\u201cI would advocate returning land to the states. It\u2019s not like they\u2019re irresponsible people who don\u2019t care what happens, you know. I just don\u2019t see any benefit from the government owning this much land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Land conservation and land transfer advocates are expecting this issue to emerge in the presidential campaign, particularly in the swing states Colorado and Nevada.<\/p>\n
First, Carson is way off on the acreage: The federal government does not own 2.4 billion acres of land. The actual land mass of the U.S. is about 2.3 billion acres, according to the Department of Agriculture, and the federal government owns and manages about 640 million acres, concentrated in 11 continental Western states and Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of \u2018returning\u2019 federal lands in the West to the states is a misnomer because those lands have never been owned by the states,\u201d wrote historian Samuel Hayes in 1989.<\/p>\n
Through the Property Clause, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress power to own land. Under the equal footing doctrine, all new states are entitled to the same powers of state government that belonged to the original 13 states. And those states operated under a policy of transferring ownership of federal lands to private and state ownership. Hence, those arguing for the federal government to \u201creturn\u201d or for states to \u201ctake back\u201d federal land believe that the Western states deserve the same statehood promise to transfer title to public lands as the 13 original states. But in the context of federal land, the equal footing doctrine generally has not applied to federal land ownership, according to the Congressional Research Service analysis.<\/p>\n
After decades of debate over provisions in the equal footing doctrine and the Property Clause, Congress in 1976 passed a law declaring that \u201cthe remaining public domain lands generally would remain in federal ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
The American Lands Council has reinvigorated the land transfer movement in nearly every Western state, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The American Lands Council also argues that transferring land to states will allow for a more \u201cresponsive and accountable stewardship\u201d of the lands. The Colorado Secretary of State recently announced that it has \u201creasonable grounds to believe\u201d the American Lands Council may have violated rules for failing to report political spending or to register as a lobbyist.<\/p>\n
Carson\u2019s rhetoric distorts the context and legal interpretations that are at play. Federal land ownership and the state-federal clash over the issue is complex and nuanced, and Carson\u2019s language blurs the underlying facts. That upped his rating to Two Pinocchio\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Chip Tuthill is a longtime resident of Mancos. Websites used for this column: www.washingtonpost.com and www.cortezjournal.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI would advocate returning land to the states. It\u2019s not like they\u2019re irresponsible people who don\u2019t care what happens, you know. I just don\u2019t see any benefit from the government owning this much land.\u201d Land conservation and land transfer advocates are expecting this issue to emerge in the presidential campaign, particularly in the swing states […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6334],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-guest-columns","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107745","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=107745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107745"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}