A proposal to sell millions of acres of federal lands in 11 Western states might have been doomed from the start because it was slipped “unvetted” into a budget bill, said Wyoming resident and former Assistant Interior Secretary Rob Wallace.
“In a nutshell, he cut the public out of the discussion on their public lands,” Wallace said of U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and his controversial proposal.
Lee’s Miscalculation
Lee chairs the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is facing scathing criticism after trying to insert the land sale language into the Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
He’s calling for the sale of between 0.5% and 0.75% of Bureau of Land Management and National Forest System parcels, but opponents of the plan say it opens the door to sell much more. And hunters say there’s no amount of federal public land they’d be OK with selling.
That was a gross miscalculation on Lee’s part, said Wallace, who served as assistant Interior secretary under the first administration of President Donald Trump. In that role, he oversaw the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.
Instead, Lee should have submitted the measure as a standalone bill before the committee and allowed open debate and public testimony before the committee, Wallace said.
Where Things Stand
After massive backlash from sportsmen’s groups, environmental advocates and others, Lee late Monday offered to significantly cut back on the amount of land that could be sold under his measure.
The same day, the proposal hit a procedural snag.
The Senate parliamentarian applied the Byrd Rule, potentially cutting Lee’s proposal out of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is a budget reconciliation bill.
Under that rule, language in budget reconciliation bills must be focused on fiscal issues. The parliamentarian ruled that the language in Lee’s land sale proposal failed that test.
Lee said he still hopes to introduce a revised, scaled-back plan and possibly gain a needed 60 approving votes on the Senate Floor.
Wallace said that a direct connection he has in Washington, D.C., told him that the matter was “still up in the air,” along with other aspects of the One Big Beautiful Bill.
“This is one piece of an avalanche that the parliamentarian is trying to work through right now,” Wallace said.
Some Wyoming hunters and representatives of sportsmen’s groups previously told Cowboy State Daily that they flatly oppose Lee’s proposal, no matter what, and that no revisions could make it acceptable to them.
Committee Process Messy, But Necessary
Lee and supporters of his measure, including Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, said it would focus on parcels of federal land in or near communities. Those could be developed for affordable housing.
Whether such a plan could ever be feasible remains an open question, Wallace said.
He again stressed that if that was Lee’s goal, he tried going about it the wrong way.
“There may be situations around the West in which making public lands available for housing might make some sense,” Wallace said. “But it has to be done in the daylight of committee hearings.
“This has to be done in the daylight, let the public speak to the merits of this.”
The often-raucous process of committee hearings can be time-consuming and complex, but it’s the way things get done, Wallace said.
“Committee hearings are messy, they’re complicated, they’re frustrating,” he said. “Some people use them for good outcomes, and some people are demagogues, but you have to do it.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
