...By and large, Americans have gone on with their lives giving
little thought to the over-hyped sequester. However, in an effort to
inflict some pain on state governments, the Obama administration saw fit
to cancel royalty payments to the various Western states earlier this
year. Royalties are the fees paid by companies that engage in certain
activities on publicly owned land. A vast majority of this money in New
Mexico and around the West is derived from the various extractive
industries.
For New Mexico, the loss amounts to $26 million this year –
$109 million in total was cut from the budgets of the several Western
states. New Mexico had the second-largest cut to Wyoming. Sen. Tom Udall
and a bipartisan group of Western senators recently penned a letter to
the Obama administration urging that such cuts not be made again next
year.
While I appreciate efforts to stop future cuts by our
delegation, this is not a discussion that should even be taking place.
These lands are part of the respective states. They are supposed to be
managed by the federal government on behalf of the states, but the funds
are rightfully ours. Unfortunately, Washington doesn’t play by the
rules.
If Washington did obey its own rules, many of these lands –
excluding national parks and tribal lands – would have been transferred
to the various Western states decades ago. After all, this was the
pattern set up at the founding of our nation. Dating back to 1780, the
Continental Congress designed a process by which the national government
would “dispose of” lands under its control for the benefit of the
nation. That process held true for two centuries but was not allowed to
work when it came to Western states like New Mexico, which remains more
than 40 percent federally-owned.
Whether federal or state government owns land may appear
trivial at first blush, but we already have seen that federal budgetary
mismanagement has resulted in the withholding of funds meant to support
the activities of New Mexico government. And of course we have
well-documented problems with federal management of lands, including the
lack of willingness to extract dead and dying trees, thus creating a
“tinderbox” in New Mexico’s mountainous regions that have regularly
caught fire in recent years.
Lastly, there is the basic reality that government’s
functions are best managed locally. Washington instead enforces
“one-size-fits-all” management policies that don’t work well for anyone.
The individual states, unlike Washington, have both the
incentive and the local knowledge to manage local lands. They can often
do so more effectively, without jumping through the hoops of
Washington’s bureaucracy. The “rights of way” used by utilities on
federal lands are but one recent example. The fact that these areas are
too narrow and allowed falling power lines to start several of the fires
burning in New Mexico has generated consternation from our
Congressional delegation, but any federal action to expand or alter
these “rights of way” is likely years away.
The good news is that New Mexico policymakers have seen the
problem and are in the midst of working on solutions. HB 292, the
Transfer of Public Lands Bill, was introduced on a bipartisan basis by
Reps. Yvette Herrell and Richard Martinez during the 2013 legislative
session. Although it failed to pass, it began the discussion about who
is best able to manage New Mexico’s public lands. Utah and four other
states have already passed similar legislation.
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