DENVER – The Colorado Senate on Tuesday reached a compromise to advance a measure that would create a Public Lands Day in the state, thanks to a suggestion from Sen. Ellen Roberts of Durango.
The bill passed the Senate on an initial vote. It must receive a final recorded vote in the chamber before going to the House.
The bill would designate the third Saturday in May each year for Coloradans to show their appreciation for the state’s vast swaths of state and federal public lands. While the bill seems simple on its face, it has been plagued by partisan rhetoric over federal management of public lands. A backdrop to the bill was a recent standoff in Oregon, where a group occupied a federal wildlife refuge headquarters, protesting federal lands policies.
The bill hit a hurdle Tuesday, as Republicans fought to protect an earlier amendment to the bill that would have stated: “Coloradans are too often not adequately represented in the adjudication and settlement of federal regulatory issues, resulting too often in ‘sweetheart’ consent decrees.”
Democrats opposed the amendment in committee, but they supported the overall bill with the amendment in an effort to advance the measure. On Tuesday, they attempted to strip the language, which resulted in bickering between the two sides.
“It refocuses the bill on just being a celebration of public lands, and not a political piece with mixed messages,” Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, who sponsored the legislation, said of the attempt to eliminate the inflammatory language.
Republicans were adamant, however, that the measure should admonish the federal government for poor maintenance of public lands and burdensome regulations that they say have limited access.
The messaging follows a movement known as the new “Sagebrush Rebellion,” a resurgence of the effort in the 1970s to force the federal government to give more control of government-owned Western lands to state and local authorities.
Just as emotions were running high, Roberts, a Republican, proposed a compromise amendment. Rather than admonish the federal government, the amendment eliminates the language on “sweetheart consent decrees” and states: “Coloradans would be well-served by a reform and greater legislative oversight of the current federal regulatory process.”
“The introduced version of the bill was, for me, a little too rosy,” Roberts said. “There are challenges with our public lands, and I think our public land managers and those who are in the field would be the first to say so.”
pmarcus@durangoherald.com
