WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee approved a proposal to sell thousands of acres of public land in Utah and Nevada as a way to help pay for President Donald Trump’s massive tax package.
The committee voted 26-17 largely along party lines to advance a last-minute amendment to greenlight public land sales in the two Western states — a major policy win for Republicans as they look to secure Trump’s campaign promises to increase domestic energy production. The proposal will be tucked into the larger budget reconciliation bill, which Republicans hope to use to pass a majority of Trump’s agenda in a single vote.
The amendment specifically targets about 11,000 acres of public lands in Utah’s Washington and Beaver counties, which was drafted upon request from county officials, Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy told the Deseret News.
“Washington County and Beaver County are landlocked and growing quickly but cannot function because of endless red tape on federal lands,” Maloy said. “At their request, I introduced an amendment to convey, at fair market value, targeted land — land needed by local governments for infrastructure.”
About 63% of Utah’s land is owned by the federal government, the most of any state in the country aside from Nevada. The lands included in the amendment make up “only a third of a percentage of federal lands in the state,” according to Maloy.
Maloy’s amendment was co-introduced by Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei. His portion of the bill would sell up to 200,000 acres of public land, according to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, who opposes the sale.
That amounts to less than 1% of the state’s 50 million acres of federally owned land in the state.
By selling off the federally-owned lands, the GOP lawmakers argued, it will help to reduce the national deficit and pay off the nation’s debt.
It’s not entirely clear the purpose of such land sales or if there would be certain requirements for buyers.
The proposal was met with pushback from Democrats on the committee, who accused their GOP counterparts of introducing the amendment at the tail-end of the 12-hour hearing.
“This is just some truly odious sausage at 11:20 p.m. at the end of a long markup,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said. “Any member of Congress that votes for this is just surrendering any semblance of good process. The integrity of the legislative process is dead if you do this.”
Only one committee Democrat, Rep. Adam Gray, D-Calif., supported the amendment in committee, but later said he would vote against the full package on the floor.
The proposal has also been criticized by public lands advocacy groups who accused Maloy and Amodei of selling off lands to pay for billionaires’ tax cuts.
“Rep. Maloy is hell-bent on selling off and privatizing public lands — attempting to do so in the dark of night, hoping her actions wouldn’t be noticed. She was dead wrong,” Travis Hammill, D.C. director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in a statement. “This plan was cooked up behind closed doors, and Utahns and Americans aren’t going to let her get away with this.”
Maloy told the Deseret News the proposal was discussed among lawmakers in the House as well as “representatives from Washington County and Beaver County who identified and requested land for development.”
Utah officials have long sought to gain control of federal lands in the state, even going so far as to file a lawsuit against the federal government last year questioning whether the government had authority to hold 18.5 million acres of public land within Utah borders.
The Supreme Court ultimately declined to take up the case. State officials have said they plan to refile in a lower court.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has prioritized public land sales as the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, especially as a way to increase affordable housing.
However, such proposals may raise eyebrows among Republicans outside the natural resources realm, particularly those who have historically opposed public land sales.
The amendment came on the same day a group of Republicans joined a handful of Democrats to announce the bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, a group dedicated to protecting and preserving public lands.
Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who will co-chair the caucus, acknowledged on Wednesday concerns of federal mismanagement over public lands — but cautioned against throwing the baby out with the bath water as a permanent solution.
“There’s a lot of frustration down in the West. I understand that,” Zinke said in response to the amendment. “But I prefer the management scheme. And I give an example as a hotel — if you don’t like the management of a hotel, don’t sell the hotel. Change the management. That’s where I sit on that position.”
It’s not clear if the public land sales amendment would dissuade Zinke or other Republicans from supporting the full reconciliation package, and aides declined an answer when asked by the Deseret News at a press conference unveiling the Public Lands Caucus.
The reconciliation legislation advanced by the House Natural Resources Committee is just one of 11 components of the larger package, which Republican leaders hope to finalize by the end of this month. The package would then head to the Senate for any possible changes.
The public land sales amendment could be stripped out at any point, especially if it receives enough pushback from Western Republicans. However, it’s not yet clear if GOP lawmakers will draw a line at that proposal.