Mission Improbable
Tancredo Pushes Public Land Sell-Off
By Howard Rothman, 9-22-05
Colorado's most quotable elected official is at it again. Not content to ride the terrorism and illegal immigration tracks to a high-profile (and ultimately unsuccessful) bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, Rep. Tom Tancredo has now called for the sale of millions of acres of Western land controlled by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture in order to pay for Katrina recovery efforts. The colorful U.S. congressman from Littleton introduced legislation on Wednesday that would require the agencies to sell off as much as 15 percent of their holdings in Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Alaska -- What? Nothing in his home state? -- but in a sign that his zaniness may be wearing thin the act received scant coverage and elicited little outrage in comparison to his recent calls to reshape the Pennsylvania 9/11 memorial and bomb various Muslim holy sites. The '08 election season is just heating up, though, so I guess we can all look forward to more interesting activity in coming months.
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Comments
Currently I favor turning a modest amount of the western federal acreage over to states and cities to allow them to better meet public purposes such as recreation, open space, fire management, etc. Maybe even limited sell offs of some acreage after the transfer and a management plan is written for affordable housing, or for land trades with the private sector where that strategy advances important public interests elsewhere.
Straight sales to the public seem too likely to result in ripoffs and crony steering.
I use to think federal control was better than the states but with the Republicans and corporations fully in charge in D.C., I no longer do and think local management might yield a little more public influence and a better balance in management.