Heller votes against bill with his own projects

WASHINGTON -- Democrats took a swing at Rep. Dean Heller this afternoon after the Nevada Republican voted against a big public lands bill even though it had several of his own pet projects in it.

Heller was on the short end of a 285-140 vote where the House finalized the bill and sent it to the White House for enactment.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put out a news release saying Heller's vote was "cementing his position in the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame."

"Representative Dean Heller actually voted against his own legislation," the DCCC said.

The sweeping legislation was a gathering of almost 170 individual bills. Among them were Heller bills for a federal land transfer to the city of Henderson, a bill to remove development restrictions in downtown Reno, a bill for species conservation along the Colorado River, and a water rights settlement for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes on the Duck Valley Reservation.

For his part, Heller said he had a problem with one of the more sweeping provisions in the umbrella bill. That one wrote into federal law the 27 million acre system of conservation lands that had been designated by President Clinton before he left office in 2000.

Republicans complained that codifying the National Landscape Conservation System would tilt the BLM's job away from managing public lands for multiple use and towards a more preservationist approach that could end up restricting public access to the lands.

"This legislation should have focused solely on local projects and let legislation that will change nationwide federal land management policies stand on its own," Heller said in a statement emailed by his office.