Expect the unexpected in natural resource politics in the year 2025.
Montana Congressman and former Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, stripped out a provision from the Trump tax bill facilitating the sale of hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands and threatening the Colorado River System.
Zinke, a Republican with longstanding ties to the Trump Administration, had juice worth the squeeze in the U.S. House to remove the public land sale provisions. His amendment in the reconciliation bill eviscerated language snuck into an earlier draft of the tax proposal by Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei and Utah Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy.
Zinke was the top Interior official during Trump 1.0. His principled stance on opposing public land sales cannot be undersold in an era where President Trump, Western Governors, and other high-level politicians think it is a worthy idea. Zinke described his effort to strip the Amodei-Maloy provision as his “San Juan Hill,” referring to Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders famed charge during the Spanish-American War.
Zinke, a Republican, recently told WBUR Boston that the issue transcends the usual political divides, hinting at the slippery slope of using our public trust assets as an ATM machine to fund the whims of politicians.
“Look, this is not a blue issue or red issue,” said Zinke. “This is a red, white and blue issue.”
The Amodei-Maloy effort would have funded tax cuts for billionaires with revenues generated from land sales in Nevada and Utah. It also aided the longstanding Lake Powell Pipeline Leviathan — a water supply that would have ultimately hurt Nevada for Utah’s gain.
Zinke, for now, saved Nevada and Utah from their worst instincts. Maloy and Amodei’s axed provision from the bill would have put 500,000 acres of land on the chopping block and invited a host of long-term considerations for Lake Mead, Clark County and Washington County. Why?
A central component of the Amodei-Maloy proposal focused on growth around St. George and Las Vegas. When politicians espouse the benefits of sprawling and growing those desert communities, they rarely talk about the state of the Colorado River System. And, they never really address the underlying consideration that growth in those places requires more from the beleaguered river. Politicians talk about conservation efforts like turf removal and other policies to limit urban water usage. But they never meaningfully weigh this: Are these communities actually conserving water or are they repurposing it in hopes of inviting wealthy people and Californians to their patches of the desert?
Politicians never talk about the costs of sprawl. Who will pay for water? Who pays the long-term costs for utilities, for roads, for schools, for essential social services? Does expanding the tax base in these communities ever work to make life cheaper, make communities more sustainable. The revenues never cover the costs.
Nevada has been selling off public lands for more than a quarter century thanks to a special carveout in federal law unavailable to any other state. Ask the people in Vegas: Are you paying more to live here today than you did 30 years ago? Are your electric bills affordable? Are you concerned with Lake Mead?
What we’ve seen in Nevada are new regressive sales taxes implemented to help cover the costs of the sprawl aided by 27 years of public land sales. Utility bills spike. Some people get rich.
Proceeds from public land sales can partially subsidize the growth, too. But it just doesn’t cover the whole bill.
Reps. Amodei and Maloy were doing the bidding of entities that are focused on short-term gain rather than long-term costs. Developers in Southern Utah and Nevada are salivating for this.
But we can’t solely blame them. Democrats love this stuff too. That’s why, for example, Senator Cortez Masto and Rep. Susie Lee have their own bills to sell off more public lands, Nevada Style. They expressed outrage over Amodei’s efforts. But that ire will subdue as they focus on their own public land sale efforts. And, of course, the Nevada Legislature is poised to pass a resolution, AJR10, which supports the federal proposal, known as the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act.
Make of it what you will, Zinke brought a great sense of relief across the Colorado River Basin and the Great Basin with his proposal. And many of the NGOs who fought with Zinke during his time as Interior Secretary years ago were grateful for his hard charge.
We hope that Nevada Democrats who champion legislatively fast-tracked land sales can learn a lesson from Zinke. Our public trust assets are non-fungible. That must be non-negotiable. There is an existing process to do land sales. It is time consuming. But it allows the public to meaningfully participate, gives land managers time to analyze, and limits the scope of disposal in a way that protects our collective interests.
The whole imbroglio is a good reminder that the way we get things done is by fighting for what we believe with whomever is willing to charge ahead: In politics, your enemy today is your friend tomorrow. Let’s hope Zinke’s work this week sends a message across the west.
See what GBWN had to say about the defeat of the Maloy-Amodei Amendment.
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