Friday, October 04, 2013

County commissioner - Shutdown proves state should manage public lands

Idaho County Commissioner Skip Brandt isn’t pointing fingers at Democrats or Republicans in Washington for the fact that national wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, boat ramps, visitor centers and other developed recreation sites, national forest developed areas and all national parks are closed. “Federal employees have decided to make their furloughs as painful as possible for the public,” Brandt wrote in an email. “So apparently the ‘Federal’ lands/ facilities are not 'true public' lands/ property after all, but rather are the bureaucracy’s property,” Brandt wrote in a email. “Thus if the bureaucrats/ Federal employees do not have a pay check the properties are off limits to the ‘subjects’” Brandt has a solution: “It is time that the Federal lands become managed/ accountable State lands.” Brandt is one of the supporters of a resolution that was approved by the Idaho Legislature earlier this year demanding the federal government hand over all of the more than 32 million acres of federally owned public land in Idaho to the state. Critics question the legal theory the resolution is based on and say the state would suffer economically unless it sold all of the land, which lawmakers say they don’t want to do. “So the next question; How long until ‘they’ put up their signs on all Federally managed lands?” Brandt asked...more

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