My first letter to Frank

I’m going to be curious to see when and how I get a response to this. Here was an opportunity to reach out and touch my newly and duly elected (despite my strenuous objections and serious reservations) Congressman. He has no Salisbury office yet, but e-mail is actually better anyhow.

The bill in question is S.22, which I wrote about last Friday.

On Sunday, the Senate allowed S.22, The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, to proceed by voting for cloture. Thus, it’s expected to get a vote in your chamber later this week, although my bet is that even more will be added to the 1,200-plus pages the bill already contains.

There are three main concerns I have with this legislation. First of all, as an omnibus bill there’s more than just land management added. One instance is the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, which was a bill that didn’t get passed last session. The Senate sponsor decided to add this into the bill in hopes of sneaking it through without as much debate. Many of your fellow House members are notorious for doing the same thing to “must-pass” bills.

Secondly, one provision of S.22 pulls an estimated 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil off the market by restricting the use of the land overhead in Wyoming. At a time when we have energy companies willing to invest their own capital into our economy in order to secure new supplies, taking them “off the market”, so to speak, seems like a poor move given both our economic situation and dependence on foreign energy supplies. While I know you favor alternatives in energy, the technology isn’t ready for a switchover and may not be for some time.

My third concern comes out of respect for private property rights. By placing areas under federal control (such as “wild and scenic” rivers, for example) many of those new restrictions negatively impact landowners whose plans for their private property would be altered because they would run afoul of federal dictates. Moreover, any privately-held land directly acquired by governmental entities comes off the local property tax rolls, dealing a blow to the financial well-being of local governments.

I hope you’ll take these arguments into consideration and vote against the passage of S.22 through the House.

While it may do just as much good as my brief conversations on Friday with the staffers of Senators Cardin and Mikulski (both of whom voted for cloture), I decided to make my feelings known. It’s a good chance for Frank to establish those “independent” bonafides he campaigned on, because as I write this he hasn’t gone against his party brethren yet in any vote.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael