Thursday, January 20, 2011
Obama Admin Denies Petition to Raise Grazing Fees on Public Lands
The Obama administration yesterday rejected a proposal to raise grazing fees on public lands, a decision that suggests ranchers will continue to be charged below-market prices to graze cattle on federal rangelands. The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in separate letters yesterday to environmental groups said other priorities prevent them from pursuing new rules to revise the current grazing fee. Both agencies also said they disagreed with the groups' legal arguments in a 2005 petition (pdf) challenging the legality of the current fee structure. Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, said the agency is pursuing separate rulemakings to revise its forest planning rule and respond to Colorado's roadless proposal, each of which have drained agency resources. Moreover, roughly 4,000 grazing allotments on Forest Service property are in need of environmental analyses that will help determine the best management of rangeland resources, Holtrop said in the letter (pdf). BLM Director Bob Abbey in his letter (pdf) to the groups said his agency was working to implement proposed orders aimed at reducing the venting of natural gas, revising coal management regulations, updating standards for oil and gas measurement and securing oil and gas production facilities. "These initiatives represent major undertakings for the BLM and involve significant investments of limited agency resources and staff time," Abbey wrote. Abbey added that he had discussed the fee structure with "numerous" lawmakers on Capitol Hill and that none of them had requested a change to the grazing fees...more
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"Below Market Rent." I see this sign all over empty commercial buildings through town these days. It makes me wonder why it is that they are empty! Obviously, they are either not below enough, or not below at all. The point, of course, is that nobody speaks for the market. What buyer and seller, or what lessor and lessee come up with in this case, IS the market value.
I remain unimpressed with the below market or subsidized grazing market, because one has a hard time finding private graze that matches up with quality and supply of public graze. What we have here is a group of people who are essentially making the argument that, since the guy who just bought a Ford paid a lot less than the guy who just bought a Mercedes, the Ford guy must've paid below market prices. After all, they're both cars. Incidentally, how do these people handle the fact that I might not pay the same price for a tractor as my neighbor, even if it is the same tractor? Does that mean one of us is subsidizing the other, too? I think not.
I also find it ironic that these environmental groups, which frequently have annual budgets in the tens of millions and are usually headed up by multimillionaires, whine about supposed land "subsidies" and channel Eddie Abbey rhetoric regarding "welfare ranchers" while they themselves are being subsidized to file all these silly lawsuits. We can't even find out what each of these suits costs us all, because there is no public record of line-item expenses for EAJA.
Incidentally, Frank, the NRA is now on the EAJA abuse issue as well, and is behind a bill to change reporting requirements on EAJA expensing. You will find an article on it in the latest issue of American Hunter Magazine. If you do not receive AH, let me know and I'll fire a PDF or link over to you.
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