{"id":112633,"date":"2015-05-07T20:42:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T02:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-lands-bill-dies\/"},"modified":"2015-05-07T20:42:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T02:42:51","slug":"federal-lands-bill-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-lands-bill-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal-lands bill dies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"John
John Gale, conservation director for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, told sportsmen at the Colorado Capitol on Feb. 25 that they need to urge state lawmakers to \u201ckeep your hands off our public lands.\u201d Lawmakers on Monday killed a bill that would have clarified state jurisdiction over federal lands.<\/span>Peter Marcus\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Hunters and anglers finally hit their target Monday as a Colorado bill that would have clarified state jurisdiction over federal lands was shot down.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 39 \u2013 with Republican sponsorship \u2013 would have allowed Colorado to exercise authority along with the federal government over federal public lands.<\/p>\n

Sportsmen and conservationists began their opposition to the bill in February with a rally at the Capitol. Since then, the bill has slowly moved through the process, with support from Republicans, only meeting its match with three days left in the session.<\/p>\n

The bill died in the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee on a party-line vote of 7-6.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is part of a larger agenda to assert increased state control over our public lands,\u201d said Scott Braden, representing Conservation Colorado. \u201cWe think this represents an assault on our national parks, on our national monuments, wilderness areas, forests and existing multi-use lands, which are critically important to our state\u2019s economy and our high quality of life in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate revolved around whether SB 39 was an initial step toward the state taking control of federal lands, which opponents worried would lead to shutting down precious recreational areas because of costs associated with management.<\/p>\n

Critics pointed out that the language of the measure was similar to a proposal pushed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. Similarly, they opposed a separate bill this year that would have studied transferring federal lands over to the state\u2019s authority, which died last month. Supporters and opponents of those efforts often found themselves trading jabs on social media over the proposals.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the jurisdiction effort downplayed management concerns, suggesting that the federal government would still have handled emergencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government takes care of disasters no matter where they are,\u201d said Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, who supported the bill. \u201cThe government is there to help us, and the fact that it\u2019s private or nonprivate is not an issue here. \u2026 I don\u2019t see anything in this bill that\u2019s taking the ownership, it\u2019s simply saying that we want to be at the table in managing some of the things that are going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, added, \u201cThis isn\u2019t a dangerous bill that all of a sudden the state is going to take over federal lands because of this bill. That\u2019s just not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

measure would have led to closing public lands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,14,131,6378],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-homicide","tag-personhood"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112633","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=112633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112633"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}