- The Senate confrimed Steve Pearce as the next director of the Bureau of Land Management.
- The former New Mexico congressman and oil industry executive entered politics in the late 1990s.
- Pearce's confirmation was met with praise and criticism.
The Senate confirmed Steve Pearce to be the next director of the Bureau of Land Management on Monday. He was the second nominee the Trump administration put forward for the role, and the first to make it through the confirmation process.
The former Air Force captain, owner of an oil and gas services company and seven-term congressman from New Mexico is now responsible for more than 245 million acres of land across the United States, including 22.8 million acres in Utah.
The Senate voted 46-43 along party lines (with 11 not voting) to confirm him in an “en bloc” vote along with more than 45 other new appointments. The nominees were not voted on separately.
Pearce’s nomination and consideration elicited strong responses from opponents and proponents alike as his track record and personal businesses support robust natural resource energy production from public lands.
Pearce is an advocate for more local control of federal land management and decision making. He had also long opposed national monument designations, made comments disparaging federal ownership of public lands. But he also made clear during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that he shares the view of the Interior secretary that public lands are not for sale.
Still, the responses to his appointment are passionate.
“I’ve strongly disagreed with Congressman Pearce’s past opposition to national monument designations and support for public land sell-offs, and that is why I voted against his nomination to lead BLM,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said in a statement. “Now that the Senate has confirmed him, however, I will hold him accountable for following the rule of law, protecting our public lands, and honoring his confirmation hearing commitments.”
Conservation advocates expressed the same sentiment in sharper terms.
“Steve Pearce’s confirmation vote is yet another blatant attack on America’s public lands. Congress has put a man who disdains federal land managers in charge of the BLM, just as the Trump administration has forced out much of BLM’s senior leadership,” said Aaron Weiss, executive director, the Center for Western Priorities. “It’s telling that Senate leadership had to package Pearce’s vote with nearly 50 other nominees in order to get him confirmed.”
Meanwhile, Republican members of the state legislature in New Mexico applauded the appointment.
“We are grateful to President Trump for appointing New Mexico’s own Steve Pearce to this important position,” said New Mexico Senate Minority Floor Leader Bill Sharer, in a statement. “And we commend the U.S. Senate for confirming Congressman Pearce to his new role as Director of the BLM.”
Melissa Simpson, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said Pearce is the kind of leader the BLM needs.
“He’s a Westerner and comes from a state that’s nearly 20% BLM land, so he understands the bureau’s mission. His tenure in Congress and his time as a small business owner in the oil field show he’s a champion of multiple-uses of public lands, from expanding domestic energy production, supporting grazing and recreation, and protecting landscapes through targeted conservation” she said in a statement.
Does Pearce favor selling public lands?
Throughout his career spanning seven terms representing New Mexico’s 2nd District, Pearce did support selling public lands. Or, as he once put it, “reverse this trend of public ownership of lands.”
He also opposed the Antiquities Act, the law that allows presidents to create national monuments that has long been a bugbear for Utah politicians, and sponsored bills to prevent its use in New Mexico. He also attempted to pass legislation prioritizing natural resource extraction over the other multiple uses of BLM land.
At his confirmation hearing in February, he was clear that selling public lands was not an option that the BLM director position has at its disposal.
“The secretary has been very straightforward that he does not visualize any large-scale sales of land,” Pearce said in response to a question from Heinrich. “(The Federal Land Policy and Management Act) does not allow BLM to go in — the director of the BLM — to have these large-scale sales.“
However, he was also asked by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., about previous statements he had made suggesting that the federal government did not need most of the public land in Western states.
“Is there too much public land in the West now in your view? Do you continue to hold that view or have you changed your mind?,” asked Wyden.
Pearce responded that, “I’m not so sure that I’ve changed.”
Voting en bloc
Pearce’s confirmation followed some confusion last week when both elected officials and those following the Senate thought he had been confirmed during a vote to advance his nomination.
That May 11 vote just propelled Pearce and around 50 other nominees who were being considered for new appointments, but many groups had already sent out press releases responding to Pearce’s confirmation. Those responses required corrections to be sent out moments later.
There is another procedural issue, however, that some have taken umbrage with. Rather than separate votes for individual nominees, voting “en bloc” has at least one legal scholar saying the process runs afoul of the “advice and consent” clause in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
“The whole notion of advice and consent is dependent on being able to ask difficult questions of the nominees in all those various points — pressure points of the process — and the ‘en bloc’ notion just eviscerates that," said Carl Tobias, Williams Chair law professor at the University of Richmond. “That is — especially for controversial nominees — just unacceptable.”
He added that, “I’m just saying that there are a lot of people who escape scrutiny — if you will — on issues that are difficult, like public lands.”
No opportunity of scrutiny
When groups of nominees are put together within single votes, Senators are not able to make individual decisions about various candidates.
For example, since Pearce and incoming Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh were part of the same group, Senators had to vote for both at the same time instead of separately, leaving little room for scrutiny.
Tobias said it’s part of a long-running feud between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.
“There’s a group right now going through — and Pierce is in that group — of 14, some of whom are either not competent, loyalists to Trump or otherwise not suited for that powerful office," Tobias said.
“The whole point of advice and consent is to have free flowing rigorous debate in committee, in the hearing, in the markup, and then on the floor,” he said.
The fact that this is how federal government leaders are now appointed is something Tobias said “needs some sunlight.”
“I think a lot of people would be very furious about it once they knew because it’s either a charade, it’s a game or they go through the motions,” Tobias said. “But it’s not true to the constitutional provision about advice and consent.”