Say Anything Blog

Those of you who have been following the National Heritage Area controversy here in North Dakota (read all of my posts on the subject here) you know that federal land designation obtained by Senator Byron Dorgan and state Senator Tracy Potter (who got caught lying to Congress about public support for the designation in North Dakota) didn’t include an opt-out provision for land owners caught up in the designation.

Land owners, I’d remind you, who were never notified of this land designation to begin with.

Now that Dorgan and his fellow liberals have been caught trying to put one over on North Dakota land owners the Senator is trying to appear as though he’s riding to the rescue of land owners by giving them an opt-out option in an amendment to the land designation legislation.  He said as much to the Bismarck Tribune.

The problem?  The lack of an opt-out provision in the bill was just the smallest of a multitude of problems with the land designation.

As people such as myself and the fine folks at groups like the North Dakota Policy Council and the North Dakota Farm Bureau have been pointing out for some time now, the problem with this land designation isn’t that property owners couldn’t opt-out of it.  The problem, as it was put by the protesters at the first public meeting about this land designation, is that whether land owners are opt-out of the designation or not they still have to babysit the private foundation that’s getting millions of our tax dollars to develop a management plan for this area.

Remember that Tracy Potter’s Northern Plains Heritage Foundation is getting $10 million to develop and promote (read: lobby for) a “management plan” for this 4.7 million acre land designation.  The group will use that money to take their plan to every local government meeting and lobby for it.  And if land owners want to oppose the provisions of that management plan, they have to show up at their own expense and oppose it.

Because of this land designation, whether land owners are opted-out or not, they still have to fight their own tax dollars to make sure that the people doing the “planning” under this designation don’t convince local governing entities to pass ordinances or regulations contrary to the interests of land owners.

Lobbying government, local or national, is part of the democratic process.  But if the liberals at the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation want to lobby for certain land management practices they shouldn’t get to do it with our tax dollars.