Lawmakers in Utah announced on Monday that they’re poised to sue the federal government for control of 31 million acres of public land, according to an AP item in The Spectrum. Four years ago, Utah passed a law requiring the federal government to hand over all public land to the state by 2015. Now that the deadline has passed, state officials say they have a right to take the government to court.
The state has budgeted $2 million to hire a team of constitutional lawyers to evaluate the viability of its case and advise the state’s attorney general on whether to proceed. But if the suit goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, it could cost taxpayers upwards of $14 million, which has some critics claiming it’s a misuse of public money. A 2014 study conducted by three state universities concluded that Utah could afford the $280 million annual costs to manage its own lands, but that it would have to lean on oil and gas leases to do so.
The lawsuit would be in addition to the controversial Public Lands Initiative proposed by Sen. Rob Bishop and House Rep. Jason Chaffetz, which also aims to bring public lands into stands management. The initiative is due to be introduced in Congress soon, despite outcry from environmentalists and Native American tribes that claim it is an invitation to mining and gas companies.
Bishop’s plans for public-land reform go well beyond his home state. As chair of the Natural Resources Public Lands and Environmental Regulations Subcommittee, Bishop let the Land and Water Conservation Fund expire last September. Since 1965, the fund had provided $3.6 billion in matching grants to state and local governments to develop public outdoor recreation areas and shared federal conservation projects. Made up of revenue from U.S. offshore natural gas and oil drilling, the fund has supported projects in nearly all U.S. communities, whether a park or a forest, reports The Salt Lake Tribune. Writing in Politico last December, Bishop accused the federal government of using the conservation fund to acquire “millions of acres of land with little transparency, scant oversight and minimal local input.”