Nevada Congressman expects to see action on federal land issues

Freshman 4th Congressional District Rep. Cresent Hardy, whose district covers the southern half of rural Nevada, foresees considerable debate and action coming during this 114th session of Congress on various issues concerning use and control of federal public lands...He added that the state taking control of public lands would provide opportunities for the citizens of the state be “like the Founders expected us to be, laboratories of industry, and let us take control of our public lands ourselves.” Hardy cited the Equal Footing Doctrine — under which all states are promised to be treated equally with the original 13 states — as an argument for states taking control of federal land. He noted that in 1828 the states of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida used that argument to convince Congress to release control of most federal land within their boundaries. Today various federal agencies control roughly half the 11 westernmost states in the lower 48 and Alaska and about 85 percent of Nevada, the highest percentage of any state, while only 4 percent of the rest of the states is under federal dominion. The congressman said he also hopes the Nevada Legislature acts on a report from its Nevada Public Lands Management Task Force recommending that the state take control of millions of acres of federal land and forwards it to Congress for its action. “I’ll tell you what is happening back here. I think people from the East Coast, we’re actually educating folks back here,” Hardy said of the lands issue. “They didn’t understand for all these years the damage that they’ve caused to the West by keeping control of these state lands, like the rights they have and the opportunities they have by having control of their own lands. We need that opportunity, like I said, to be laboratories of industry.”...more