Angry GOP senators lash out at BLM director over land policies

 

Frustrated and clearly angry Republican senators excoriated the national director of the Bureau of Land Management in a congressional hearing this week over land use polices, what they say are endless permitting delays or the imposition of projects not welcome in their home state.

“We live as subjects,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told BLM Director Tracey Stone-Manning. “Increasingly, the BLM under your leadership, seems to have taken an approach that manages these lands like a museum — it is a look but you cannot touch sort of approach that involves (lands) in people’s backyards. You can hardly throw a rock in any direction in Utah and not hit federal land.”

Stone-Manning testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for the first time in over three years — stoking another accusation that she and the agency have been unresponsive, out of touch and indifferent to states’ concerns over federally managed land...more