Fulcher backs the land transfer movement with dubious arguments | Opinion
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- Fulcher backs federal land transfers, risking Idahoans’ access to public lands.
- His letter cites mismanagement and backlog but offers no viable funding plan.
- State control would worsen wildfire response and shift huge costs to Idaho.
The public land sell-off movement has again reared its head in Idaho.
U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, has embraced a path that would end in Idahoans losing the places they love to hunt, hike, fish, camp and graze their cattle.
It’s not surprising. While Rep. Mike Simpson and Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch stood up for public lands when they were under threat from a proposal by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to force the disposal of millions of acres, Fulcher failed to join them. And in a recent letter he sent to elected officials around the state supporting state management of Idaho’s federal lands Fulcher has definitively turned on Idaho’s most important heritage.
Couching things in terms of management rather than ownership is a convenient way of side-stepping the central political problem: Even in very conservative states like Idaho, land transfer is deeply unpopular. But the real policy problem isn’t that Idaho can’t afford to own the federal lands within its borders; the problem is precisely that it can’t afford to manage them.
Of course, Fulcher says he wants to protect public lands — the nearly unanimous position of Idaho voters. But this is a bit like a payday lender who says he has a simple solution for your unexpected expenses; listen to him, and you’re going to get a much bigger bill than you expected.
Fulcher’s letter is riddled with half-truths, misleading claims and bare assertions with no evidence to back them up. He blames federal mismanagement for a million acres of Idaho burning last year, hoping you’ll forget about drought and searing summer temperatures.
Fulcher says that federal land management agencies are overwhelmed, leading them to be ineffective.
True, federal agencies are often overwhelmed by the tasks they face. It’s expensive to fight fire, to manage grazing, forestry, recreation and ecological values, maintain trails, pit toilets and parking areas and to do the countless other things they do. And their budgets are limited.
But how is transferring management of the land to the state supposed to help this one iota?
You have to pay people to do these things, and they don’t care whether their check comes from federal or state taxes. Do you predict that Idaho will be able to come up with more taxpayer funding to accomplish these tasks than the feds?
Fulcher points out federal lands have a $50 billion maintenance backlog. Do you expect that will get better or worse if federal lands management is transferred to a state with less than $7 billion in total annual general fund revenue, which is staring down the throat of major budget shortfalls?
Yes, federal land management agencies are underfunded. Fulcher’s proposal is, quite precisely, to make every problem he identifies worse.
In no case is the problem more acute than with wildfires.
Wildfire doesn’t know where state borders are or announce its plans ahead of time for the benefit of state budget writers.
The thousands of U.S. Forest Service firefighters stationed across the country — which surge seasonally during peak fire season — are available to be deployed quickly to other regions of the country when a large fire breaks out. A firefighter living in Idaho might spend part of fire season in Arizona, part in California, part in Nevada and part in Montana, depending on where fires are burning any given week.
On its own, Idaho would either have to maintain a much larger than necessary number of firefighters with taxpayer funds in good fire years so that it’s prepared for the bad ones, or accept the fact that it will be grossly unprepared in bad fire years.
The budget fluctuations caused by fire would be impossible for Idaho to weather. As I noted a few months ago, fighting a bad year of wildfires in Idaho costs on the order of what it would cost to run the state’s entire prison system for a year. How are you supposed to write a budget when you have to wait several months to find out if you’ll have to double the prison budget or not?
Idahoans will either be severely overtaxed or there won’t be enough resources to fight fires.
The fundamental point remains — despite Fulcher’s assurance that “our public lands need to stay public.” Transferring these lands to the states means selling them. Transferring management means every problem with management gets worse. We couldn’t possibly afford to keep them.
If Fulcher’s movement gains traction, the day will come when you want to show your grandkids where you learned to hunt or fish, the place your dad taught you life’s most important lessons around a campfire — and you will find a no trespassing sign.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.