The Sagebrush Rebellion Continues

Western states and ideological conservatives continue their multi-decade ban against the federal government’s control over public land, demanding the government get out of their ability to do whatever they want to the land while still expecting subsidies for those acivities both direct and indirect. One of the big fights in recent years has been over road access, particularly in Utah. Still infuriated by Clinton’s creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah politicians has repeatedly sued for the public access to roads across wilderness areas and national monuments. A settlement was just reached in one case which seems to me a compromise that everyone hates enough to live with. But I thought this was telling:

The second settlement in the Utah cases might come in Kane County. In March, a federal district judge approved 12 of the county’s 15 R.S. 2477 claims, including on roads that cross the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, but that decision has been appealed by both sides. In an interesting twist, in May two Kane County ranchers filed papers seeking to get roads on their lands removed from the suit; they want those roads to remain private, rather than being opened to the public, reports the Salt Lake Tribune:

Their intervention marks a new front in Utah’s road controversies, pitting counties against their own residents.

“Nobody has taken into account these private property owners,” (Chris) Odekerken’s lawyer, Bruce Baird, says. “The county is in a philosophical fight with the feds. It’s a fight between two dinosaurs, and my clients are the rodents scurrying underneath trying to not get squished.”

That’s right, except I’d call it an ideological instead of a philosophical fight. While certainly many rural landowners support the state of Utah, especially the big rich ones, asking the people who are actually affected by these lawsuits evidently didn’t come to anyone’s mind.