EDITORIAL: Reid’s land grab

Is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looking out for Nevada, or just himself? It’s a question worth asking after the Democrat introduced legislation to block more than 805,000 acres of federal land in Nevada from future development.

As reported Wednesday by the Review-Journal’s Steve Tetreault and Henry Brean, the bill would forbid the Bureau of Land Management from selling any land or granting mining or oil permits, as well as renewable energy projects, across the Garden Valley and the Coal Valley. The area proposed for protection is bigger than Rhode Island and straddles the Nye and Lincoln county lines directly north of the Las Vegas Valley.

Such legislation is wildly popular with absentee environmentalists, who don’t live anywhere near the lands they want sealed off from productive use, but who donate lots of money to Sen. Reid and the Democrats he needs re-elected this fall to remain majority leader. But the legislation is decidedly less popular among the people who would benefit from having mining or oil jobs near their homes, or the collection of property taxes from private land owners.

Indeed, it appears no one in Nevada asked Sen. Reid to introduce the bill. He’s the only sponsor.

“We don’t want that to become a national conservation area,” said Ed Higbee, chairman of the Lincoln County Commission. Only 2 percent of the land in his county is privately owned.

Sen. Reid’s bill comes as the state and its House delegation are taking steps to reduce the amount of federally owned land here — Washington controls more than 80 percent of Nevada — and join the country’s fracking revolution, which has greatly increased domestic oil production, reduced the trade deficit, put hundreds of thousands of people in high-paying jobs, boosted the dollar and reduced gasoline prices.

Sen. Reid’s legislation is hostile to both of those goals, but clearly helpful to him. The interests of his constituents, not his donors, should come first.