The committee writing the party platform for the Republican National Convention gave its support to “legislation providing the timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” says Oregon Public Broadcasting. “The language echoes some of the demands of the armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon earlier this year.”
The federal government owns 53 percent of the land in Oregon. A member of the GOP platform committee from Oregon, Russ Walker, said the idea of shifting land to state control “is something that’s been moving around in the lands policy community for some time.”
One member of the platform committee, Victor Sprouse, of West Virginia, said the language was a “very broad brush to say we’re going to turn over all federal lands to the states.”
Delegates to the convention in Cleveland, which opens today, will decide the final language.
“Many in the GOP have long been on the side of the Sagebrush Rebels; as far back as 1984, the party’s platform called for decreasing federal holdings and increasing privatization,” said High Country News.