S
Why state efforts to grab federal land keep failing
tate Legislatures magazine/ April 1980: Fierce regional sentiment; generations of history; tangled political and legal questions; new economic and social
realities ... Christopher A. Wood/Washington Post/May 1995: Buildings damaged by anonymous bombers. Armed men threatening federal officials. Politicians passing local ordinances repudiating federal law. These two quotes, separated by 15 years, fairly portray the evolution of the image of efforts to wrest control of public lands from the federal government. Nevada has been in the forefront of these efforts, which continue today with Senate Joint Resolution 1 at the 2015 Nevada Legislature. It’s an effort that reflects an enduring notion in Nevada politics, that the small counties are the “real” Nevada and that politicians can advance by tailoring their appeal to that region. This notion has had little election success, but a good myth dies hard, and state politicians keep pandering to the small counties. And few envisioned the 2014 election, which swept Republicans more oriented to dogma than practical action, into the legislature.
The SagebruSh rebellion In 1976, Congress enacted the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which outlined new functions of the Bureau of Land Management, set federal policies on control of public lands and mining, and established multiple use, sustained yield, and environmental protection practices and policies. It also ended the practice of homesteading, which—along with benign uses—had been used to shift tribal lands to whites. More to the point, the new law
made federal land holdings permanent. It was not a new idea—the original founding Atlantic coast colonies that held land had willingly turned it over to the federal government. On the quarter-century anniversary of the act, the BLM said, “[B]ecause of the insight and vision of the people who crafted it, FLPMA provides us with the tools we need to cooperatively and creatively manage the public lands, and in the process, dispel the notion that a variety of uses and resources cannot co-exist.”
Legislature, Rhoads listened to criticism with an open mind, accepted amendments, treated critics with respect. Many, including some liberals who should know better than to use guilt by association, have portrayed the Sagebrush Rebellion as akin to the extremist groups like county supremacists (fired by a theory that county officials, particularly sheriffs, trump federal power) who followed later. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said in a report after the 2014 Cliven Bundy standoff, “Today’s disputes with
We just weren’t making any headway. Richard Bryan
Former Nevada attorney general
federal authority, many long simmering, are an extension of the earlier right-wing Sagebrush Rebellion, Wise Use and ‘county supremacy’ movements.” In fact, while there were extremists on the fringes, the Rebellion was a peaceful movement motivated by issues. “The bill does not constitute a rebellion, a revolt, or a secession,” Rhoads told the Assembly on April 25, 1979, the day the Nevada Assembly voted for Assembly Bill 413. “It does constitute a constitutional challenge to the right of the federal government to unilaterally control and manage the public domain and to hold the land in perpetuity without any conversion to private ownership.” Many moderate legislators who voted for Rhoads’ bill would not have gone along otherwise. It was later organizations—from which Rhoads dissociated the Rebellion—that gave the issue its unsavory reputation. In national news coverage, such as the U.S. News & World Report article quoted
Not everyone agreed. “The legislation dashed Western hopes that the U.S. would gradually turn control of public lands over to local governments, which residents argue could do a better job of managing public land than bureaucrats stationed in Washington,” reported U.S. News & World Report. In 1979, Nevada Assemblymember Dean Rhoads convinced his colleagues in the Nevada Legislature to launch an effort to take state control of federally held land through a lawsuit. Rhoads is one of those very conservative Republicans—a longtime member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—who later found himself less comfortable with the Republican Party as militants, evangelicals, and social conservatives used the GOP as a vehicle for increasingly extreme public policies and accused those traditional conservatives who didn’t go along with being RINOs. In getting the Rebellion legislation through the Nevada
earlier, journalists tended to describe the Sagebrush Rebellion as representing the West and Westerners. But once it was authorized by the Nevada Legislature, public attitudes began to evolve. In Nevada, the passage of the bill had been low key, but soon its provisions were becoming well known through heavier news coverage. In addition, urban dwellers—who included most Nevadans—got a taste of what the Rebellion prevailing might be like when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Reagan, a Rebellion supporter, appointed a wide array of officials who sympathized with the anti-public lands movement, and implemented policies that advanced movement goals. Of course, every political action has an equal and opposite reaction, and as Reagan’s policies threw more attention on the goals of the Sagebrush Rebellion, and the implications of Reagan’s proRebellion policies became clearer, it lost support in the urban areas of Nevada where the state’s open spaces were beloved. Interior Secretary James Watt became a lighting rod. Public concern centered on the specter of development and the cost.
oppoSiTion formS No one knew what the cost of providing services such as law enforcement and fire protection to such huge swaths of land would be, or the consequences of the state’s gain of legal liabilities, or the depth of the loss of various kinds of federal funding and subsidies, or the cost of providing infrastructure. Advocates of the Rebellion had produced a study arguing that there would be few costs, but there was no independent assessment along those lines, and the state was deep within the throes of the impact of
“ N EVE R LAN D ” continued on page 14
by Dennis Myers OPINION
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