Thread: 7 Answers to 7 Questions About the Nevada Rancher Situation from The Blaze

Originally Posted by Newmexican

It has to do with the Enabling Acts at Statehood. I remember reading hat the Supreme Court had ruled that he Lands Act of 1976, that he Congress passed that would NEVER honor the Enabling agreements was disputed and the Supreme Court ruled that the government had to honor the agreements of statehood. If anyone finds anything on this please post it.

Why does federal government own 84% of Nevada and what can Reid do to give it back?

April 16, 2014 by Jonathon Moseley 117 Comments
Many say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could easily arrange for his home state to get back most of the 84 percent of Nevada territory owned and controlled by the federal government. So does the Democrat represent the interests of Nevada, or does he put the interests of the U.S. government and the Democratic Party over his own state’s needs?
Nevada would get what it deserves if Reid drafted a measure to treat Nevada the same way as other states. The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives would eagerly vote to treat Nevada like a grown-up. Instead, Reid runs the U.S. Senate with an iron fist, to the detriment of his own voters.
Renegade rancher Cliven Bundy raised a question during the hair-raising show-down between the Bureau of Land Management and the militia supporting the cattle rancher. Bundy says he was paying grazing fees to Clark County, but that the county stopped accepting his payments. Bundy insists that Nevada, not the U.S. government, owns the land where his cattle graze.
According to the ranchers’ argument, the federal government “owned” or controlled every territory before it became a state, but once statehood was reached, the land became the property of the new state.
So how is it that the U.S. government owns 84 percent of Nevada? It certainly looks like Nevada citizens are being treated unfairly. It is almost as if Washington, D.C., is treating Nevada like a child that can’t manage itself.
Photo: WND Facebook

Many Western states were treated unequally when they joined the Union. Unlike Eastern states, Congress reserved vast amounts of federally-owned land in the “Enabling Acts” for statehood in the West. Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution requires an act of Congress to create a state. Keeping the majority of land in federal control seems in conflict with the very concept of statehood. The second paragraph of Section 4 appears to authorize this bizarre practice. But on closer inspection, that is far from clear.
The Nevada Constitution includes an “Ordinance” section that adopts the requirements of the congressional Enabling Act. A second rewrite of the state constitution was approved by voters on Sept. 7, 1864. Nevada became the 36th state on Oct. 31, 1864. Nevada agreed to let the federal government own “unappropriated land” within the state, “unless otherwise provided by the Congress of the United States.”
Las Vegas Review Journal reported in December:

Some Nevadans, particularly from the rural areas of the state, have been pushing the idea of a state takeover of federal lands for years.
Supporters were successful in the 2013 session of the Nevada Legislature in getting a measure passed to allow for a study of the concept.
The group created by Assembly Bill 227, the Nevada Land Management Task Force, has been charged with evaluating whether the state should consider taking over control of some of the public lands now managed by federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, which controls 76 percent of the land in the state.
The task force will submit its findings to the Legislative Committee on Public Lands by Sept. 1.

All these years later, Congress could easily right this discriminatory wrong. As the leader of the U.S. Senate, Reid could propose a change reverting the property to Nevada’s control, and Republicans in the House would enthusiastically agree.
Nevada voters should tell the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House to end the discrimination against Nevada and release the “unappropriated territory” to the management and ownership of their own state government.


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About Jonathon Moseley
Jonathon Moseley is a Board member of the Northern Virginia Tea Party, and Executive Director of American Border Control. He served as Executive Director of the Legal Affairs Council.
The opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of BizPac Review.

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/04/...it-back-112757


Enabling Act of 1802

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Enabling act for Ohio 1802

The Enabling Act of 1802 was passed on April 30, 1802 by the Seventh Congress of the United States. This act authorized the residents of the eastern portion of the Northwest Territory to form the state of Ohio and join the U.S. on an equal footing with the other states. To accomplish this, and in doing so, the act also established the precedent and procedures for creation of future states in the western territories. The Enabling Act of 1802 would be the first appropriation by Congress for internal improvements^[1] in the country's interior.
Ohio was the first state to be created out of the Northwest Territories, which had been established by the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, 1787 in an act of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. The Northwest Ordinance laid out the conditions for the development and creation of states from the territory. With the act of May 7, 1800, the eastern part of the Northwest Territory, Ohio was set off under a distinct territorial government, and the remainder was organized as the territory of Indiana.^[2] By 1802 Ohio, in the eastern division of the Northwest Territories, had reached a population of 60,000 and was entitled to begin the transition to statehood. The Enabling Act of 1802 set forth the legal mechanisms and authorized the people of Ohio to begin this process.
The act required the people of Ohio to elect a delegate for each 1,200 people to attend a constitutional convention. These delegates would meet in Chillicothe on November 1, 1802, and would decide by majority vote whether or not to form a constitution and state government, and, if so, either provide for the election of representatives for a constitutional convention or to proceed immediately with the matter.
The new constitution and government of Ohio was required only to be "republican, and not repugnant to the ordinance of the thirteenth of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, between the original States and the people and States of the territory northwest of the river Ohio." The new state was to be equal in status to the existing states, and would have only one Representative to the United States House of Representatives until the next census. The help provide that equal status, section seven of the act offered three "propositions" to the convention for their free acceptance or rejection, which, if accepted, would be obligatory upon the United States; these granted certain lands held by the Federal government to the new state, notably those set aside for public schools, and provided that 5% of the proceeds from sale of Federal lands would fund creations of roads to and through Ohio.
The convention met from November 1 to 29; it agreed to form a state, accepted the several land-use proposals, and wrote the Ohio Constitution of 1802, which went into force without submission to popular vote. On February 19, 1803, Congress recognized the State of Ohio. This act did not purport to admit the state, but declared that Ohio, by the formation of its constitution in pursuance of the act of April 30, 1802, "has become one of the United States of America."^[2] This inconsistency would be corrected in the 1950s.
Significance and growth

Along with the extensively discussed topic of internal improvements, the entry of Ohio into the Union in 1802 raised the issue of whether the United States or Ohio should control the public lands in the territory. In a major precedent, the older states retained for the Union full sovereignty over these lands but agreed to allocate 5 percent of the net proceeds of land sales in Ohio for building roads to and through the state.^[3] The Enabling Act of 1802 specifically stated that the 5% portion should,
"be applied to the laying out and making public roads, leading from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic, to the Ohio, to the said State, and through the same, such roads to be laid out under the authority of Congress, with the consent of the several States through which the road shall pass." This statement within the Enabling Act of 1802 foreshadowed the Cumberland Road, which was built to fulfill the promise to use a portion of the money accruing from the sale of public lands in Ohio in order to connect that young state with Atlantic waters;^[4] the road would be approved in 1806^[3] and would later extend nearly to the Mississippi River.
In the act of March 3, 1803, which add and modified the propositions contained in the Enabling Act,^[5] 3 per cent of the net proceeds of land sales was given to Ohio for roads within the State, and for no other purpose whatever.^[1]
Similar provisions for a grant of 5 per cent of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands within each State have been made in the subsequent acts for the admission of the various public-land States^[6] to the Union. In the different acts there is some variation in the purposes for which the grants were made. The early acts usually made the appropriation for roads and canals; acts after 1836 made the proceeds available for roads and internal improvements; and the act for Nevada (1864) applied it to roads and irrigation ditches. Beginning with the four States admitted in 1889, the proceeds of this 5 per cent grant have been granted as a permanent fund for the support of common schools.^[1] Between 1802 and 1860, inclusive, this method of revenue sharing returned $5.4 million to the states;^[3] by 1887 the amounts accruing to the various States for the proceeds of the cash sales of public lands aggregated $7,123,550.^[1]


References

• United States Inland Waterways Commission, Preliminary Report, 1908, Government aid to inland navigation
• Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States, by the Best American and European Writers Lalor, John J., (Ed.), 1899. Ohio
• Stephen Minicucci, Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860, Studies in American Political Development, Vol 18, Issue 2: p.160-185, (October 2004), Cambridge University Press, DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X04000094
• Archer B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce, A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The Chronicles of America Series. Editor: Allen Johnson (1921)
• “An act in addition to, and in modification of, the propositions contained in the act entitled 'An act to enable the People of the Eastern division of the Territory Northwest of the river Ohio, to form a Constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union, on an equal footing with the original States; and for other purposes”, Library of Congress, Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1801-1804, Thursday, March 3, 1803.
• Minicucci, “Public land” states is a category for states that excluded [the original 13 states plus] Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee before Ohio was admitted, and Texas after.

External links

• Text of the Enabling Act and related documents

Categories:

• 1802 in law
• United States federal territory and statehood legislation
• Pre-statehood history of Ohio
• 1802 in the United States
• 7th United States Congress
• Ohio Constitutional Convention (1802)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1802

Nevada Statehood












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Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-113141 (b&w film copy neg.).

Side view of portico of Nevada state Capitol building in Carson City, circa 1920.


The first push to make Nevada Territory a state originated from within the territory, without prior authorization from Congress. On September 2, 1863 the voters of the territory approved of the concept of statehood by the overwhelming margin of 6,660 votes to only 1,502. To implement this, on November 2, 1863, thirty-nine delegates met to draft a state constitution. Since the great majority of the delegates had come to Nevada by way of California, they used the California state constitution as a first draft in formulating their own document. On December 11, 1863 the newly written constitution was submitted to the voters who, on January 19, 1864 surprisingly rejected it by a crushing 8,851 to 2,157 vote. There were a variety of reasons why it was rejected, including the idea that the taxation of mines, as established in the newly written constitution, was deemed too unfavorable for the mine owners.
Yet the idea of statehood did not die; instead it was immediately taken up on the national level, and a new attempt to create a state of Nevada was started in the United States Congress. An enabling act for Nevada statehood was passed just before the Thirty-eighth Congress was to go into recess, and signed by President Lincoln on March 21, 1864, which set up the procedure for future admission. This enabling act stated that Nevada would achieve statehood when and if it wrote an acceptable constitution, which would include certain stipulated provisions. The constitution would be reviewed by the President, and, if approved, Nevada would be admitted. The procedure was constitutionally odd, in that Congress was left out of it; it was up to the territory and to the President to implement the required ideas. But there was haste to insure that Nevada would become a state before the next meeting of the congress.
There were reasons for both the rush to have a Nevada state, and for the irregular procedure. First, it was at a time when the nation was fighting a desperately fought Civil War, and Nevada Territory was universally and correctly perceived to be both pro-Unionist and strongly Republican. Thus, despite other territories having considerably more population, Nevada was pushed to the head of the line for statehood. As the 1864 Presidential election approached, there were certain perceived advantages in having an additional Republican state. For one thing, a Republican congressional delegation could provide additional votes for the Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery, which earlier had narrowly failed to garner the necessary two thirds support of both houses of Congress. More overriding, however, at least in the spring of 1864 was the real fear that there might be three major candidates running for President that year, and that no party would achieve a majority of electoral votes. Then, as required by the United States constitution, the election would go into the House of Representatives, where each state would have only one vote, and where a Republican Nevada would have voting rights equal to those of populous New York or Pennsylvania. This made the admission of an additional safe Republican state seem quite necessary.
A second convention to write a state constitution therefore met from July 4–27, 1864. The defeated 1863 constitution was used as the basis for the new document. The requirements of the congressional enabling act were duly incorporated at the beginning of the constitution in a section called "The Ordinance." This included the outlawing of slavery, and the statement that all undistributed public lands would be retained by the federal government and could never be taxed by the state. These provisions would be "irrevocable" without the consent of Congress and of the people of Nevada. The new constitution also included a "paramount allegiance" clause, proclaiming the supremacy of the United States government over the states and that no state had the right to secede, both very much Republican party doctrine, and voluntarily inserted into the document by its makers. The 1864 constitution also espoused democratic principles, popular in the West, with popular elections demanded for many state offices, including the state judiciary. Possible opposition from mine owners was headed off by a provision stating that only the net proceeds of mines could be taxed.
This state constitution was overwhelmingly approved by Nevada voters on September 7, 1864, with 10,375 votes supporting it, and a mere 1,184 against. The constitution was telegraphed to Washington, D.C. at a cost of $3,416.77, supposedly the longest and most expensive telegram ever sent up to that time. Lincoln proclaimed Nevada a state on October 31, 1864, and, eight days later, Nevada voted strongly Republican in the Presidential, congressional, and legislative elections. The state surely was "Battle Born" (one of its several state mottoes). The Civil War had been indispensable for giving statehood to one of the least populated and economically viable of all the territories.


Further Reading

Eleanore Bushnell and Don Driggs. The Nevada Constitution: Origin and Growth. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1984.


David Alan Johnson. Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840-1890. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.


http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/nevada-statehood


Related Articles


- See more at: http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles....6yVwOuhd.dpuf

Originally Posted by Newmexican

It has to do with the Enabling Acts at Statehood. I remember reading that the Supreme Court had ruled that he Lands Act of 1976, that the Congress passed that would NEVER honor the Enabling agreements was disputed and the Supreme Court ruled that the government had to honor the agreements of statehood. If anyone finds anything on this please post it.

It refers to it in these.

http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/hbillint/hjr021.pdf

http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/hbillint/hcr013.pdf

Is this what you are talking about NM?

http://www.blm.gov/flpma/FLPMA.pdf

Managing the Public Lands
A Snapshot of pre- and post-FLPMA Management
1976 & 2000

Highlighted Area	Pre-FLPMA 1976	Post-FLPMA 2000
Acres Managed	450 million surface 822 million mineral estate administered	264 million surface 700 million mineral estate administered
BLM Employees	4,530	10,000
Types of Primary BLM Disciplines (not comprehensive)	Range Conservationists, Land Surveyors, Geologists, Foresters, Administrative Assistants	In addition to types of jobs in 1976: Wildlife Biologists, Wild Horse and Burro Specialists, Recreation Specialists, Economists, Hydrologists, Archaelogists, Sociologists, and Land Use Planners.
Proximity of BLM lands to communities	Records show that in the West, cities having a combined population of 35 million people are within a three-hour drive of 66 million acres of BLM lands.	More than 4,100 communities with a combined population of 22.2 million people are located within 25 miles of BLM lands.
Land Exchanges Patents or deeds issued Acres patented or deeded	53 36,991 acres	244 135,850 acres
Recreation sites Managed by BLM Fee Sites	326 0	3,191 335
Wild and Scenic Rivers	3 Wild and Scenic Rivers	36 Wild and Scenic Rivers
Areas of Critical Environmental Concern Acres	0 0	838 14,045,540
Historical & Archeological Properties recorded Acres inventoried	11,076 1,133,956	235,574 14,416,221
Percentage of country's onshore oil and natural gas provided from Federal lands	6% Oil and Gas	11 % Natural Gas 5 % Oil
Millions cubic feet (Mcf) of Natural Gas Produced on Federal Land	1,080 million Mcf	2,139 million Mcf
Barrels of Oil Produced on Federal Land	168,000,000	108,000,000
Coal Production on Federal land - Total (short tons-2000 lbs) - WY Coal Production	54,782,326	404,787,030 325,180,000
AUMs livestock grazed	10.1 million	9.8 million
Acres of National Conservation Areas and National Monuments	57,000 acres	19 million
Number of Threatened and Endangered species	177 species of animals and plants	511 species of animals and 736 species of plants.
Acres of Designated Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas Managed by BLM	0	23,445,495

http://www.blm.gov/flpma/snapshot.htm

H.J.R. 21
Joint Resolution on the Sovereign Character of Pilt--payment in Lieu of Taxes -- Ivory, K.

Senate Floor Sponsor: Hinkins, D.

Drafting Attorney: RuthAnne Frost
Fiscal Analyst: Mark Bleazard

Effective Date: 11 March 2014

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Bill List | Bills by Representative, Senator, or Subject
Similar Bills: Resolutions Legislative Affairs

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Bill Status/Votes
Last Action: 18 March 2014, House/ to Lieutenant Governor
Last Location: Lieutenant Governor's office for filing
Bill Status/Votes Last Updated: 28 March 2014, 3:38 PM Video and Audio Recordings of Debates (Software to view or listen to recordings can be found at real.com. Questions about audio/video streaming.)
Floor Debate Video and Audio Files
House Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee 2/26 (Audio Only)

Bill Text (If you are having trouble viewing PDF files, Install Latest Adobe Reader)
Introduced HTML | PDF | WP Zipped 11K Last Updated: 6 March 2014, 4:28 PM
Enrolled HTML | PDF | WP Zipped 11K Last Updated: 16 March 2014, 9:01 AM
Committee Reports
House # 1 HTML | PDF | WP Zipped
Transmittal Letters
House # 1 HTML | PDF | WP Zipped
Senate # 1 HTML | PDF | WP Zipped
Standing Committee Information
Minutes
House Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee - 26 February 2014, 4:00 PM HTML | PDF | WP Zip
Fiscal Note
Fiscal Note HTML | PDF Last Updated: 25 February 2014, 7:01 PM

Printed copies of bills may be obtained from Legislative Printing.

http://le.utah.gov/~2014/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HJR021.htm

Who’s Done What on Federal Land Transfer?

By: Carl Graham
One state is an anomaly. Two states are interesting. Three states make a movement. So, do we have a movement on Western states getting some of our lands back?
Not yet. But it’s moving. Here’s a quick summary of legislation in several Rocky Mountain states that either calls on or studies whether to call on the federal government to return selected lands back to the states.
Utah is leading the pack, with legislation demanding that the federal government keep its statehood promise and setting up a body to look at the issues that would surround such a complicated event.

• HB 142 (2013) Tasks the Governor’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office to conduct a study and economic analysis of the transfer of certain federal lands to state ownership.
• HB 148 (2012) Demands the transfer of federal public lands (strictly defined omitting many) to the state by 12/31/2014. It also tasks the state’s Constitutional Defense Council to create a Public Lands Commission that will administer the transfer and address how to manage transferred lands.
• HJR 3 (2012) Puts most of the language of the two actionable bills into a resolution.

Nevada is taking a novel approach by tasking County Commissioners to study the issue and come up with recommendations.

• AB 227 (2013) Creates the Nevada Land Management Implementation Committee consisting of one representative from each county to conduct a study addressing the transfer of public lands in NV from the federal government to the state. The committee reports 2/1/2015, and the bill calls for a transfer decision target date of 6/30/2015.

Montana created an interim committee of legislators to evaluate lands held by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in the state.

• SJ 15 (2013) Creates the interim committee and tasks it to identify concerns and risks with federal land management policies in the state. The committee report is due 9/15/2014.

Wyoming also has a study bill.

• HB 228 (2013) Creates a task force to investigate possible legal recourse to compel the federal government to relinquish ownership and management of federal lands. The task force report was due 11/1/2013.

Idaho has another study bill.

• HCR 21 (2013) Forms an interim committee to study the process of the state acquiring title and control of federal lands. The committee will report to the 2015 legislature.
• HCR 22 (2013) calls on Idaho’s congressional delegation to work with the state in returning selected federal lands to the state. It mirrors in many ways Utah’s HB 148, but as a resolution.

Arizona had a lands transfer bill in 2012 but the Governor vetoed it.

• SB 1332 (2012) Demanded select federal holding be transferred to state control by 12/31/2014 and created a Public Lands Board of Review to manage the transition. The Governor vetoed the entire bill after it passed both chambers.

So what’s on tap for 2014? We’re in the process of tracking that down state by state and will post it here.

http://endfedaddiction.org/federal-land-transfer/

IMO People need to get involved and focused in their states and get the public lands back in the states control. All it takes is dedication and focus......if people continue to chase their own tail in a vicious circle of blame and bitching nothing good is going to happen, just more bad. Take your anger and put it into action for the good of your own state. BE the CHANGE.

Originally Posted by April

Is this what you are talking about NM?

http://www.blm.gov/flpma/FLPMA.pdf

This is what I was looking for. It seems that this case is being used as precedent.
Eliza Presson Guest
Posted Mon, April 6th, 2009 4:17 pm

Opinion Recap: Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs


Stanford student Patrick Nemeroff discusses the Court’s decision in No. 07-1372. Additional information is available on SCOTUSwiki, here.

On Tuesday, March 31st, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, reversing the Hawaii Supreme Court's holding that the federally enacted Apology Resolution bars the State of Hawaii from selling to third parties any land held in public trust until the claims of native Hawaiians to the lands have been resolved. The Court first held that it has jurisdiction to review the Hawaii Supreme Court's opinion because it rested on the Apology Resolution. It then found the Hawaii Supreme Court's interpretation of the Apology Resolution to be erroneous, and held that federal law does not bar the State from selling land held in public trust. Accordingly, it remanded the case for the Hawaii Supreme Court to determine if Hawaiian law alone supports the same outcome.

Justice Alito, writing for the Court, first rejected respondents' argument that the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case because the decision below rested on adequate and independent state grounds. Justice Alito relied on Michigan v. Long, which held that the Court has jurisdiction so long as the "the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion."� Because the Hawaii Supreme Court opinion lacked a plain statement that it rested solely on state law, and instead explicitly relied on the Apology Resolution multiple times, the Court had "no doubt that the decision below rested on federal law,"� and, thus, that it had jurisdiction to review the Hawaii Supreme Court's interpretation of federal law.

Justice Alito then addressed the Apology Resolution, concluding that it does not strip the State of its sovereign authority to sell the lands granted to the State when it was admitted into the Union. First, Justice Alito concluded that neither of the two substantive provisions of the Apology Resolution justifies the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision. The first substantive provision uses only conciliatory or precatory verbs, not the type of terms that Congress uses to create substantive rights. The second substantive provision merely provides that the Apology Resolution does not serve as a settlement of any claims against the United States. A disclaimer of settling claims against one sovereign, the United States, cannot be read to affirmatively recognize claims against another, the State of Hawaii.

Next, Justice Alito turned to the 37 "whereas"� clauses that preface the Apology Resolution, which make various observations about Hawaii's history. Justice Alito concluded that those clauses do not serve as a congressional recognition of native Hawaiians' unrelinquished claims to the land for three reasons. First, as the Court explained in Heller, such preambles do not enlarge the meaning of the substantive provisions of an act, and should only be relied on where necessary to resolve ambiguities in the act itself. Second, the Hawaii Supreme Court's reading of the Apology Resolution would effectively repeal the Admission Act, which ceded the lands at issue to the State. But the "whereas"� clauses contain no plain statement of such an intent, and repeals by implication are disfavored. Third, the Apology Resolution would raise grave constitutional concerns if it were read to cloud Hawaii's title to its sovereign land after Hawaii was granted statehood. Therefore, the canon of constitutional avoidance dictates that the Court should look to competing plausible interpretations that do not raise such concerns.

Recognizing that respondents defend the decision below on state-law grounds, the Court remanded the case for further proceedings in light of its interpretation of the Apology Resolution.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2009/04/op...aiian-affairs/

The above is referred to in the PDF from the GOP January 2014.

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF
WESTERN STATES TAKING BACK PUBLIC LANDS

WHEREAS, The federal government promised all newly created states – in their statehood
enabling contracts – that it would transfer title to the public lands;

WHEREAS, This promise to transfer title to the public lands is the same for all states east and
west of Colorado;

WHEREAS, The federal government honored this promise with Hawaii and all states east of
Colorado and today controls on average less than 5% of the lands in those states;

WHEREAS, The federal government has failed to honor this same promise with MT, WY, CO,
NM, AZ, UT, ID, NV, WA, OR, CA and AK and today still controls more than 50% of all lands
in these states (more than 80% of the state of Nevada);

WHEREAS, The Supreme Court of the United States declared these enabling act contracts to be
“solemn compacts” with enforceable rights and obligations on both sides;

WHEREAS, In 1976 the United States Congress ended its nearly two hundred year public policy
of beneficially transferring ownership of public lands by passing the Federal Land Policy
Management Act (FLPMA);

WHEREAS, Public lands previously held in trust for the individual states were managed for their
resource value prior to the passage of FLPMA;

WHEREAS, After the passage of FLPMA our public lands are instead being managed
perpetually for their conservation value;

WHEREAS, Local state and national economies are all being adversely impacted by the loss of
use of the natural resources thus being managed;

WHEREAS, Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT), Secure Rural Schools (SRS), and other public
offsets are financially inadequate, have been unreliably funded and do not adequately
compensate the States for the breach of their Enabling Acts;

WHEREAS, The U.S. Supreme Court case Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs speaks to the
proposition that Congress cannot by subsequent, unilateral action alter or diminish the rights
conferred upon a state in consequence of its admission to the Union;

WHEREAS, Under the guise of “sequestration” to cut federal expenses, the federal government
is cutting western states’ revenues in the form of PILT, SRS and FML (Federal Mineral Lease)
cutbacks;

WHEREAS, States east of Colorado pay billions each year to subsidize western states to not use
their lands and resources to educate their own children and care for their own communities;

WHEREAS, Western states already manage millions of acres of state lands generating more
revenue with less expense and less environmental damage in general than federally managed
public lands;

WHEREAS, The National Association of Forest Service Retirees recently issued a paper
describing the unsustainability of current federal forest management practices;

WHEREAS, The resulting increase in catastrophic wildfires is needlessly killing millions of
animals and destroying habitat and watershed for decades;

WHEREAS, Western states are incurring inordinate expenses to suppress forest fires related to
failed federal forest policies;

WHEREAS, The federal government discourages capital investment and job creation by taking
10 times longer to approve energy development permits than states where the federal
government honored the promise to transfer title to the public lands;

WHEREAS, The Institute for Energy Research discovered in 2013 that there is more than $150
trillion in mineral value locked up in federally controlled lands;

WHEREAS, Opening 8% of the coastal plain of ANWR in Alaska would provide billions of
dollars to the Federal treasury, create more than 500,000 jobs nationwide and add between 9-16
billion barrels of oil to our nation’s supply;

WHEREAS, In 2012 the United States Government Accountability Office testified to Congress
that there is more recoverable oil in UT, CO, and WY than the rest of the world combined locked
up in federally controlled lands; and


WHEREAS, Legal analyses by the Sutherland Institute and The Federalist Society conclude that
the intent of the parties, the text, and the context of the statehood enabling acts, obligate the
federal government to dispose of public lands; now therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee calls upon the federal government to
honor to all willing western states the same statehood promise to transfer title to the public lands
that it honored with all states east of Colorado; and

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee calls upon all national and state leaders
and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the imminent transfer of
public lands to all willing western states for the benefit of these western states and for the nation
as a whole.


*As adopted by the Republican National Committee on January 24, 2014.

http://www.gop.com/wp-content/upload...BLIC-LANDS.pdf

Originally Posted by April

It refers to it in these.

http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/hbillint/hjr021.pdf

http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/hbillint/hcr013.pdf

This refers to it also. This has been really brewing for years and because of the dates on the resolutions, it seems to be heating up. The incident with the Bundy Ranch could really throw gas on the fire.