Rep. Ryan Zinke’s new bill, HR 7430, Public Lands in Public Hands Act contains many loopholes that are big enough to drive a fracking truck through. Here are some of them:
The law would not prohibit changing the boundaries of national monuments to allow development. Thus, vastly reducing the size of two national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, carried out by Ryan Zinke when he was Trump’s Secretary of the Interior to allow oil, gas, and coal extraction would not be prohibited.
Neither does the bill include the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act. Supported by 84% of registered voters in Montana, the bill will protect the four most important tributaries of the Blackfoot River and ensure that grizzly bears, Canada lynx, elk, native trout, and other fish and wildlife can thrive.
The law would prohibit transfer of title of “publicly accessable tracts” or tracts that are “contiguous” with publicly accessable land. Furthermore, if any Federal tract was less than 300 acres in size (a little less than a half square mile which is 320 acres in size) or less than five acres in size and accessible via a public waterway, and if the transfer of title was “authorized to be transferred under and subject to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976,” the prohibition would not apply. Thus, the law would not prohibit sale or other transfers of larger less-accessible “land-locked” tracts.
The law would only prohibit “transferring title to Federal land to a non-Federal entity.” The law would not prohibit transferring an exclusive easement or a lease or other arrangement to manage such land to a non-Federal entity.
The law would apply only to “Federal land managed by the Secretary of the Interior or the Chief of the Forest Service.” Land managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), and other Federal agencies would not be protected.
The law would not prohibit transfers of title to limited-in-size tracts (described above) that are authorized by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. That act allows Federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management to be sold to private parties (Sec. 203 of the Act) or conveyed to States and their political subdivisions (Sec. 211 of the Act) under the conditions set forth in the Act.
The law would not prohibit transfers of title “authorized by—(A) the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998; (B) the Sisk Act (16 U.S.C. 479a); (C) Public Law 85–569, commonly known as the “Townsites Act of 1958”; (D) the Small Tract Act of 1983; (E) the Act of May 17, 1906, commonly known as the “Native Allotment Act of 1906”; (F) Public Law 85–508, commonly known as the “Alaska Statehood Act of 1959”; (G) the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; (H) the Alaska Native Vietnam-era Veterans Land Allotment Program authorized by section 1119 of the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act; (I) the Recreation and Public Purposes Act; or (J) the Weeks Act of 1911; 3) explicitly authorized by Federal law; or (4) completed through a land exchange authorized by Federal law.” So, passage of the bill with all these loopholes would change US law little, if any.
To clear up a misunderstanding about the bill, the following statement is not correct: “The bill also requires congressional approval for disposals of publicly accessible federal land tracts larger than 300 acres and for public land tracts larger than five acres, if accessible via a public waterway.” Under current law, (which the bill would not amend) only if the tract is larger than 2,500 acres in size, congressional disapproval of a proposed sale of public land must occur within 90 days via an adopted concurrent resolution of the House and the Senate. (Good luck with that these days!) Also, under current law, (which the bill would not amend) conveyances of public lands to States or their political subdivisions are not subject to congressional approval or disapproval at all.
Thus, the bill is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It would not change existing law in ways that would achieve its stated purpose of keeping “public lands in public hands.” Unfortunately, the bill appears to be no more than a disingenuous marketing communication by Rep. Zinke’s 2024 campaign. As noted elsewhere on this website, Rep. Zinke has never gotten a bill passed that he introduced so maybe the bill is just 2024 general election propaganda.
To muddy the waters even further, Outdoor Alliance reported that Rep. Zinke’s voted for a House rules package that governs how the House will operate during 2023 and 2024, calling it a land heist. That rules package (H. Res. 5) contains the provision quoted below (Section 3g) that enables public land transfers to be treated as “budget neutral”—so that lawmakers can more easily transfer, sell off, donate, or exchange public lands. (Typically, laws are scored to see how they would affect the federal budget and their cost to taxpayers. This new rule will automatically score all land transfer measures as budget neutral.)
(g) SCORING CONVEYANCES OF FEDERAL LAND.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—In the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress, for all purposes in the House, a provision in a bill or joint resolution, or in an amendment thereto or a conference report thereon, requiring or authorizing a conveyance of Federal land to a State, local government, or tribal entity shall not be considered as providing new budget authority, decreasing revenues, increasing mandatory spending, or increasing outlays.
(2) DEFINITIONS.—In this subsection:
(A) The term ‘‘conveyance’’ means any method, including sale, donation, or exchange, by which all or any portion of the right, title, and interest of the United States in and to Federal land is transferred to another entity.
(B) The term ‘‘Federal land’’ means any land owned by the United States, including the surface estate, the subsurface estate, or any improvements thereon.
(C) The term ‘‘State’’ means any of the several States, the District of Columbia, or a territory (including a possession) of the United States.
In his voting for H. Res. 5, it sure appears like Rep. Zinke is comfortable “talking out of both sides of his mouth” about keeping public lands in public hands.