Auctioning federal real estate
Meeting with members of Nevada's congressional delegation in Washington this week, representatives of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce complained the shortage of developable land in Southern Nevada is driving up prices, and that federal land available for sale under the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act could be exhausted within six years.
More federal land should be released for sale, they urged.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. and his Democratic cohort Sen. Harry Reid cautioned that getting public land bills through Congress is a major undertaking. Particularly difficult would be acting on a suggestion that the possible uses of proceeds from the sales -- $2.7 billion to date, dedicated to Clark County recreation and conservation -- be expanded to include transportation and other needs.
Nevadans should be happy the senators won a provision in the existing bill that all sale proceeds remain in the state, they insisted. "It is really difficult to open that bill because people who are not from Nevada will want to spend the money on non-Nevada programs," warned Sen. Reid.
Given that the Constitution says the federal government can own lands within the several states "for the erections of forts, magazines" and the like only by consent of the appropriate state (not territorial) Legislature, and then only when said lands have been properly "purchased," it might have been wiser for Nevada to simply call Washington's bluff, demand to see Washington's bill of sale, reclaim these ownerless lands, sell them off, and use the proceeds as Nevadans see fit.
As things stand today, however, attempting to go back and tamper with the distribution of these proceeds might indeed do more harm than good.
Rep. Jon Porter also had a good point when he advised, "You have to look at air quality and the future of water and infrastructure needs" rather than making no provision for the problems more developed land could bring.
But the main thrust of the chamber members' observations cannot be denied: Las Vegas is hemmed in by desert lands which remain under the control of the federal government. Regardless of the mechanism, those lands should be made available for private development and use by actual Americans.
If the delegates can win another increase in the total acreage to be released, so much the better. But it's worth noting that while the 1998 law instructed the BLM to sell off 54,000 acres -- and Congress expanded that to 76,000 acres in 2002 -- only some 34,500 ares have been sold to date.
Some auctions have actually drawn no bids, at all.
How can that be?
The Hawaiian Islands excepted, the old saw is still correct when it reminds us that God isn't making any more of this stuff. So any well-publicized land auction that draws no bidders is prima facie evidence that the BLM is reaching in up to its elbows, combining deed restrictions and excessive parcel sizes and minimum required bids in a manner designed to effectively prevent the very land sales they're instructed to carry out.
Long before any additional lands are likely to be freed up, the senators could and should submit a "sense of the Congress" resolution to reiterate to this agency that what are required are "true auctions." Parcel sizes should be small enough to encourage bidding by numerous parties (not just our handful of biggest developers); no deed restrictions should be attached beyond "normal and legal use"; and no minimum bids should be specified. If only one lonely citizen shows up and bids a single dollar, he should have himself a nice piece of land.
(If the BLM balks at that, just open the land to 160-acre homesteading, like Oklahoma.)
And, finally, it should be reiterated that the goal is a net loss (repeat, a net loss) of land in federal hands -- no requirement that additional acreage be turned over to federal agencies elsewhere "in compensation," since the federal government was never supposed to own the majority of land in any one state, in the first place.
This land is your land. This land is my land. It's not the BLM's land.
