Rep. Jim Gibbons wants to rewrite the law governing hard-rock mining on federal lands. Shortcutting the usual legislative process, he has slipped into the federal budget bill sweeping language that would fundamentally alter the General Mining Law of 1872.

Amid an upwelling of bipartisan criticism, Gibbons is now tinkering with the language in his bill. He announced new revisions at a news conference on Monday. He is trying to win back critics such as Sens. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo. But the proposal is still so full of ambiguous language and far-reaching consequences that haste can only make waste.

The ancient mining law opened federal lands to mineral development. It allows mining prospectors to stake claims on federal land. The law provides a right to mine on federal land without paying any royalty to the United States, but only if a miner can show a "discovery" of valuable minerals by demonstrating that a mine can profitably operate on the claim. Until 1994, the law also allowed miners to purchase valid claims for a maximum of $5 per acre. But Congress wisely banned the sale of mining claims after Barrick Goldstrike, a Canadian company, forced the government to sell it land in Nevada holding $10 billion in gold for a mere $10,000.

The Gibbons legislation would lift that ban on selling federal mining claims, making them available for $1,000 per acre or "fair market value."

But mining companies do not have to buy federal land to mine for free. Unfortunately, the Gibbons plan passes up the opportunity to require payment of a reasonable royalty on gold and other ores pulled from the federal lands. And it could be interpreted by courts to prevent the state from imposing taxes on mines operating on federal land. This is hardly the hallmark of fiscal responsibility.

Even more important, the Gibbons plan eliminates the bedrock requirement of a "discovery" of valuable minerals before mining can proceed. Instead, claimants could secure the right to mine merely by paying modest fees each year to maintain their claims. If a mining company wanted to conduct mining on a paid-up claim where the BLM wished to build a reservoir or water pipeline, or to protect wildlife habitat, the government's only option would be to buy them out. Take another bite out of the budget pie.

These and other problems with the bill are especially important for Nevadans. Nevada is the epicenter of our nation's mineral wealth and has more federal mining claims than any other state. Mining is its second biggest industry, and many Nevadans understandably want to see that the industry stays strong. But Nevada also contains innumerable places on federal lands that are special for other reasons.

For example, the drainages of the Snake and Schell Creek Ranges and the Duck Creek basin in White Pine County provide some of the best elk habitat in the state. A Nevada hunter would be lucky to win the lottery for an elk tag for these prized areas once every 20 years. Access to these prime areas is limited, and a few strategically located mining claims could lock them up. Imagine the hunter's dismay -- after years of waiting -- at being refused access by a "mining claimant" who had never even been required to show that mining the land would make economic sense.

Other federal lands, valuable for their proximity to Las Vegas, are designated for auction under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. Even though Gibbons has offered to remove language that would cripple these auctions, the bill could still have undesirable impacts in Las Vegas' future neighborhoods.

Under the Gibbons plan, owners of more than 100 mining claims surrounded by lands set for auction could conduct mining activities without even showing they could make a profit. To stop them, the government would have to buy them out. Real estate developers own some of those claims. If they purchased the land under the pending proposal, they'd likely pay far less than auction prices and deprive Nevadans of needed money for parks and schools.

Before Congress declared the Grand Canyon a national park, an enterprising "prospector" named Cameron staked a claim on the south rim of the canyon under the mining law. He never ran a profitable mine, but he did take to charging park tourists a fee to access the famous Bright Angel Trail. The U.S. Supreme Court declared his claim invalid in 1920 because he couldn't prove a "discovery" of valuable minerals. If the Gibbons plan had been the law, then Cameron might still hold the keys to the Grand Canyon.

News conference revisions and closed-door negotiations between Senate and House budgeters cannot be expected to fix this bill. A leading legal scholar, George Coggins, has called the history of public land law "one damn mistake after another." Fiscal conservatives, environmentalists, and even the mining industry all want to reform the 133 year-old mining law. But doing anything other than pulling the Gibbons mining rewrite off the table and pursuing reasonable mining reform through the normal legislative process would only add to the legacy of mistakes.

Bret Birdsong is an associate professor at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law.