Confrontations such as these, instigated by federal employees with minimal law-enforcement training and accountability, are common on Utah’s public lands, according to testimony given last week in the Legislature’s latest installment of an anti-federal campaign that appears to be gaining momentum.
Three southern Utah sheriffs leveled these allegations in support of HB155, sponsored by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, which would bar U.S. Forest Service officers and Bureau of Land Management rangers from enforcing the law in Utah except in emergencies or when a sheriff has given prior approval under cooperative agreements.
HB155, which cleared the House on Monday, is just one of several pieces of legislation this session aimed at limiting or mitigating federal influence in the management of public land, natural resources and endangered species in Utah.
"We are the decider. We have to act like it,"
Rep. Ken Ivory, the West Jordan Republican championing the transfer of
federal lands to the states, told colleagues on the committee last week
in debating HB155.
At a previous meeting, he yoked the legacy of
Frederick Douglass to his cause, quoting the early civil rights leader’s
pronouncement that the federal government rarely cedes authority
without a demand.
Last week, Ivory and his allies unveiled two
new demands in House resolutions, which do not carry the force of law,
but express the Legislature’s position.
One resolution, HJR14 sponsored by Ivory, says
federal agencies cannot claim water rights. The other, HJR15 sponsored
by Rep. Marc Roberts, R-Santaquin, and passed out of committee Monday on
its way to the full House, says they have so badly managed forests they
now pose a "public nuisance and safety issue."
Both resolutions cite the recent U.S. Supreme
Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, stating that
the states are "separate and independent sovereigns."
And both resolutions amount to indictments
against the Forest Service, alleging the agency has botched its duty to
safeguard the public from wildfire, to treat forests that have burned
and to take care of the land.Ivory’s water-rights bill, which the House
natural resources committee is to consider Tuesday, asserts the Forest
Service is pressuring grazing-allotment holders to sign over their water
rights in a clear abuse of state sovereignty. It also alleges the
agency has messed up forest hydrology by restricting grazing and
logging, resulted in dangerous fuel loads and "inordinate water absorption for unhealthy vegetation densities."
That committee on Monday endorsed Roberts’
HJR15 and its sister bill, HB164, which would enable local government
officials to "mitigate" situations on federal land that they deem "may
adversely affect the health, safety or welfare of the people of the
municipality or county."
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