H.B. 546 Public Lands Duty of Care Amendments: transcript

We, we do, yes. Mr. Chair got, uh, John Howard online. And, uh, Go Ahead. I wanna thank, I wanna thank the committee. I want to, I want I want us to take a minute and just appreciate the irony here. We have Representative Ward had a resolution to transfer public lands, and I've got a bill that doesn't have anything to do with transfer of public lands. It just has to do with better management and access, health and productivity of the land. I just need to let that soak in for just a minute. I'm appreciating. I think it's great. Um, to, to one of the comments that was made earlier. We have done so much work in Utah Code that if and when, again, this is not a transfer bill, but I just wanna address the point. If and when we ever had ownership control, we have made our code so specific in the fact that Utah has a public land state. We have owner grazing rights and mining rights and recreation rights and hunting and fishing. And all of that is recognized in our code, even in the section that this bill pertains to. And that if we were to ever sell maybe small inhaled parcels, we made it very difficult on ourself to do that intentionally. And so, anyway, I just wanna put everyone's mind to rest. I know there've been some articles that the sky is gonna fall and cats and dogs are gonna play together and all the rest, but this is simply about the jurisdiction. And so ownership is one thing, but jurisdiction government, who's the government of the land, is quite another. Mr. Chairman, may I have my, my intern pass out some, some folders to the committee?

We discovered a few years ago that there is a federal study, uh, on jurisdiction over federal areas within the states. Two volumes. It comes from the early 1950s that there was a large VA compound, I believe it was in Pennsylvania. And the VA compound, most of the people in the town lived on the VA compound. So they didn't pay tax to the city, but the city was providing police and fire and sewer and, and, and schools. But most of the people there didn't pay tax. And one night the city council decided, well, you're not paying tax, so your kids can't come to the school anymore and we're not gonna provide services 'cause you're not helping fund these things. And Mr. Chair, it got all the way up to President Eisenhower and there was this big, uh, concern over, can we do this, can we not? What is this about? And President Eisenhower ordered a study of jurisdiction over federal areas within the states. And, and this two volume study is what resulted from that. They noted in the study that this is the most comprehensive study ever done on the subject of jurisdiction. They had the US Attorney General, all of the state's attorneys, general 33 federal agencies, they studied thousands of state and federal cases, every periodical they could get their hands on to understand jurisdiction, who is the government over that land without regard to who may own it. And, and Mr. Chair in the study, again, most comprehensive study ever done, he said, the general rule is that the state has jurisdiction, the government over everything within the boundary of the state, unless there's an exception. First exception is the enclave clause for its arsenals, dockyards federal government buys it with the consent of the state legislature. That's one exception to the general rule. The second exception to the general rule is where the state legislature agrees to share our jurisdiction with the federal government. The third exception is where the state legislature agrees to give some small measure of our jurisdiction to the federal government. That's called partial jurisdiction. Then they identified a fourth category that they said it wasn't jurisdictional at all. This is just where the federal government owned the land. But they had no measure of the state's authority. In fact, they said they were just like any other landowner. It was pretty fascinating. But then in 1962, they, they commissioned the GSA, the General Services Administration to do an inventory every acre of land down to the 10th of an acre on those jurisdictional categories. And in the folder that you've been given is this is the inventory. I only pulled out the inventory sections for Utah. Uh, it's much bigger. It's about a thousand pages with all the states. But, but the identified those four categories of jurisdiction for Utah. And, and you've got a, a tabulation in there that we had an intern years ago run those categories. And more than 90% of all the federal areas within the state of Utah by the federal study and the federal inventory are in that category four proprietary interest only, no jurisdiction. Well, following that, we found that study. We thought that was fascinating. That state is actually the government over a great majority of the land within the state. What does that mean? And we tried to figure out in the federalism commission what does that mean? And our prior attorney general had had made some, uh, had some concerns that the study was out of date that maybe cases had superseded that. And so, uh, Mr. Chair and Chair Albrecht will know and others who are on the Federalism commission in June of last year, we had an update of that study. Uh, and Mr. Howard, who is on, I'd like to give him time now, they studied every Supreme Court case from 1957 forward on this subject of jurisdiction over federal areas within the States. And Mr. Howard, if, if we could make him a presenter and he could, uh, explain the study and, and what we received in June on this update of the study.

So, Mr. Howard, if you could introduce yourself, uh, and who you represent and where you're at. Thank you. Go ahead. I seem to have lost you and I don't know how We can hear you. Um, okay. Well, we did a study. What we did is, uh, do You wanna go ahead and introduce yourself and, Oh, sorry. My name is John Howard. I'm a Loa lawyer in San Diego. Um, and, um, have been studying these issues and representing, uh, or, or presenting to the legislature of Utah for the last 15 years on, uh, issues related to, to, uh, public land. Um, oh, I got your picture back up. Sorry. Hey, Go ahead. Um, And what we, um, were, were tasked with doing was looking at the Eisenhower study and extracting all of the cases that, uh, it had cited and it cited some 600 cases and we, and about a a hundred and, and, uh, some odd, uh, Supreme Court cases, which we read and analyzed. Then at that point, what we were able to do is move forward with every case that had cited any of those cases and reviewed those. Um, I, um, uh, and what we discovered was the law actually since 1957, had not changed. It had evolved over the years, um, from a presumption that the states had a jurisdiction over all of the lands, um, to a time when there was in the mid sixties, whether were some question about that. And then, uh, when the Rehnquist era took over, it began to change back to what is, uh, true. So, because I know I I don't have much time, I want to just, uh, point out that what, uh, Representative Ivory said was, uh, absolutely correct. Most of the land is owned, uh, as a proprietor. That doesn't mean that the state can interfere with, with legitimate federal functions on, on its own land. But what it does mean is the state has jurisdiction, um, legislative jurisdiction over, uh, virtually all of the federally acclaimed lands in the state of Utah. Um, what does that mean? Well, it means that the, that the state does in fact have regulatory power. It means that the state does have the power to review, uh, legitimate federal functions. But as I understand, the bill is before, um, uh, your, uh, committee, uh, it is merely to map those lands so that it can be monitored by the state of, of, uh, Utah, uh, for the purpose of, of ensuring that Utah's legitimate legi, uh, legislative, um, jurisdiction is respected. Um, with that, I think I, I'll, I'll leave it open for questions if you have any.

Uh, just a couple more. I just want to go to the bill quickly. Go ahead. If, if you would go to lines 2 83 in the bill, this is a very, very simple bill, and it does three simple things. Map the lands according to the jurisdictional categories, monitor those lands and, and measure the access, the health and the productivity of the lands. And the mapping is to be done by January of 2028. So we have a great deal of time to work on the mapping, but that's all the bill does, is we wanna map the lands and then measure the access, health and productivity. We want to map out the high value critical minerals because we know that's an area of great, uh, uh, national security, economic security for the nation. But we identify digitally map, we identify areas where there may be public nuisance. What that means is we've seen particularly Mr Chair and, and and chair Albrecht in your area, the forested areas where the forests have overgrown so intensely that they decimate the watershed. The habitat, the wildlife, 20 to 30 animals per acre are incinerated in catastrophic wildfires. We wanna monitor any nuisance condition we already have in code catastrophic wildfire, public nuisance section. So we monitor according to that, and then we come back to the committee. And in fact, I had actually, uh, in the draft of the bill intended, if you look in lines 2 96, to have that be to the Federalism commission and the Natural Resources Committee. And I'd be happy to add that in either by voice amendment, uh, or on the floor. Uh, with that Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just, sorry, just a, a couple of quick questions. I dunno why I've lost my voice this morning. All of a sudden, um, you're talking about mapping, is this mapping not already being done? What are the gaps, why? Yeah. And what's the difference between what we have currently or if we have anything currently to what you're proposing and just trying to get a handle on it? Yeah, right. So these jurisdictional categories, this is something that we're just learning. And in fact, this updated study we just got in June. And so now that we understand that this federal study is still good and valid, now we want to map the lands according to the federal study and the federal inventory on jurisdictions with the federal government saying we're still the government. So we wanna map those lands and then identify those areas that are of critical concern forest health, that affects the watershed. In fact, in 2017, we commissioned a study of the forest health around the Wasatch front, and, and we had Utah State Department of Ag and our, our Utah Department of Ag one spark away from losing watershed to nearly half of the Wasatch front because of these nuisance forest conditions. So we want to know what those are and identify those, but yeah, that's, that's why we haven't done this previously. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Um, can you just explain to me a little bit about, uh, landscape scale lands?

Right. And so in defining that, we're looking at those big broad areas of land mm-hmm. That if the forests aren't well maintained, we see devastating consequences. Like the Brian Head fire that, in fact the, the gentleman, I think his last name is Owen, that owns the general store at Panguitch Lake, you know, one of the nation's top blue ribbon fisheries. He went out and bought an 8,000 gallon water tanker personally because they knew the conditions were so bad that the fire was coming. Sadly, the water tanker didn't show up until three days after the fire hit. But, but we're looking at those big areas that if we don't, rather, if we allow them to maintain or, or, or, uh, continue in a nuisance condition, it decimate the watershed for decades. It devastates the habitat for decades. It incinerates wildlife. And that's why we're looking at those big broad landscape scale lands And the, the mapping that was referenced by the good representative that the fiscal note would pay for the mapping of those landscape scale lands. Is that correct? Correct. That's what that's directed towards on lines 2 25 through 2 33 under principles to be recognized and promoted.

It sounds like a lot more to me than just maintenance of the landscape, establishing land management responsibilities related to zoning and planning, generating income from renewable and non-renewable resources to provide essential government services collecting adequate tax revenue to fund schools and public safety programs for local governments. It sounds like we would be using these landscape lay landscape scale lands. Excuse me, that's a tough one to say. Um, for, for a lot more than just maintaining or managing the lands we would be collecting from that land. Is that correct?

Not necessarily. Uh, what that section does is really reiterate what the federal study has said about the state jurisdiction versus the federal jurisdiction. And so we're documenting that in our code. And then our first step is to identify what the condition of those lands are, where those mineral interests and things may be. We don't take any steps beyond that, but we identify what the federal study has indicated, and then we do the inventory based on the federal study. Is

That federal study established in like, code someplace or it's been like codified, like, like these pieces that are being added into the code?

Yeah, as a matter of fact, it's, it's been recognized and codified, if you will, from 1957 all the way up to 2020. Uh, 1970 was a massive study called a Third of the Nation's Land. And that was the study that led to flipma, the Federal Land Policy Management Act in the Forest Act recognizes these jurisdictional categories, uh, further documents in 19 73, 74, all the way up to 2020 Army field service manuals, uh, DOI manuals where they recognize these jurisdictional categories. What's interesting is it's in the federal studies, but we haven't recognized our own jurisdiction as a state. They've done the studies, they've done the inventory, and we've been acting like we're not the government, like we're somehow subservient. And the whole purpose of that study was, it's very critical, the jurisdictional interests and who the government is so that the people know where they look for for services, who's responsible for services, who's responsible to pay for services, that sort of thing. So,

Alright. Thank you Chair.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, not necessarily a question, but I, I think for the committee's edification, it would be good to know that Chair Ivory is, uh, the chair of the Federalism Commission. I serve on that as well. And he has put together with the speakers, uh, approval, a federalism commission made up of members of both sides of the aisle who've been working all summer and all fall. Uh, in fact, many of you maybe not, do not know this, but, uh, this state hosted the first ever bipartisan convention held right here in Utah, Salt Lake City and Snowbird this past fall, which lawmakers from all over the state, all over the US attended, uh, to try to get this federalism item, uh, moving along. Uh, so that, you know, the pendulum doesn't swing every four years from one side of the aisle to the others. That we establish principles, core principles that, uh, help both sides of the aisle try to solve some of these federalism issues that we've argued about for heaven knows how long. But the, uh, the Forest Service and the BLM land public lands in general, he mentioned fires, had a lot of 'em in my area, law enforcement on public lands. Uh, there's just all kinds of things and, and, uh, Representative Ivory, I would ask that you research with the state, uh, geological survey. I had them, I run a bill a couple years ago and they mapped where the critical minerals are in the state of Utah, so maybe you can use that going forward. Yeah. Um, but anyway, I, I just wanted the committee to know that, uh, the speaker asked, uh, Representative Ivory to be the chair of this federalism commission. He and, uh, Senator Stratton. And this was really a first of its kind, um, convention, if you will, uh, here that we hosted in the state of Utah this fall. And, uh, it brought leaders both sides of the aisle from all over the United States. It was pretty impressive to say the least. And, uh, I just want to compliment you on that and let let this committee know that that happened. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I may just go ahead. The Summit that we had really was impressive. And the whole point of what we're doing is focusing on structure of our government over politics. We can keep fighting over Blue King versus Red King, and we swing from one extreme to the other every four years. These are efforts to get down to the jurisdiction, to the roles and responsibilities of our federal partner in the States where we govern as a partnership. And, and that's the critical aspect of what we do by drilling down on the jurisdiction, we're identifying our roles versus theirs. So we do governings. Pardon? Thank you, Mr. Chair, for very

Maryanne Christensen, executive Director of Utah Legislative Watch, and we definitely support this legislation. The public is kind of split into two views. There's the, the part of the public that thinks, oh, public lands, that's the land that federal government is set aside for us to use. But the other part of the public, they understand that federal lands, for the most part, are forests, that they fail to maintain it. It involves leases that the federal government can withhold or cancel at will. And it involves the federal government being able to close off roads and keep the public out of public lands. So this bill doesn't fix any of that. What it does is it defines the problem for us. And so I think that is a very, very necessary and prudent first step to showing just exactly what the problem is. And so I hope you will vote for the bill. Thank you.

Chair members of the committee, my name is Nathan Hole. I'm from Sunset, Utah and Davis County, I urge you to oppose HP 5 46 because this bill is designed to go straight to the courts and continues a dying tradition of trying to claim public lands in Utah, using every tool that, that they can find to, despite the opposition to it, and next to no movement on it. Over the several past several decades, almost 90% across the uni, the Intermountain West support, maintaining the status of public lands. Not only is this bill based on false claims that Utah never seeded control of federal lands to the United States, which were acquired decades before Utah was even a state. Hundreds of thousands of bipartisan voices from across the Intermountain states, including Utah, Montana, and Idaho, voiced their opposition to state control of public lands with their congressional members. This is cleverly cla, crafted with language designed specifically for a frivolous court battle using the doctrine of public nuisance to argue that conservation, land management and protection are harming the state when they're actually extremely benefiting our burgeoning outdoor industry. This bill threatens the rapidly growing outdoor recreation industry in Utah by creating more threats from road building, mining, energy, and development among many others. This bill is designed for federal court battles to also threaten public lands, not just in Utah, but across all western states. This specific bill is already opposed by various hunting, fishing, and conservation groups across the political spectrum. The opposition is bipartisan. John Howard, the the lawyer used by the sponsor, crafted the legal roadmap to bring the public land issue to the Supreme Court, and whose strategies are renowned for trying to force constitutional crises to bring cases right to the court. And did you wrap that? The court declined to hear in 2024. Wildfire mitigation is important, but this goes far beyond that. Thank you. I ask you to oppose this bill. Thank you.

A committee and chair. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Um, my name's Doug Tolman. I represent a group called Save Our Canyons. Um, we're here to protect the Wasatch Mountains and we partner with the Forest Service and with the state and with, um, a lot of other local nonprofits to work on wildfire mitigation as one of our, um, key parts of our mission right now. We were looking through the, um, federalism Commissioner port and I, I did notice one, um, Supreme Court case that I thought wasn't referenced enough, and there's one specific statement in there that I would like to read, if that's okay, Mr. Chair. Um, so we're speaking about the, um, property clause here, which is, uh, in the constitution, the Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belongings to the United States. So in the, the court's opinion on clip B, New Mexico 1976, uh, it says, referring to that clause in broad terms, it empowers Congress to determine what are needful rules respecting the public lands, and that there is no li or no merit to the appe narrow reading that the provision grants Congress power only to dispose of or to make incidental rules regarding the use of and to protect federal property. The clause must be given an expansive reading for the power of the public lands, thus entrusted to Congress is without limitations and includes the power to regulate and protect the wildlife living there, which contradicts some of the bill language. So thank you for allowing me to speak.

Okay. So, uh, sorry. Testifying from Washington dc we're out here with the, um, NACO alleged conference, so long distance, but we're still concerned about what's happening in Utah. Uh, Tammy Pearson, Beaver County Commissioner, also chairman of the Public Land Committee for uac. And, uh, we're supporting this appreciate Representative Ivory and, and his efforts in the Federalism committee. Um, anything that we can do to, to move forward on, on this mapping and, and Utah managing lands that really should be land managed from the ground level and the state and county levels. And we support this. And if you, if you'd let me, I also have Commissioner Greg Miles here with me.

Commissioner Greg Miles, Duchesne County Commissioner. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. Uh, Duchesne County is in support of this bill and especially it's, uh, fortune talking about, you know, mineral development. Um, we, we represent, uh, a local government closest to the people, and I think oftentimes we are forgotten that it is Duchesne County or these public lands are in a county. And so, um, we are supportive and, and, uh, urge your support. Thank you.

Go ahead, introduce yourself. Yes, Greg Jensen, um, Sevier County Commissioner here in Richfield. Thanks for letting me, uh, speak this morning. I'm also in support of Bill 5 46. Appreciate the opportunity to speak of it. In speaking on behalf of my feeling of, uh, getting us Utah jurisdiction in place, um, managing public lands in my part or my mind has been hindered for, uh, nearly over a century. Fire, uh, naturally has been occurring for 40 to 60 years in the past, and, uh, we've missed two or three of these cycles. Um, the Mineral Canyon Fire, which burned 75,000 acres last year, which also burned, uh, 15, 15,000 of that was privately owned, was started on public land and one of these large land masses that, uh, Representative Ivory mentioned. Uh, you know, that, and within one day, not even 48 hours from the start of this fire, it jumps six to seven miles and, uh, then burnt three generational cabins of my family. And, uh, these lands need to be managed. We want to make sure that, uh, the state is being, uh, managed in the right way so that these big, massive fires and these things don't happen. And in many discussions with different bills. Earlier today, we talked about water storage, and we, in my mind, there are literally millions and millions of trees or water wicks that are sucking up 200 to 500 gallons of water a day, which we want to go downstream, but we want to hit the Great Salt Lake. And we, uh, this may get us started, uh, in the right direction. Thank you.

Uh, testifying from Washington DC I'm also Commissioner Jack Lidle from Daggett County, Utah. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. Wanna thank Representative Ivory for running the bill? Um, we support it and appreciate the opportunity to comment. One of the things that I think is very important to, and not to be redundant, but maybe to pull some things together. Um, the, the idea that these watersheds need, they need management. It's not just protection, it's also the idea that those are part of our infrastructure. They're our local infrastructure for producing and providing the water that all of us need. And I think it's very important that we protect that infrastructure and manage it. Um, so that among many other things, with the short time left, I, I'll defer and say thank you very much.

Uh, thank you Mr. Chair and committee members for the opportunity to speak KA West. I'm in Salt Lake County right now, but spent half my life in where I'd like to be in rural Utah. It was good, good to see all the county commissioners participate, including, uh, commissioner Pearson, who represents one of my favorite counties. Just don't tell anyone in Salt Lake that, um, I wanna speak to what Representative Albright covered. I wanna reassure, uh, the representatives and I'm grateful that they spoke from Save Our Canyons and our neighbor from Sunset, Utah. Uh, our work in the Federalism Commission under, uh, Representative Ivory and Senator Stratton is bipartisan, it's thorough, it's blunt, it's direct, it's got all the voices around the table that, that we need on an issue as important as public lands and, and proper management. And I'm one of those, uh, stubborn stalwart democrats in the state. And that's my role on the commission. I represent the Utah Democratic Party. So I just wanna assure everyone that it's not one-sided and that our work is, um, setting, I think, an important precedent, uh, for other states and that we look forward to working, uh, ahead on these important issues in a bipartisan way and have more blue states and blue governors understand that a healthy forest is one thing and we're all in favor of that, but we also absolutely agree in having a healthy state, federal relationship, whether that's on public lands or regarding ICE operations. So thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I look forward to working more with the Federals and Commission over the next year.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and sponsor the bail. Uh, things are sunny and warm in southern Utah today, so thank you for allowing me to jump on and testify. Um, Brandon Yardley, a commissioner in Beaver County, and like many counties in southern Utah, Beaver County has a high percentage of federal land, and it is, uh, we, we support this bill to be able to map the areas that need some fire mitigation plan and also some improved grazing. I'm a grazer of federal ground here in Beaver County, and we look forward to the time when we can make significant progress in improving our federal land in the grazing mechanism and, uh, try to mitigate some of the fires that everybody talked about. It's, it's difficult for us to watch these fires start knowing that we could have done some things to, to mitigate those if we just worked together and, and try to try to stop that. Uh, the importance of grazing is really why I jumped on to speak today. Um, it, it can be a tool for fire mitigation and we need to just make sure there's strong enough language in the bill to support the grazing and maybe we can, uh, drop the renewable energy, the solar development on federal land, if that's an option. But we can work with the sponsor to do that in the future. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, uh, Representative Shipp. Um, my name is Kirk Robinson. I represent a nonprofit wildlife conservation organization with headquarters in Utah, Western Wildlife Conservancy. And I just want to express my support for the comments made by the gentleman from Save Our Canyons and the gentle gentleman from where was it, Syracuse or somewhere up that way? Uh, I agree with them, and I don't, I don't re object to the mapping project per se. I just don't think it's going to go anywhere. I think this is a misguided effort for two reasons. It's almost, Almost impossible for it to ever succeed, um, given the actual case law and, and Supreme Supreme Court decisions and, um, the enabling act that created the state of Utah. And secondly, I don't think that the sponsor of this bill really understands some of the science that's important. For instance, if you cut down a forest, you're not gonna get more water into the streams and into the lakes. Uh, eventually the root system will die. The root system acts like a sponge to hold water and to meter it out gradually without it evaporating over the course of time. And, uh, given the comments I've heard, I do not trust these people to know what they're doing, frankly. So I, I opposed this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we favorably recommend House Bill 5 46. Okay. That motion is in order. Would you like to speak to it? I Would, um, I really appreciate the work that's happened on the Federalism Commission and the work of Representative Ivory and his and, and everything that's happened there. This is really about structure. It's not about politics, it's about management. And in large part, I think it's fascinating because the state worked hand in, in glove with the federal government already on the management of our, of our federal lands. I understand that there's a lot of fear about what this may or may not do, but, but I see this bill as about good management and, and mapping and understanding where the lands are and, and what that means to the state of Utah. I think it's an important step as we look to our role as a state in federalism, our duties are specific as a state and it's high time. We, we just follow through on that. So I appreciate the bill and I hope those the committee will, will join me in voting a yes for it.

You. You having your back at a letter from Representative Chait and Bishop. This is from 2015. They sent a letter to the GSA and said, do you have any update on that GSA inventory? They said, no. That's our latest inventory. That is the inventory of jurisdiction. This is about working as partners, understanding our jurisdiction. If you look in the other language of the bill, talks about multiple use, sustained yield, forage for wildlife, working with sportsmen, working with all of those various recreational interests, cultural, uh, uh, resources. That's all in the bill. That's the kind of management we have committed to. With that, I encourage the committee support.

I'll waive, Uh, uh, sums a waived by the maker of the motion.

Do we have, uh, testing in place along the Jordan River and at the inlet of the Great Salt Lake so that we can monitor the impact of this with regards to water quality?

Candace? Yeah. Um, thank you Mr. Chair. Yes, there is, uh, stream Flow or USGS stream gauges along the Jordan River. Um, I, I can find out more information specifics on what measures they have as far as water quality, but there are measurement devices along the way And, and I, I, I just hope that the division of water quality, to the extent that this goes into effect,

Thank you Mr. Speaker. I have here on my desk, uh, a study that we found. It was the, uh, most comprehensive study ever done on the subject of jurisdiction over federal areas within the states. Mr. Speaker, there was a VA compound in Pennsylvania that the children lived on the VA compound with their parents. But Uintah the local school, they didn't pay tax 'cause they lived on the VA compound. And one night the city council said you can't come to our schools 'cause they didn't pay tax. Got all the way up to President Eisenhower. He ordered the study of jurisdiction over federal areas within the states. There was a policy manual, the other volume was a legal manual. They identified four categories of jurisdiction, uh, exclusive, concurrent, partial, and then proprietary interest only. Following that, the General Services administration, the GSA did an inventory of every acre of land down to the 10th of an acre. And in most states, and particularly the Utah, the vast majority of the land, they said the federal government has their interest is a proprietary interest only. That they have no manner of the state's authority. They hold the land like any other landowner. In 2015 we asked Congressman, Bishop and Chafet to verify this jurisdictional status and they sent a letter, the GSA responded, that's the latest inventory of the federal land. With that Mr. Speaker, this bill simply maps landscape, scale lands to monitor them and measure the access, health and productivity of the land so that we can tell going forward our jurisdictional duty to protect the health, safety, welfare, the access, the health, and the productivity of the land. With that Mr. Speaker, be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you Mr. Speaker motion to amend a simple floor amendment in my name.

The motion is on line 2 96 after Federalism commission.

After Federalism Commission the words and the Natural Resources, agriculture and Environment Interim Committee.

We add the words and Natural Resources Environmental Inter Interim Committee. Did I get that right? Natural Resources, agriculture, natural Resources and Environment. Interim Agriculture, Interim Committee. Natural Resources. Agriculture, natural Resources. Agriculture Environment Interim committee. Correct. Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah, it's just, uh, besides going to the good representative from West Jordan's Federalism Commission, uh, we determined that it probably ought to be reported in interim to the Natural Resources Ag and Environment Committee as well.

Representative Ivory on that verbal amendment. That's A friendly amendment. Mr. Speaker, we intended to have that in the bill originally and appreciate the good sponsor, uh, making the amendment.

I waive Summation has been waived.

Thank you. By way of background. Well by way of background, in in the 1950s Eisenhower, uh, presidency, there was the dispute between our, our, uh, uh, federal agency and a local agency dealing with jurisdiction. So as a result, the president, uh, Eisenhower presidency directed that there be a jurisdiction report done on all the public lands across America. And that report is contained in these two books. In 2015, the Federalism Commission sent a letter to our representative, Bishop and Representative Chais, asking them if there's been an update to this. And the office of the Congressional Intergovernmental Affairs responded that this was still the existing law. There hadn't been an update. So the Federalism Commission completed an update to this jurisdictional report. It's contained here. So we have this issue related to jurisdiction. And why is jurisdiction important? Because what, uh, jurisdiction indicates is who has the stewardship to lead out in making the decisions and caring for the, the applicable area that's under consideration. There was, uh, an, an opportunity, uh, several years ago meeting with the director of the BLM National Director. We were talking about a problem we were having with our, uh, wild horses and, and, and mules that were, uh, impacting our public lands. They were outta control and, and, uh, passed the guidelines set federally, they weren't even being managed according to their guidelines. And we pushed against that and he said, I'll leave us alone. We have proprietary jurisdiction, proprietary jurisdiction. And we asked, well, what does proprietary jurisdiction mean? He couldn't answer that. But it's defined in this study. There's four types of jurisdiction. One is exclusive jurisdiction. That is the term that's applied when the federal government possesses all of the authority of the state under Article one, section eight, clause 17, for example, it becomes like a federal island within the state. The second sort of jurisdiction that the study identified was concurrent jurisdiction. That is a term applied in those instances where the state consents to share its authority with federal government. Again, these are federalism issues. The third part of jurisdiction is partial jurisdiction. This is a term applied in those instances wherein the state has granted to the federal government some small measure of a state's authority over an area. And finally, fourth, proprietary interest only is a fourth Juris proprietary jurisdiction is where the federal government has no legislative jurisdiction over the land. It merely holds it in a proprietary interest only having this quote the same rights in the land, as does any other landowner. So what we're doing in uh, house Bill 5 46 is we're seeking to hold the land owner accountable for their duty of care in the public space. Now, how does this affect the great Salt Lake? How does it affect our water ecosystem? How does it affect our air quality? How does it affect all these very sensitive environmental issues that we care greatly about? The health and, and health and vitality of our public lands is critical. And one of the challenging impacts we have right now related to what's taking place with the Great Salt Lake, for example, we need several hundred thousand acre feet in the lake. We're making progress. We've identified 160,000 acre feet approximately if we would do away with a non-native species rag mighty and, and Russian olive around the lake and feeding in the lake, that would put an additional 120,000 acre feet into the lake. It's remarkable. So this what we're, what this bill is, it's all about wise stewardship and, and what we're doing here is we're instructing Plip coal to take these proprietary proprietary principles that we have identified in this, in, in this, uh, this, this study and re create the maps, measure the the property monitor and report facts so that we can then work with our counterpart as a land steward in, in large, uh, large areas of 250,000 acres or more to improve the health, vitality and strength of our our lands. This is not a bill about ownership, it's not a bill about transferring public lands. It's a management bill. With that, I'll be glad to yield.

Thank you for giving me the time to, to get that on record. I will waive summation and move that house. Bill 5 46 pass.