SALT LAKE CITY, Aug 21, (AP): Utah’s Republican leaders made good Tuesday on a decade-old vow to launch a legal challenge aimed at wresting control from the US government over much of the federal lands that dominate the state.
The state's attorney general said he asked to file a lawsuit with the US Supreme Court in what is considered a long-shot attempt to assert state powers on US Bureau of Land Management property across about one-third of Utah.
It marks the latest jab in a running feud between states and the US government over who should control huge swaths of the West and the enormous oil and gas, timber, and other resources they contain.
Federal agencies combined have jurisdiction over almost 70% of Utah.
The lawsuit targets about half of that federal land - some 29,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers), or an area nearly as large as South Carolina. Those parcels are under land bureau management and used for energy production, grazing, mining, recreation and other purposes.
Utah’s world-famous national parks - and the national monuments managed by the land bureau - would remain in federal hands under the lawsuit.
"Utah cannot manage, police or care for more than two thirds of its own territory because it’s controlled by people who don’t live in Utah, who aren’t elected by Utah citizens and not responsive to our local needs," Attorney General Sean Reyes said.
The federal dominance prevents the state from making money off of taxes and development projects on those acres, he said.
University of Colorado environmental law professor Mark Squillace said the lawsuit was unlikely to succeed and was "more a political stunt than anything else.”
The Utah Enabling Act of 1894 that governed Utah's designation as a state included a promise that it wouldn't make any claim on federal land, Squillace said. The property clause of the Constitution also gives the federal government absolute authority over public lands, he said.