Interior Department reorganization, budget prompts concerns from Democrats, Republicans

Nevada politicians across the political spectrum raised concerns Monday about a Department of Interior budget request that, if implemented by Congress, could affect how the federal public land agency operates and funds conservation projects. Because the Interior Department oversees the Bureau of Land Management, which controls more than 60 percent of the state’s land, agency officials play a key role in decisions about which activities should be permitted on public land. Federal land managers control ranching allotments; they oversee conservation; they permit oil wells; they protect endangered species. The Interior’s budget document asks Congress to authorize funding that would be used to reorganize the agency’s land managers. It also wants authority to take proceeds from Southern Nevada’s public lands buyback program and to end geothermal royalties to counties. One big ask by the Interior Department is for $18 million to reorganize the agency based on geographic basins instead of boundaries that mirror state lines. The current boundaries vary among the agencies within the Interior Department (BLM and Bureau of Reclamation have different systems, for instance). But in many cases, they follow state boundaries. The reorganization proposes to carve Interior operations into 13 regional boundaries based on watersheds and wildlife corridors. In a media briefing with reporters on Monday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the current system is inefficient because of how different agency functions overlap with each other. Under the new boundaries, all of the agencies within Interior would operate in the same regions. Local officials are less optimistic. Nevada would be split into three regions, and for weeks, local officials have raised questions about what the reorganization would look like. The change, which was announced publicly last month, came as a surprise to county commissioners and governors from Western states, where the Interior Department manages about 700,000 square miles. “We have heard concerns,” said Dagny Stapleton, executive director of the Nevada Association of Counties (NACO). “The question is: Will this proposed reorganization increase the effectiveness of the agency’s decision-making and planning or will it hinder the counties’ abilities to engage and participate?” NACO has not taken an official position on the plan, but Stapleton said it would probably be addressed at the next meeting. Some rural county officials have expressed concerns that the move could add another layer of bureaucracy and make it more difficult to communicate with a department that had a regional focus than one that was more conscious of state boundaries...more