State braces for new assault on lands sales funds

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 | 8:38 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The House Appropriations Committee approved an order for a study detailing how the government has spent money earned through public lands sales in Clark County.

The committee passed the Interior Department spending bill Tuesday that contained a provision, inserted by the department subcommittee, requiring the study.

The House may vote on the bill next week, but it would still need Senate approval. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, will work to take out the language, according to his office.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who sits on the Senate Budget Committee, previously prevented it from being put into the budget resolution.

Nevada's House members feel the provision revives the Bush administration's desired change to keep more money from Bureau of Land Management auctions than the law currently allows.

Under the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act all the money from public land auctions in Nevada stays within the state and different percentages go to the education fund, water treatment efforts and federal land conservation projects.

But in the 2006 budget request, President Bush proposed putting 70 percent of the money from land sales to the national treasury, primarily to help reduce the deficit. Bush's proposal left 30 percent to Nevada.

Nevada's congressional delegation strongly opposed the idea and opposed efforts to revive it after it was blocked from the budget resolution.

Republican Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons sent a letter to House Appropriations Interior subcommittee Chairman Charles Taylor, R-N.C., expressing their objections to the provision.

Gibbons said the report should show how much the state needs the money, especially because the government owns most of the state and taxpayers get 70 cents on the dollar for money paid into the federal government.