This whole amendment is a waste of time for multiple reasons.
1. Its putting the cart in front of the horse. Its meaningless BS unless the State actually were to acquire Federal Lands. That's highly unlikely given the fact that Utah's lawsuit seems to be going nowhere. The Western States attorney generals see no legal path forward for PLT. Governor Mead also made similar statements that PLT is not legal and would be a disaster for Wyoming.
2. Its a poorly written amendment, as a best case. The amendment would result in years and years of litigation and the only citizens it would do anything for are Attorneys.
3. It doesn't address the issue of creating another branch of State Lands. Hicks, Bebout, Miller, Stubson all keep saying that the lands wouldn't be administered by the OSLI, but nowhere have I seen any mention of a new State Lands Division. As such, any newly acquired Federal lands would fall under the same state regulations as we have currently...no camping, administrative closures, no campfires, and a free for all on proposed land exchanges (to name a few of the problems that aren't addressed).
4. They've attempted to amend it already so that there is "no net loss" of lands or access. That's a pretty broad generalization...I'm not interested in trading elk hunting property for pronghorn property, simply because there is "no net loss to access".
These are just a few items, in a laundry list of concerns, that this thrown together amendment lamely tries to address. It is a waste of time.
Its also total crap that the people of Wyoming were not involved wayyy earlier on this amendment. The Legislature asks the Sportsmen community to collaborate with them, but have no problem dropping this type of deal on us a couple months before the session.
If their goal by running this amendment is to get Sportsmen to the table, they're going about it all wrong.
I've heard through the grapevine that this amendment probably isn't going anywhere, but until its dead, I'm not going to pump the brakes on total opposition.
