House lawmakers and Department of the Interior (DOI) officials will tour Ogden, Utah, next week, scoping out the town as a potential headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is making plans to move the headquarters of the BLM out of Washington, D.C., to a city in the western U.S., but a decision has not been made on the new destination. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah will lead the tour that will include other members of the committee and the DOI acting assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, Susan Combs. Combs is overseeing the BLM’s transition out of the U.S. capital, Utah’s Deseret News reports. Moving the BLM headquarters, which manages about 248 million acres of federal land, west would serve as a good faith gesture to farmers and ranchers who often complain of BLM policies and regulations coming from bureaucrats living potentially thousands of miles away. The new headquarters would be more accessible to the people BLM regulations most affect...MORE
Think back to the Obama administration. If the headquarters of the BLM and the USFWS had been located in Colo. or Utah, what real difference would this have made? Would the administration of grazing permits, the implementation of NEPA, or the preferred alternatives in land use plans been different? Would the number of endangered species listed been different? Or the number and size of critical habitat designations?
If these agencies had been headquartered in the West, would their Congressional testimony, on behalf of the Obama administration, in favor of additional wilderness areas and other restrictive designations have been different?
Would Obama have designated fewer National Monuments?
My fear is that while we have Republicans controlling the Presidency and both Houses of Congress, we are squandering an opportunity to bring meaningful, long-term changes to the statutes underwhich we are governed, and instead are spending energy, time and political capital debating and determing where our oppressors will be located.
Somewhere in the West, a chamber of commerce would benefit from the relocation of these headquarters. An urban area will welcome the federal employees and the additional spending they will bring. In the rural areas, where these lands and their users actually exist, little will have changed.
7 comments:
What may have been different.........and hopefully WILL be different with a move is to get some government employees out of the cesspool & culture of corruption that is Washington D.C. and surrounding areas.
Will it fix all?? No.........but it can't hurt.
My point was the time and energy being spent on this move would be better spent on amending the ESA, NEPA, etc. That should be the priority while the R's control the White House, the Senate and the House. And that opportunity may very well may very well end this November.
You make a great point........although in the long run.......moving out of the cesspool will pay many more dividends to the taxpayers and our country as a whole.
How much in the way of amending ESA, NEPA and other things can really be accomplished with the Deep State still firmly embedded........especially by November ?
The unintended consequence [or is it?] is the further dilution of western culture by the new invaders.... let's all hold hands and just feel good together!!
Now that the swamp has successfully removed Trump's appointment from power how is all of this going to take place. It is going to take a concerted effort first in the administration, then in the Republican Party to get the swamp drained. But as soon as someone emerges from the administration to start on the process the whining starts about how much was spent on airline tickets, office furniture, etc, etc,. And then you think that the process will ever get done when the whiners have their way? Let's get behind the Trump administration and give his appointments a chance to make the necessary changes! Yes, there may be some blood but without blood there is no sacrifice as it says in the bible. So quit crying about the meaningless things and let the process begin. Or, in a few years we will really see what the demoncrats can to to ruin this country. Wake up America! MAGA
"although in the long run.......moving out of the cesspool will pay many more dividends to the taxpayers and our country as a whole."
I guess that is our fundamental disagreement. 94% of BLM employees are already in the field. I fail to see how moving the remaining 6% will result in any significant change, whereas amending the ESA and NEPA alone would bring significant change along with taxpayer savings.
"How much in the way of amending ESA, NEPA and other things can really be accomplished with the Deep State still firmly embedded........especially by November ?"
The same deep state would also have to authorize and fund the transfer of BLM headquarters out of DC, so that applies equally to both. No doubt they would be more likely to fund the transfer than amend the statutes, as that would be less of a threat to the deep state than amending the statutes.
I'M not opposed to the transfer, its the reorg that it is part of that concerns me. See my comments today.
Surely over the past 25 years you have seen this opera played continuously by different administrations. They propose to move the boundaries of the department of the interior (BLM) and then combine the Department of Agriculture (Forest Service) with the BLM. BUT, after all of that bluster nothing has changed and nothing will because it takes the will of congress to make these changes. And currently the will of congress is to figure out how to make pigs fly. Ain't gonna happen!
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