Letter to the Editor: Feds Stole State Lands of the West

Vicki Cool, a precinct committeeman with the Gila County Republican Committee, recently wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Payson Round-Up. It was published on April 25, 2014.

Dear Editor:

Only Fox News covered the Bundy/Nevada controversy, but told only half the story. There are 11 states in the West that never got their land after they got statehood. Arizona is one of them.

If this is an issue you care about, go to info@americanlandscouncil.org or call 801-ALC-6622.

You might consider how those who live in New York would pay for their schools if 80 percent of their land was owned and mismanaged by the Forest Service or BLM. Have you ever heard of PILT (payment in lieu of taxes)? They are made by the federal government to the states and are a fraction of what taxes would be were the land held in private ownership.

I guess those of us who live in the West are considered to be too inept to manage and profit from our own land. Perhaps we need to have all western lands covered with those lovely windmills and solar panels. Of course we will get to live with the desert tortoise and Mexican wolves. Those mistakenly endangered species will determine the use of our lands: no copper mining, no lumbering, no ranching, and no fracking. All we get are illegals coming across federal land to use our schools, hospitals, jails, benefits and take our jobs.

Vicki Cool