{"id":53258,"date":"2020-06-19T08:27:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/u-s-senate-passes-public-lands-bill-colorado-dems-accuse-gardner-of-greenwashing\/"},"modified":"2020-06-19T14:27:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:27:00","slug":"u-s-senate-passes-public-lands-bill-colorado-dems-accuse-gardner-of-greenwashing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/u-s-senate-passes-public-lands-bill-colorado-dems-accuse-gardner-of-greenwashing\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Senate passes public lands bill; Colorado Dems accuse Gardner of \u2018greenwashing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed the Great American Outdoors Act, but the CORE Act, which was proposed by U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, was left off the legislation. The CORE act aimed to protect 400,000 acres of public land in Colorado, including 52,000 acres in the San Juan Mountains.<\/span>Courtesy of Mason Cummings, The Wilderness Society<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Great American Outdoors Act passed the Senate by a 73-25 vote Wednesday, a rare bipartisan bill considered a major win for conservation nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a legacy for our public lands,\u201d said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. \u201cThis is a generational opportunity to give back to this country something lasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gardner\"
Gardner<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Gardner, one of the lead co-sponsors of the bill, said he is working with his colleagues in the House of Representatives to ensure its passage. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law if it passes without amendment.<\/p>\n

More than 800 conservation groups and six former secretaries of the Interior Department previously stated their support for the bill, emphasizing its ability to reduce the maintenance backlog on public lands, while bolstering the tourism economies of mountain towns at a time when they are being particularly hard hit by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic lands, parks and trails are vital to restoring our country\u2019s health and way of life amidst the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d Anna Peterson, executive director of The Mountain Pact, said in a statement. \u201cWe thank the Senate for passing the Great American Outdoors Act and now urge the House of Representatives to quickly follow suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats also support the bill but have accused Gardner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of \u201cgreenwashing\u201d by bringing up the bill during an election year. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., noted that he had introduced legislation to permanently reauthorize and fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund in every Congress since he was elected in 2010, but this was the first time funding had received robust bipartisan support.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic lands are part of our legacy, our culture and our history in Colorado,\u201d Bennet said in a statement. \u201cAfter a decade of leading this effort, I\u2019m thrilled the Senate has finally passed full funding for LWCF.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner refuted this, noting that he supported legislation in 2019 that reauthorized the LWCF.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just partisan grapes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Previously, Gardner has voted for budgets proposed by Trump that slash conservation spending, earning him a lifetime score of 11% from the League of Conservation Voters. In 2011, when Gardner was a U.S. representative, he also voted for a budget amendment that would slash funding by 90% for the LWCF, the very entity that would be fully funded by the Great American Outdoors Act.<\/p>\n

The Great American Outdoors Act is also co-sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who is facing a tough re-election campaign against former Democratic governor and presidential candidate Steve Bullock. When asked whether the decision to bring the bill to a vote in an election year was an act of political maneuvering, McConnell said in a news conference that the bill is a rare opportunity to pass something with broad support.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in proximity to an election, but that makes it even more remarkable that we\u2019re actually able to get together in spite of the contests that are going on all over the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Hickenlooper\"
Hickenlooper<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Former Colorado governor and U.S. Senate candidate John Hickenlooper said Gardner, whom he is running to unseat in the 2020 election, is using the Great American Outdoors Act as \u201ccover\u201d to hide a poor record on conservation and public lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, he thinks it\u2019s going to give him cover,\u201d Hickenlooper said during a campaign town hall last week. \u201cThe question would be why for the previous years he didn\u2019t support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The town hall, organized by his campaign and held June 12, was also attended by Sens. Bennet and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo. All are co-sponsors of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, which would designate about 400,000 acres of new wilderness areas, recreation and conservation management areas, and a first-ever National Historic Landscape in the state of Colorado. Bennet has attempted to introduce the act as an amendment to the Great American Outdoors Act.<\/p>\n

\"Bennet\"
Bennet<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cOn the CORE Act, Sen. Gardner has been completely missing in action,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cThere is a huge difference in the record here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner made it clear that he wanted to get the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act passed without additional amendments, including the CORE Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cPress conferences are great, but what\u2019s even better is Cory Gardner actually leading action on the most historic conservation legislation in over 50 years,\u201d said Meghan Graf, a spokesperson for Gardner\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

Many of the Great American Outdoors Act\u2019s supporters have urged lawmakers to pass the bill without amendments, worrying they would slow its passage or poison the bill\u2019s bipartisan support.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the CORE Act was left off the Great American Outdoors Act when it passed the Senate.<\/p>\n

But Bennet and Hickenlooper hope by bringing the bill to Gardner\u2019s attention, they can force the senator to make a statement one way or the other about public lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cSen. Gardner has had his chance to support the CORE Act, he\u2019s refused to support the CORE Act,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have two senators supporting it. John Hickenlooper supports it, and I think it\u2019s one of the reasons why it\u2019s essential for him to win in the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob Wallace is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Journal and The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

not included with Great American Outdoors legislation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,481,28,193,29,24,25,1566],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-gov-john-hickenlooper","tag-headlines","tag-land-use","tag-newsletter","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet","tag-u-s-senate"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53258","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=53258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53258"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}