{"id":112941,"date":"2015-04-27T17:51:43","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T23:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/land-grab-study-advances-in-senate-2\/"},"modified":"2015-04-27T17:51:43","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T23:51:43","slug":"land-grab-study-advances-in-senate-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/land-grab-study-advances-in-senate-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Land grab\u2019 study advances in Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A Colorado Senate committee advanced a bill Thursday that would study transferring federal public lands to state authority.<\/span>Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 A Colorado Senate committee Thursday advanced a bill that would study transferring federal public lands over to the state\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

The Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee passed Senate Bill 232 on a 5-4 party-line vote, with Sen. Ellen Roberts of Durango joining her Republican colleagues to pass the bill. The bill now heads to the full Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be turning a deaf ear if I did not support this. I would be turning a deaf ear to a number of my county commissioners and constituents,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cFor a lot of my constituents, they\u2019d like to see this kind of study.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue has been surrounded in controversy, as outdoor enthusiasts \u2013 many from Southwest Colorado \u2013 fear that the bill is the first strike in an eventual transfer. They worry that charging Colorado with managing 23 million acres of federal land could result in closure of those precious spaces. Cost estimates begin at $27 million for the state to manage federal wildlands.<\/p>\n

A chorus of hunter and anglers and conservationists lined up to oppose the bill, echoing concerns over the proposed 15-member study commission, which would include county commissioners and representatives of the Western Slope, Southwest Colorado and northeastern part of the state. But it doesn\u2019t require industry stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a complex, very broad, very large task, that requires experts in all sorts of areas and stakeholders from all of the industries that are impacted,\u201d said Greg Holm, with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. \u201cAll those people need to be represented.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one of the bill\u2019s sponsors, Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, said he deliberately chose county commissioners because they represent Coloradans.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou and I all know county commissioners are made up of the regular folks in Colorado,\u201d Sonnenberg said. \u201cThey\u2019re farmers, they\u2019re ranchers, they\u2019re businessmen, they\u2019re retired, they\u2019re community organizers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of the bill pointed to a conservative movement to force the federal government to give more control of government-owned Western lands to state and local authorities. They made the same argument Tuesday when the Senate backed a bill that would clarify state jurisdiction over federal lands.<\/p>\n

Both bills face an uphill battle in the Democrat-controlled House.<\/p>\n

One of the issues the task force would possibly study is having the federal government sell to private buyers any of the federal lands or face a property-tax bill from the state. But legal conundrums surround that proposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed study would look at selling or leasing public land that\u2019s likely highly valued by hunters, anglers and wildlife watchers,\u201d said Suzanne O\u2019Neill, Colorado Wildlife Federation executive director. \u201cIt is unacceptable to finance transfer of public lands to the state by selling off blocks to private bidders and charging very high fees to access what remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether she would support such a transfer, Roberts said: \u201cWholesale, no, but that\u2019s why this study would produce some interesting conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hearing examines transferring federal lands to state<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112941","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=112941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112941"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}