Editor’s Note: This editorial originally appeared in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner last month.
“My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”
This is the opening paragraph of a memorandum signed Jan. 21, 2009, by President Barrack Obama, one day after his inauguration.
The memorandum goes on to state: “Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information.” Many Americans applauded this as proof that “hope and change” wasn’t just a beguiling campaign slogan.
Some 23 months later, on Dec. 23, 2010, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unveiled a secretarial order establishing a new policy for lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. This policy directs the BLM to inventory all lands it manages for their wilderness characteristics and creates a new classification of lands known as ‘Wild Lands.’
Salazar’s announcement was the first anyone outside the Department of the Interior knew about the Wild Lands policy, even though it was nearly two years in the making.
Governor Parnell’s office was informed of the program only hours before it was announced. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, whose state in 2003 reached a settlement with Interior on new wilderness study areas, was afforded a similar courtesy.
In a letter to Salazar, Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter of Idaho declared: “Without any state or public input, the Interior Department has circumvented the sovereignty of the states and the will of the public by shifting from the normal planning process of the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) to one that places significant authority in the hands of non-elected federal bureaucrats.”
Secretary Salazar’s decision to unilaterally create and implement this policy contradicts both the President’s memorandum and the Department of the Interior’s own “Open Government Plan.” That June 2010 plan is chock full of terms such as “citizen engagement,” “collaboration,” “cooperation” and “stakeholder involvement.” Detailed flow charts sprinkled throughout show how the principles in the president’s memorandum flow into the core mission objective of the department.
Salazar’s failure to allow the American public and the governments of the 43 states in which the BLM manages lands to participate in developing this policy or provide “their collective expertise and information” calls into question the department’s commitment to an open and transparent government.
One doubts Salazar would have ignored such a snub during his tenure as a U.S. senator or, prior to that, as Colorado’s attorney general.
The BLM manages 253 million surface acres in the United States. In Alaska, once all land conveyances are completed, the agency will manage some 75 million acres.
Under the new policy, BLM lands in Alaska will be inventoried for wilderness characteristics, even though they were withdrawn, inventoried, studied and classified during the years between the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 and enactment of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980.
While BLM manages none, there are 57 million acres of congressionally-designated wilderness in Alaska.
The BLM Wild Lands Policy has drawn strong reactions from all quarters. Several governors and members of Congress have questioned whether the secretary has the authority to implement the policy with its new land classification. Committee hearings are being planned. Many have proposed withholding funding for implementing the policy.
Ranchers, the oil and gas industry, the mineral industry, local governments and motorized recreational users have voiced strong objections. While many organizations applaud the policy, others feel it doesn’t go far enough to protect BLM lands. Certainly, it raises an abundance of questions about the future of BLM-managed lands in Alaska.
It might be naïve, but it is not unreasonable, to believe that every substantive policy or program adopted by a federal department or agency should be subjected to some level of public review and input during its development, not afterward. What constitutes substantive is open for debate.
What is not debatable, however, is that the manner in which the BLM Wild Lands policy was conceived and put into place with no input from the affected states or the American public is insulting and unacceptable.
If President Obama’s directive calling for an open and transparent government is to be anything more than empty words, Salazar’s order must be rescinded.
Stan Leaphart is the executive director of the 12-member Citizens Advisory Commission on Federal Areas, which monitors federal land management actions and assists Alaskans affected by them. Administratively, the commission lies within the state Department of Natural Resources. Its website is http://dnr.alaska.gov/commis/cacfa/
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