Despite the best efforts of our friends and neighbors from the extreme right wing of the political spectrum, Cliven Bundy, Larry Moses, and Michele Fiore, Nevada will not be forcing the US government to give up public land in Nevada to the state, or to private interests.
Ms. Fiore’s Assembly Bill 408, which purported to assert Nevada sovereignty over its public land, has gone down in flames. The Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, Agriculture and Mining heard arguments on the Bill on April 1, 2015.
As has been argued repeatedly in these pages, and as was argued in front of the Committee, a fairly good-sized group of local citizens have long advanced a harebrained legal theory to the effect that the US government is controlling and maintaining public land in Nevada illegally. Although he did not speak before the Committee, Cliven Bundy did lead a group of about 100 people to Carson City to demonstrate in favor of the bill.
Fortunately, the Nevada Legislature’s chief attorney, Brenda Erodes, completely destroyed this cock-eyed theory in a well documented, well written ten-page legal brief, which concluded that Assembly Bill 408 is unconstitutional and that the US government’s claims on public land in Nevada are legitimate. The Committee did not report the Bill, and it is very likely to die in Committee.
For all of you who would like to see our public lands privatized, and forever kept from those of us who love to camp, fish, and hunt without first having to secure permission from private “ranchers,” or worse yet, from faceless corporations, I am sorry. Our public lands are destined to remain public for just a little while longer.
Keith A. Grimes
