$10,000,000 And Not A Plan In Sight

Update: To download the audio copy of my interview, click here.
This morning I was on the Scott Hennen Show opposite state Senator Tracy Potter, the man in charge of the newly-designated, half a million acre “National Heritage Area” in North Dakota (ready my previous posts on this subject here). Watch this post as I’ll put up the audio of it once it is available.
It was an interesting debate, with Tracy Potter claiming that there’s been a lot of “misrepresentation” about the issue by myself and others.
What interested me about the debate was Potter’s assurances that nobody was going to be managing the private land, despite the fact that the land owners weren’t notified about this designation and don’t have any way to opt out. Yet right after Potter made those assurances, he talked about the “management plan” his foundation would be coming up with for the area.
If the point isn’t to manage the private land, why is Potter coming up with a “management plan”?
It’s also interesting to hear Potter say that he’s not sure what they’re going to do with this land designation, or what they’ll do with the $10 million in federal funding that will be appropriated for instituting a management plan for it. I wish I could go to Congress and come back with $10 million without really having to tell them how I’m going to spend it. Of course, according to Potter his group has to submit their management plan to Congress before they can get their funding, but his group is already getting (per his own admission) some $160,000 to hold public hearings to get land owners to “opt in” to a management plan (as if they have a choice).
Seems to me like public hearings are something to be held before the federal government designates half a million acres of private land to a quasi-government, quasi-private foundation for management.
During the interview Potter affected an “aw shucks, what’s the big deal?” attitude about this. That’s deceptive. This is a big deal. Land owners who previously didn’t have to worry about anyone managing their plans for them now have to keep an eye on Senator Tracy Potter and his well-funded (by our federal tax dollars) group to make sure that they don’t develop some management plan that further impugns their property rights.