This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A group of political leaders who cook up wildly radical plans based on ideas plucked out of the air and who want to spend your money to turn those plans into reality usually do not try to cloak themselves in the mantle of "conservative."
Yet that is exactly what is happening in Utah.
By signing HB148 last week, Gov. Gary Herbert joined a majority of the Legislature, the attorney general and most of Utah's congressional delegation in pursuing an expensive and futile snipe hunt: a demand that the United States of American turn over some 30 million acres of public land that it owns in Utah to the state government, which may then dispose of that land as it pleases. Of course, what it pleases is that a lot more land be opened to damaging exploitation, under the guise of raising money for strapped public schools.
Part of the rationalization for this crusade is the undeniable fact that the federal government owns a much larger percentage of the lands in Utah and other Western states than it does in the states east of the Rockies. That means that Utah and its Western brethren face a burden of supporting education, and all other public functions, with a significant chunk of what would otherwise be taxable land off the table.
What these arguments forget is that the West is different. A great deal of federal land was long unsalable at any price. Too arid. Too rocky. Too far from market centers.
That's not the case along the Wasatch Front today, of course. But in the long period before populations in Utah, Arizona and other Western states took off, the federal government's approach to its own land changed. Conservation, for its own sake and as a basis for sustainable economic activities, rose in priority.
These policy changes were enacted by Congresses and administrations of both parties, and there is no more a constitutional requirement for a return to the old ways than there is a demand that members of Congress wear powdered wigs.
Besides, the federal lands that were disposed of over the decades were sold to private parties. With some exceptions, they were not generally turned over to any state. The claim that Utah wants its land "back" is false, because it was never Utah's to begin with.
And there is also no reason to believe that any windfall, should the impossible happen, would really go to education. Every other suggestion for increasing school revenues has been brushed aside. The land grab idea is less a solution to that problem than a smoke screen for it.
Congress and the courts will see this plan for what it is, a bogus attempt to distract the people of Utah from reality.