Congressman advocates state control of public land
Utah is capable of maintaining and controlling its own public lands and will benefit from doing so, said Congressman Rob Bishop at Pizza and Politics, a USU College Republicans-sponsored event Thursday night.
Bishop said the royalties Utah has earned through its federal public lands has decreased 90 percent in the last three years. If the state, rather than the federal government, were allowed to control its own public lands, it would be better able to provide funding for other programs, such as education. He said there are certain lands that should be protected by the Federal Government, but not all of them.
Bishop said the Federal Government owns one-third of the land in the United States. The amount of federally owned public land in Utah alone equals the size of the State of Florida, he said. The western states are also those with the slowest increase in educational funding. Bishop said that there is a link between the amount of land owned by the federal government and the amount of funding available for education.
“If you really care about the future, if you want to fund education,” Bishop said, “what has to happen is that Utah has to be able to control its land.”
He said that Utah’s ability to care for its public lands is not a concern.
“Why is someone who lives in Utah instinctively inferior to somebody who works in the Department of Interior in Washington? Why is that we always say that only Washington cares about the grand purpose?” Bishop said. “Utahns are just capable as anyone in Washington for controlling their own lands and making those decisions, and I refuse to accept the fact that Utah cannot manage these lands because we’re basically country bumpkins and stupid. That’s what Washington tells us, and I don’t buy it,” he said.
If a law doesn’t work for every state, those states are free to find solutions for themselves that do work, Bishop said. The national government is only good for laws that all the states must obey uniformly.
“I definitely thought (Bishop) had a bunch of good points on how we could run ourselves,” said Brian Dean, a student who attended the event. “We don’t need Washington as much as a lot of people are saying we do.”
Hannah Fjelgsted, an attendee to the event, asked Bishop if he was in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment. This amendment changed the appointment of senators to be by direct election rather than by a state legislation, which can cause a lack of representation in Congress for certain states. Bishop said it was not just the 17th Amendment causing these problems.
“This is what I want to warn you about: if you think repealing the 17th Amendment is the end-all and be-all and would change the situation, you’re sorely mistaken.” Bishop said.
He said the 17th Amendment was created because the previous system by which the states elected senators had failed, and it was the states themselves who had wanted the change. Simply repealing the 17th amendment won’t solve the issue; other changes must be made to give the states a greater say, he said.
“(Bishop) made me more open to the possibility that we might need to do more than repeal the 17th amendment,” Fjelgsted said. “I agree with his overall point about the inefficiency of federal land. I totally agree with all that he’s been doing to try to bring the land back to the states.”
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