{"id":105220,"date":"2016-05-10T18:12:30","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T00:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-simple-public-lands-day-bill-sent-to-governor\/"},"modified":"2016-05-10T18:12:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T00:12:30","slug":"a-simple-public-lands-day-bill-sent-to-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-simple-public-lands-day-bill-sent-to-governor\/","title":{"rendered":"A simple Public Land\u2019s Day bill sent to governor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Arkansas River rolls through Browns Canyon near Salida. After much wrangling, state lawmakers gave approval to a bill creating a Public Land\u2019s Day in Colorado. The day would occur on the third Saturday in May, if the governor signs the measure, as he is expected to do.<\/span>Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 After heated political wrangling over a seemingly simple bill to create a Public Land\u2019s Day in Colorado, lawmakers finally agreed to set a date.<\/p>\n

The third Saturday in May would be a day for Coloradans to celebrate the state\u2019s 24 million acres of national public lands.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers sent the bill on Friday night to Gov. John Hickenlooper, who is expected to sign it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was supposed to be about celebration, and talking about how much public lands contribute to the Colorado way of life,\u201d said Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, who spearheaded the effort.<\/p>\n

The bill \u2013 introduced Jan. 13, the first day of the legislative session \u2013 was constantly overshadowed by discourse over federal management of public lands.<\/p>\n

A recent standoff in Oregon, where a group occupied a federal wildlife refuge headquarters protesting federal lands policies, highlighted the tensions and frustrations surrounding the debate.<\/p>\n

One side tends to follow messaging from a movement known as the new \u201cSagebrush Rebellion,\u201d a resurgence of the effort in the 1970s to force the federal government to give more control of government-owned Western lands to the states.<\/p>\n

First the bill was amended by Republicans to state: \u201cColoradans are too often not adequately represented in the adjudication and settlement of federal regulatory issues, resulting too often in \u2018sweetheart\u2019 consent decrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, worked on a compromise amendment in the Senate, which eliminated the \u201csweetheart consent decrees\u201d language.<\/p>\n

But Democrats felt that went too far, so they amended the bill to state: \u201cIt is imperative to encourage effective cooperative and collaborative engagement among counties, municipalities, the state and federal land management agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Republican-controlled Senate at odds with the Democratic-controlled House over the bill, lawmakers met in a conference committee to work on a compromise. In the end, they stripped the bill down to its original intent, which was to create a Public Land\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows the passion that we have about our public lands,\u201d Donovan said of the long debate. \u201cI didn\u2019t want the declarative language to become a political battleground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmental groups praised the Legislature for not including the federal admonishment.<\/p>\n

\u201cColoradans want to celebrate, not seize our national public lands,\u201d said Scott Braden, wilderness and public lands advocate for Conservation Colorado. \u201cWe have no patience for extremist attempts to privatize or undermine our shared outdoor heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

pmarcus@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

celebrate outdoors the third Saturday in May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,13,193],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-land-use"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105220"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}