By Andrew Hay
SANTA FE, New Mexico (Reuters) -Democratic and Republican governors of Western U.S. states on Monday opposed what they called the proposed wholesale selloff of millions of acres of public land as part of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill.
At a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, governors of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming spoke out against Senate Republicans’ plans to sell up to 3.3 million acres (1.3 million hectares) of federally owned land in 11 Western states as part of the giant bill.
The efforts to auction off public land have enraged conservationists and proved contentious with some Republicans who blocked a similar provision last month in the House’s tax and spending bill.
“That proposal is likely a nonstarter in New Mexico,” said Democratic New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is hosting a meeting of Western governors and Trump administration cabinet secretaries in the state’s capital.
“They belong to all of us,” she said of the federally owned lands.
Under the Senate Republican plan, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service would identify and sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands to build housing, raising up to $10 billion for federal coffers.
The Western governors said any sales of public land should be decided at a state level and done sparingly.
“That does not say wholesale we’re going to get rid of our public lands, but we’re going to look at certain places where the adjustments we can make just make better sense than what we have today,” said Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, citing communities that wanted to grow but were surrounded by federal land.
Several thousand people demonstrated against public land sales outside the Santa Fe hotel where Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke with governors, according to protest organizers.
Under the Senate tax bill proposal, Burgum and Rollins would have authority over public land sales.
“Our sacred lands are sacred, and they shouldn’t be sold,” said protester Tony Sophie, 56, a tree care specialist from Placitas, New Mexico, who described public lands a his “church.”
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Lincoln Feast.)
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