Say Anything Blog

For previous updates on North Dakota’s National Heritage Areas situation, click here.  And tune in to the Say Anything Show tonight at 8:00pm central time when I’ll be talking to the American Policy Center’s Tom DeWeese about National Heritage Areas in Tennessee.  Supporters of North Dakota’s NHA have pointed to Tennessee as an example of how NHA’s don’t hurt property rights.  Mr. DeWeese will tell us that just isn’t true,

According to the North Dakota Policy Council, the 500,000 acre National Heritage Area - recently created in North Dakota by Congress via legislation introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan which doesn’t allow land owners to opt out - will be managed in part by input from the Sierra Club.

The time for giving input on whether or not more than 500,000 acres of private land should be designated as the Northern Plains National Heritage Area is past – it was a discussion in which few had a chance to take part. However, the time for giving input on the management plan is coming and the Sierra Club figures to be at the forefront.

Northern Plains Heritage Foundation (NPHF) board member Signe Snortland has been delegated the task of organizing public input on the management plan. Snortland, former state archeologist and current employee of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, was recruited to the board.

“I was working with the Sierra Club on a similar idea (to the NHA designation) to try and I got a call that there was already a board in existence and they had identified me as a potential member,” Snortland said. “We were looking to see if there would be a way to identify cultural resources along the Missouri River to work with landowners to protect them (the cultural resources).”

However, much more than a mere study has taken place. In March, President Barack Obama signed into law H.R. 146 – which contains the legislation creating the Northern Plains Heritage Area. Currently, the area includes the entirety of Burleigh, Oliver, McLean, Mercer and Morton Counties. With the designation the NPHF board has the authority to write a management plan for the area which includes recommending “policies and strategies for resource management including the development of intergovernmental and interagency agreements to protect, enhance, interpret, fund, manage, and develop the natural, historical, cultural, educational, scenic, and recreational resources of the Heritage Area.”

While the NPHF board cannot directly change land use policies, there is potential to sway local governing authorities with its recommendations. The NPHF board will also have up to $1 million each year at its disposal to carry out the goals set forth in the management plan. A lot of entities will be seeking a piece of the pie, including a group hostile to property rights, the Sierra Club.

In short, what has happened here is a group funded exclusively, to my knowledge, by your federal tax dollars went before Congress to testify in favor of a bill creating a 500,000 acre land designation in North Dakota with no notice to the land owners that they were being included and no way for them to opt out.  They got that designation, and now they’ll get up to $1,000,000 in your tax dollars a year to essentially lobby local government into managing this land designation according to their wishes and the wishes of special interest groups like the Sierra Club.

It’s bad enough that taxpayers in general are being forced to fund this foolishness, but imagine if you were one of the land owners caught up in this debacle.  Not only are they stuck in a land designation they can’t get out of, their own tax dollars were used to lobby for the designation and will be used to lobby for management plans for the land designation.

Meaning property owners caught up in this have to fight against their own tax dollars to avoid having their land managed in ways they might not want.

Fair?  Not even a little bit.  But that’s how big government liberalism works.  They know what’s best for you and your property, and they aren’t afraid to make you pay them to manage your life and property for you.