There’s nothing worse than being labeled a land-grabber. Just ask President Barack Obama’s administration. When a Department of the Interior memo surfaced that listed 14 sites, including 2.5 million acres in Montana, under consideration for new national monuments, the outcry was immediate.
Land-grabber!
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tried to squash the controversy. He said nothing was imminent. But there are skeptics. Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg recently proposed legislation that would overturn the 1906 Antiquities Act, which would in turn block the president’s ability to create new monuments on public lands.
The congressman recently wrote a column promoting The Montana Land Sovereignty Act “to make sure Montanans will always have a seat at the table when it comes to new designations.” He says it’s the “exact same protection that Wyoming currently has.” And he has posted on his website 300 pages of emails that include “reports of high-level conversations” between Salazar and Montana Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus.
It appears our senators are guilty of associating themselves with land grabbing.
But if you believe critics of House Resolution 1505, on which the congressman has also attached his name, he is guilty of the same offense.
The resolution passed the House Natural Resource Committee last week. And if it were to become law, it would give the Department of Homeland Security unprecedented authority on all federal lands within 100 miles of the United States’ border, or the northern third of our state, including Glacier National Park.
Supporters of the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act say it gives the Border Patrol the necessary power to keep the nation secure.
“It’s time to put an end to the dangerous turf war where federal land managers hide behind environmental laws in order to prevent border patrol agents from doing their jobs on federal land,” Rehberg said in a statement.
But opponents of handing Homeland Security total authority over federal lands have used a familiar talking point, characterizing the bill as a “federal land grab” and comparing it to the Patriot Act and REAL ID, two bills often used as examples of government overreach.
“It needs to be scrapped altogether because no matter how you spin it, it gives the Department of Homeland Security total control over the land we all use,” Tester said in a statement.
He contends that the legislation could potentially stop timber sales and even construction in Glacier National Park. He says the feds without warning can “seize vast swaths of land we all own and use – with no accountability.”
Talk about land-grabbers!
But Rehberg, like Tester in regard to new national monuments, says the concerns are overblown.
“HR1505 isn’t about creating new enforcement authority,” Rehberg told the Great Falls Tribune. “Rather, it’s about making existing laws actually work as intended by alleviating the regulatory burden of certain environmental laws.”
Either way, as Tester and Rehberg square off for Tester’s U.S. Senate seat, the potential for the federal government grabbing Montana land will be argued over.
But at the state level, that potential has already been realized.
Remember, in the last Legislature both Democrats and Republicans backed legislation that guaranteed a Canadian energy company eminent domain powers to build a transmission line project.
The law, House Bill 198, allows the company to force property owners along the power line route between Great Falls and Alberta to sell.
Opponents of the new law began gathering signatures to overturn the law, but they didn’t collect enough to qualify for the 2012 ballot.
It looks like one land-grabber, with the blessing of the state Legislature, is already getting away with it. Meanwhile, we’re worried about the feds.