EDITORIAL: No new monument without congressional approval, federal land release

The federal government owns more than 80 percent of Nevada’s land. But for Washington, too much is never enough. Now the Obama administration wants to make a sizable chunk of that property even less accessible to the taxpayers who own it.

As reported by the Review-Journal’s Steve Tetreault last week, the White House has prepared paperwork for President Barack Obama’s signature that would make 704,000 acres in central Nevada the nation’s newest national monument. A draft proclamation establishes the Basin and Range National Monument, encompassing parts of Lincoln and Nye counties, an area that conservationists have touted as containing some of the most compelling desert valleys and rugged mountain ranges in the nation.

The designation encompasses a whopping 1,100 square miles — about the size of Rhode Island.

So now Nevada, which went 150 years without a national monument, is about to get its second in six months. However, there’s a big difference between the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, designated in December, and the Basin and Range land grab on the president’s desk. The Tule Springs monument was created through Congress, with local consultation and bipartisan support. More importantly, it was part of broader legislation that released thousands of acres of federal land to cities, counties and the university system for economic development, recreation and educational purposes.

On the other hand, the Basin and Range National Monument would be established via unilateral action by the president, with little consideration for the people who live in the region, many of whom are against the designation. Mr. Tetreault noted that leaders in Lincoln and Nye counties have said they do not favor it. If this huge amount of land is made a national monument, the people’s ability to access the land and put it to productive use would be greatly limited, a point not lost on Nye County Commissioner Lorinda Wichman.

“Nye County is larger than Switzerland, and within Nye’s 18,000-plus square miles, we are able to generate ad valorum taxes on less than 3 percent of the land mass,” she told Mr. Tetreault. “Each time there is more land withdrawn from Nye County for special designations, the residents of Nye County lose potential opportunities to fund future services.”

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., introduced a bill in January that would prohibit the designation of national monument land in Nevada “except by express authorization of Congress.” Reps. Cresent Hardy, Mark Amodei and Joe Heck, all R-Nev., sponsored a similar House bill. The policy is sound. If the monument designation is something Nevada’s congressional delegation wants and is willing to work toward with local input, as it did with Tule Springs, that’s fine.

But any additional federal land protections in Nevada must be offset by the release of hundreds of thousands of acres to local control or private ownership. The expansion and diversification of Nevada’s economy depends on the state gaining control of the land within its borders and collecting property taxes from it, instead of paying federal taxes to be kept out.