Ben Carson said: “The fact that the government owns 2.4 billion acres of land is ridiculous. What do they need with all that land?”
“I would advocate returning land to the states. It’s not like they’re irresponsible people who don’t care what happens, you know. I just don’t see any benefit from the government owning this much land.”
Land conservation and land transfer advocates are expecting this issue to emerge in the presidential campaign, particularly in the swing states Colorado and Nevada.
First, Carson is way off on the acreage: The federal government does not own 2.4 billion acres of land. The actual land mass of the U.S. is about 2.3 billion acres, according to the Department of Agriculture, and the federal government owns and manages about 640 million acres, concentrated in 11 continental Western states and Alaska.
“The idea of ‘returning’ federal lands in the West to the states is a misnomer because those lands have never been owned by the states,” wrote historian Samuel Hayes in 1989.
Through the Property Clause, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress power to own land. Under the equal footing doctrine, all new states are entitled to the same powers of state government that belonged to the original 13 states. And those states operated under a policy of transferring ownership of federal lands to private and state ownership. Hence, those arguing for the federal government to “return” or for states to “take back” federal land believe that the Western states deserve the same statehood promise to transfer title to public lands as the 13 original states. But in the context of federal land, the equal footing doctrine generally has not applied to federal land ownership, according to the Congressional Research Service analysis.
After decades of debate over provisions in the equal footing doctrine and the Property Clause, Congress in 1976 passed a law declaring that “the remaining public domain lands generally would remain in federal ownership.”
The American Lands Council has reinvigorated the land transfer movement in nearly every Western state, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year.
The American Lands Council also argues that transferring land to states will allow for a more “responsive and accountable stewardship” of the lands. The Colorado Secretary of State recently announced that it has “reasonable grounds to believe” the American Lands Council may have violated rules for failing to report political spending or to register as a lobbyist.
Carson’s rhetoric distorts the context and legal interpretations that are at play. Federal land ownership and the state-federal clash over the issue is complex and nuanced, and Carson’s language blurs the underlying facts. That upped his rating to Two Pinocchio’s.
Chip Tuthill is a longtime resident of Mancos. Websites used for this column: www.washingtonpost.com and www.cortezjournal.com
