10/3/03 - Havre Daily News
Our View: Rehberg's bill would violate property rights
U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg portrays himself as the champion of private property rights when he pushes his bill to remove private property from within the boundary of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.
The fact is: Rehberg's bill would amount to a violation of private property rights if it were passed in Congress.
Rehberg's bill, the subject of a hearing by the House sub-committee on national parks, recreation and public lands earlier this week, would not only remove private land from within the monument boundaries. It essentially would require that those landowners who want to sell their land to the federal government would need an act of Congress to do so.
Under the bill, the landowner could sell his or her land to the federal government. But the Bureau of Land Management couldn't add it to the monument without an act of Congress. Why would the BLM want to buy the land if it couldn't be added to the monument?
That's a hurdle that other owners of property property don't have to face when selling their land.
The presidential proclamation creating the monument already assures that the owners of private property within the monument have not lost their ability to use their land as they see fit. Rehberg's bill would change that.
It should also be noted that the Missouri Breaks monument is not the only national monument that has private property within its boundaries. Because of that, this bill won't pass. Congress isn't going to open up a can of worms by making itself a participant everytime someone with land inside a monument's boundaries wanted to sell the land to a federal agency.
"This bill makes Congress micromanage all of these monuments," said Breaks advocate Hugo Tureck, who ranches about 25 miles outside of the monument. "...And Congress can't get anything done now. Think of the extra work it's putting on Congress to buy this land."
It's time for Rehberg to stop pandering to a small group of suspicious people as well as this country's private property extremists and drop this issue. There's a lot more important work in Washington to be done.
