housing.
“Folks like Elon Musk … will make money off the public lands that should belong to the American people. That’s horseshit.”
Martin Heinrich
“We haven’t put out maps because there are a whole bunch of criteria established by the legislation, and those criteria are very difficult to reduce to a map,” Lee told conservative radio host Charlie Kirk in a video posted on X.
But opposition to Lee’s measure comes from “all walks of life,” said Land Tawney, former president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. That includes “Democrats, Independents, Republicans, hunters, anglers, bird watchers, kayakers, ranchers [and] loggers,” he said Wednesday at a roundtable hosted by Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.
Heinrich excoriated Lee’s measure.
“Eighty-five percent of the money from these sales would go to pay for tax cuts,” Heinrich said. “That means that folks like Elon Musk, who already own[s] 4,400 acres of land in Texas [worth] some $3.4 billion, will make money off the public lands that should belong to the American people.
“That’s horseshit,” Heinrich said.
A spectrum of opposition
Lee’s plan to include U.S. Forest Service land in the “mandatory disposal” provision flunked a parliamentarian’s rules test that limits reconciliation budget measures to relevant budget matters. The revised provision must undergo the same scrutiny, Democrats say.
Heinrich poo-pooed the notion that Lee’s measure would result in affordable housing. “An out-of-town billionaire can show up, buy a 100-acre parcel and throw a trophy home on it,” he said.
Powell resident Mike Tracy criticized Lee’s linking of public land and affordable housing.
“If you put those two concepts in the same sentence,” he said of Lee’s proposal, “it makes them seem somehow related, maybe even somehow causal.
“It makes people not feel comfortable speaking out against it because who wants to be against affordable housing?” he said at the roundtable. “I don’t think it’s proper to say that they’re related.”
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, had a message for Lee. “Don’t come into our states and dictate what should be done.
“It is clear they’re trying to sell this public land to pay for this reconciliation package, which gives tax cuts to billionaires,” she said. “That’s what this is about.”
“Right now, we are pissed,” said hunting advocate Tawney, who represented American Hunters and Anglers. “They want to defund, dismantle and then divest,” he said of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Native American tribes are upset, too, said Hilary Tompkins, former solicitor for the Department of the Interior.
“The Southern Ute Indian tribe in southwestern Colorado is concerned because they have off-reservation hunting and fishing rights on an area that includes BLM lands,” she said. “They have not heard from anyone who is advocating for this proposal about the impact on those off-reservation treaty rights.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon sees opportunities to resolve the state’s challenges with the checkerboard land ownership pattern along the Union Pacific Railroad line, said Jess Johnson, government affairs director with the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.
“I want to figure out how we do this in a Wyoming way,” she said of the checkerboard conundrum. “This budget reconciliation is not it.”
Not sensitive lands?
Wyoming’s U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, Republicans who continue to support Trump’s agenda, did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment about the backlash. “It is clear that our congressional delegation isn’t in it for Wyoming,” the state’s Democratic Party chair, Lucas Fralick, said in a statement.
Lee, however, explained some of his thinking.
“I’m working closely with the Trump administration to ensure that any federal land sales serve the American people — not foreign governments, not the Chinese Communist Party, and not massive corporations looking to pad their portfolios,” he said in a post. “This land must go to American families. Period.”
In the radio interview, he said opposition was ginned up.
“The left is working overtime to dupe conservatives about my federal land sale bill,” he said. “This is just basically surplus land that’s suitable for housing because it’s right next to where people live.”
He characterized critics as having an agenda. “What I’ve heard is that people on the left generally want people moving from rural areas into urban areas, more suburban areas and from single-family housing into multi-family housing, higher density housing units,” he said. “They believe that that’s good for them, perhaps for Mother Earth, or whatever their reasons might be.
“These are not sensitive lands,” Lee said of the targeted BLM parcels. “They are not lands that are out there, that are part of an environment that’s appropriate for hunting, for hiking, for fishing, etc.”
Wyoming’s Johnson challenged that notion at the roundtable. She said she arrowed her first mule deer on public land near town.
“I was on this amazing parcel of public land — tiny,” she said. “It’s little. It’s one to three miles from Lander. It’s BLM. It’s really nothing special to look at, except it is everything to me.”
wyo file , the single most ruinous thing in my travels in the west over the past 40 years is the proliferation of exurb-designer home building in the interface zones of our national parks and forests. i am unfazed by energy extraction, as in the green river valley , as i know this activity is temporary and will fully mitigated later. these days the aforementioned “view wrecking” and “habitat wrecking” home building is all the rage , and would only be exasperated by the “stealth” attempt to sell public lands. gene robinson carson valley nv
Contending that public land sales will provide affordable housing is ludicrous. Typical construction costs in in Cheyenne are $300 per square foot. This would make a 1200 square foot house $360,000 plus land , utility, and roads. Probable cost of $480,000 for a modest sized home on a level lot. Add 30 % for land that is steep or located away from sources of materials and labor. This is not affordable for a young couple with or wanting to start a family.
Bottom line is that only very wealthy individuals could purchase these lands to develop and resell for very expensive homes.
It is clear who would benefit- only rich developers and speculators.
Be no development with out sustainable long term secure jobs people. With AI starting to eliminate jobs. WHO or how will anyone buy house or rent? USA has aging population.
Now we know what they meant by “take it back”, and I thought it was just to robber barrons and the dark ages
If we do not have affordable housing, which attracts those who contribute the least and consume the most, we solve multiple problems.
Russian oligarchs are extremely wealthy businesspeople who gained massive fortunes—often rapidly—during the chaotic privatization period following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The current attempt to Privatize Public Lands (Sale of Public Lands) will benefit those individuals in our society that are extremely wealthy. Russia’s MO didn’t serve them well. Will not serve use well, either.
I agree,,, horseshit. What’s to stop the BLM from trading or selling now. The BLM is in the process in Campbell County of trading 2,300 acres of private land for 4,600 of BLM. These kinds of deals that take away public land are already happening and have happened for a long time. Horseshit there I’ll say it again.
The idea that the sale of the BLM lands will make affordable housing more available is another one of the great “cons “perpetuated by the Republican Party.
There are three basic parts involved in the construction of affordable housing. They include the land, building materials/ labor, and infrastructure.
If the land has to be sold at market value, you are back at square one. The only way that any kind of affordable housing could be made available would be if appropriate land is given to the community free of charge.
Not likely! That would defeat the purpose of providing funds to offset the great tax scam.
Sell the people’s land to pay for billionaire’s tax cuts? Show some spine, governor… take up the fight for OUR state that has been abandoned by our representatives in Washington whose breath must reek from what they kiss so willingly. Public lands were not intended to be a stopping place midway between the theft of a continent to ownership by the rich. Say it, guv… “NOT IN OUR STATE!”
Thank you Mr. Thuermer for staying on top of this very important issue.
Does the current administration want to generate some cash? A better idea is just sell time-limited naming rights to the National Parks. “Yellowstone National Park, brought to you by Pepsi Cola”.
They really are testing to see how gullible the Wyoming voter is and so far the WYGOP has not let them down. It is not about affordable housing, it is about stripping the American public of its wise investments in order to fund a tax cut for billionaires.
Out of state money funds Lummis, Barrasso and Hageman so why should they care about Wyoming? Wake up please.
PS the abandoning of the roadless rule will be used to destroy migration corridors.
I live yards away from BLM land outside of Casper. I would be very sad to see it sold off to the developers who build cheap homes and sell them for way more than a normal person can afford. I saw sandhill cranes spend a couple days on the land on their way through to their summer homes a couple years ago. The undeveloped land gives me a sense that I’m not just surrounded by people, and that I don’t have to drive forever to go for a hike away from people. It’s good for mental health to have “wild” spaces near town. Don’t take that option away from us.
There’s multiple problems here. First, the bill is so big, it’s in legalese, its next to impossible for anyone with a job to read through, yet they include public land sell off, and its next to impossible to figure out what they are trying to do.
My understanding is there already is a process to annex public land to use for housing. Why do we need this bill? Is there really 3 million acres around towns and cities causing them to be landlocked? Seems questionable to me.
When concerns are brought up, its always “the left/right is attacking.” How about bring us some facts. Bring this bill up by itself, show us multiple proposals. Ramming this through overnight is a bunch of nonsense.
We elected these people to represent us and solve our problems. They are not doing either.
The responses from Barrasso and Lummis illustrate perfectly what congressional cowards they both are. Despite overwhelming opposition to Mike Lee’s attempts to sell our public lands, these two weasels still won’t make a commitment or a statement indicating that they support the demands of their constituents, that being absolutely no sales of public lands anywhere, ever. Senator Barrasso’s and Senator Lummis’s refusal to support their constituents demands is disgraceful and reprehensible.
BLM land does have some issues, most notably the checkerboard areas. Developing some form of land swap arrangement to get rid of the checkerboard areas would be a much more productive issue for BLM land than a sell off. Let’s clear up one problem before instigating another.
So, if the BLM land, adjacent to residential land, is sold and becomes private, can’t the new owners put up wind turbines instead of houses?
How can any person capable of rational thought truly believe ” affordable” homes would be built on these stolen lands! With no map of parcels designated to sell available to the public and as yet no regulations in place regulating what could actually be built on these parcels this is nothing but a land grab worth billions to developers!
Your posts are always so well-structured and easy to follow.
So M. Gordon sees the benefit of selling checkerboard land to the wealthy. Another traitor to the Wyoming public.
Everyone, please remember this: per Rep. Karlee Provenza, “This past October, Rep. Hageman, Gov. Gordon, and 26 members of the Wyoming Legislature filed a legal brief in support of a request that Sen. Lee sent to the U.S. Supreme Court to ‘transfer’ ownership of all federal public lands to the states.”
They will keep beating the drum on this issue, and sooner rather than later it will happen. Sad day for America……..
Remember this during the next election. None of the three delegates are stand up for the voters! What arrogance! I’m angry that I voted for them in the first place. Cowards!
Thank you for your honesty and moral compass. I sense a great opportunity for Elk Mountain Ranch.
Have they ever voted for wyomings best interests?
It’s unfortunate that the people will probably lose a good chunk of their public land. But, maybe some the supporters of the gullible ol’ party will realize that their representatives don’t give a damn about them.