“It's an issue that keeps raising its ugly head,” Baucus told the nearly 200 people crowded into a Missoula Children's Theatre meeting room. “We have to continue to be very vigilant. This is a very live issue that has a good chance of succeeding.”
“My experience in Washington is that it's never over until it's over and even then it's not over,” he said. “You can't assume anything.”
The Bush proposal would sell up to 300,000 acres of Forest Service lands to offset costs of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Act. That legislation, set to sunset later this year, was enacted to stabilize funding for county governments and rural schools in areas with large tracts of forested federal lands.
The Bush budget proposal also calls for selling up to $350 million of BLM lands over 10 years to help pay down the national debt. Baucus said that proposal isn't clear - “my sense is it's intentionally vague to make it more difficult to fight.”
“There's a very strong ideology of privatization in this administration,” said Baucus. “Its budget is replete with efforts to try to privatize ... the land sale proposal is just another example of that.”
The issue of selling public lands isn't new, said Bob Ekey, the Wilderness Society's Northern Rockies regional director. For the last 20 years, the sale of public lands has been a platform for the Sagebrush Rebellion.
What is new is the attempt to tie the sales to funding public education.
“We don't need to hold schoolchildren hostage to a controversial proposal,” Ekey said Thursday.
The people drafting these proposals “are not from the West. They're not from Montana. They don't understand how important public lands are to our heritage,” Ekey said.
Public pressure on politicians does have an impact, Ekey said. In Idaho, a congressman changed his stance on the controversial Pombo amendment, which was proposed last year to sell public lands to mining interests, after hearing a groundswell of opposition to the idea from the public.
“Fortunately, we have good leadership in this state to push back on these issues,” Ekey said.
Pointing to proposals to sell public lands, eliminate roadless-area designations and weaken Forest Service planning efforts, Ekey said there is an “all-out campaign” by the Bush administration to weaken protections or dispose of public lands in the West.
Dave Stalling of the Hellgate Hunters and Anglers Association said proposals to sell public lands bring Montana's sportsmen together like nothing else.
In a time when this country loses about 1.5 million acres of wildlife habitat a year to development, Stalling said, sportsmen don't support any proposal that culminates in a net loss of public lands. They do support exchanges which block up tracts of public lands, he said.
Ron Moody of Lewistown said it's time for Montana sportsmen to change from their traditional defensive posture to something more assertive in protecting public lands.
“Sportsmen should be working to not only keep what they've got, but working to make it bigger and better,” Moody said.
Moody said he's forming a political action group for Montana sportsmen that will work to hold politicians accountable for their stands on public lands. He wants to see a day when politicians don't use the gun card to placate Montana sportsmen.
“We don't have to give up our lands in order to keep our guns,” he said.
Judy Stang, a Mineral County commissioner, called the Secure Rural Schools Act funding essential in stabilizing rural county government budgets. Without it, Stang said, county taxpayers will have to pick up the bill.
“We would have to double our countywide mills for road services and general fund,” Stang said.
If public lands are sold, Stang said, it's doubtful that anyone local would be able to afford to buy them. Instead, the lands would be sold to the wealthy and the impact to county coffers would be negligible, she said.
“No one is going to be able to afford to buy these tracts except developers,” Stang said.
The Bush proposal calls for phasing out funding for the Secure Rural Schools Act, said Baucus.
“Once we sell these lands, the dollars will be gone,” he said. “The Secure Rural Schools Act funding would get down to zero and the effect on counties would be horrendous.”
A member of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Anna Marie Rider of Missoula, asked Baucus to carry a message back to Washington, D.C., to those proposing the sale of public lands.
“Ask them would they rather be hanged or sentenced to 20 years in Leavenworth?” Rider said. “I'd be willing to swat the horse ... just tell them to keep their paws off of our land.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
Get involved
Sen. Max Baucus says the best way to make a difference is to call your congressman and keep calling until they personally return the phone call. The Washington, D.C., Capitol operator phone number is (202) 224-3121. “It's important to remember that congressmen want to get re-elected,” said Baucus. “They want to do basically what people back home want them to do ... you need to give us our marching orders.”
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)