Letter: Funds from BLM sales should be used more wisely

Thursday, Oct. 14, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

The recent U.S. Senate bill authorizing Lincoln County BLM land sales allows Lincoln County to only keep 10 percent of the proceeds. The Bureau of Land Management will keep 85 percent for further Nevada land acquisitions. Truly alarming is that the bill allows the funding drain from the Clark County BLM land sales to continue.

The bill now makes Lincoln County eligible to claim money from BLM land sales here in Clark County. Certainly BLM land sold at auction in Clark County is far more valuable than that offered for sale in Lincoln County.

Sens. John Ensign and Harry Reid have already redirected $30 million of our BLM land sales revenue, every year, for environmental work at Lake Tahoe, and now Lincoln County gets in on the action. Our $1 billion-plus pot of gold here in Clark County is not only being drained by outside special interests. We continue spending large sums of BLM money here building parks and trails that few people use but all taxpayers must now pay to maintain forever.

Much of the land-sale windfall should have been used for lasting and beneficial programs, such as building a new university campus and attracting technological enterprise. It's not too late. BLM funds can still be put to better use, provided our congressional representatives get their act together now.

Sens. Ensign and Reid, along with Clark County taxpayers, also need to start asking for detailed accounting of where and how our BLM money is currently being spent. Where did all this money go? Looking forward, where is it going to go? Who will really reap the benefits?

RICHARD RYCHTARIK