One legislator saw it as a plan to pave the way for an invasion by waterway, a la Rogers’ Rangers. Another, when told by the attorney general’s office that the proposed law, Senate Bill 324, was unenforceable, said no one believed the word of the attorney general over the opinion of one of the Legislature’s many self-anointed constitutional scholars. And it wasn’t even a full moon.
Now the proposed law, which purports to declare a moratorium on federal land acquisition in New Hampshire and restrict federal ownership of land in the state to 2 percent or less, is awaiting a decision from Gov. Hassan.
Hassan should veto the crackpot legislation, which could needlessly complicate and compromise conservation efforts and possibly interfere with the state’s ability to receive federal money under the Land and Water Conservation Act and other programs.
The bill is an updated version of a 1935 law put on the books for reasons lost to time. That law, which hasn’t been enforced or even mentioned in decades, limits federal ownership of land within the state’s boundaries, excluding the White Mountain National Forest, to 2 percent. The nation’s first grazing act, enacted to combat the deterioration of federal lands by overgrazing, passed in 1934. It asserted the federal government’s right to manage its lands within a state as it saw fit, but it’s hard to imagine that spurred action in New Hampshire.
By one estimate, the state is just 47,000 acres shy of hitting the 2 percent cap, but the revised bill calls for counting land covered by federal conservation easements, like those designed to preserve agricultural land. That means the state has probably already exceeded the cap.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to create a six-state Great Thicket National Wildlife Refuge of 15,000 acres to provide habitat for the New England cottontail rabbit and other endangered shrublands wildlife. Also underway is a proposed expansion of the Silvio Conte Wildlife Refuge that protects the Connecticut River watershed from its source on the Candian border with New Hampshire to Long Island Sound.
The latter expansion, depending on its size, is opposed by the timber industry, some sporting groups, and towns such as Alstead and Gilsum, which fear a loss of tax revenue if property owners willingly sell or lease their property to the federal government.
The bill is sponsored by a small group of conservative Republicans, including Sagebrush Rebellion sympathizers who agree with the stance taken by renegade Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his family.
“We don’t want to become a Nevada east,” said Keene Rep. James McConnell, one of the bill’s sponsors. “We don’t want to become a state that is largely owned by the federal government.”
It’s a little late for that. The federal government owns a big portion of newer, Western states because federal lands were not transferred to state ownership when states were created. Congress retains the right to control the land, a right that has stood many court tests.
The bill is, as the attorney general’s office said, unenforceable because the state cannot limit the rights of the federal government. It is also likely unconstitutional because, in a surprising position for conservatives, it interferes with the right of an owner to sell or lease his or her land.
SB 324 is the kind of legislation that confirms the national suspicion that New Hampshire is a place where cranks can make their mark. It belongs in the circular file next to Hassan’s desk.