Governors Signal Openness to Selling Federal Land for Housing

Three Western governors said Monday they’re open to selling off federal lands for housing and other purposes, but with limits.

Some growing communities in Wyoming are surrounded by federal lands, and they should be able to expand onto lands now owned by the federal government on a “piece-by-piece basis,” said Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R), speaking to reporters at the Western Governors Association annual meeting in Santa Fe, N.M.

The Interior and Housing and Urban Development departments are considering a plan to transfer federal land to the states to allow new homes to be built. The Senate is also considering a provision of the GOP tax cut package that would require the Interior and Agriculture departments to sell, or dispose of, more than 2 million acres of federal land nationwide, including national forest land.

The federal government owns more than 640 million acres of land nationwide, 245 million of which is managed by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and about 193 million acres are managed by the US Forest Service.

Federal land sales would help clear-up the “checkerboard” pattern of land ownership in parts of the West, Gordon said.

In giant swaths of the region, the federal government owns numerous individual sections of land that are adjacent to same-sized sections of private or state land. That pattern inhibits access to federal land and makes managing large areas difficult, he said.

But New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said large-scale public lands sales are “likely a nonstarter in New Mexico.”

“The process that has been described so far is a problem for a state like New Mexico,” where residents value federal lands access, she said. “Selling that to the private sector without a process, without putting New Mexicans first, would be at least for me as a governor problematic.”

Lujan Grisham said she supports federal land transfers for housing, but only with a “smart, narrow focus.”

The state’s Democratic leadership will “lean in” on public lands protection, which may be the focus of a possible special session of the New Mexico Legislature, Lujan Grisham said.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) also said he’s open to using some federal lands for housing, but a full-scale sell-off “would be a devastating blow to our quality of life as well as our economy.”