Provision for mandatory public land sales in Republicans’ big budget bill hits a roadblock after Senate parliamentarian’s ruling

Changes are coming to Senate Republicans’ proposal to sell off millions of acres of federal public land in the West after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the provision violated a legislative rule. 

The provision was one of several from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee ruled out by Elizabeth MacDonough, who has served as the parliamentarian since 2012, according to a press release from Democrats in the Senate Budget Committee. The parliamentarian — often described as a referee — is a nonpartisan, appointed advisor who offers guidance on Senate rules and procedures.  

In this case, MacDonough found that the committee’s mandatory sale of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in 11 states violated the Byrd Rule, which requires all items in a reconciliation package to have a direct and substantive impact on federal spending or revenues. 

In addition to the land sales, the Senate committee’s provisions regarding construction of a mining road in Alaska, National Environmental Policy Act compliance for offshore oil and gas projects, geothermal leasing requirements and more were found improper under the rule.    

The ruling means Senate Republicans must either strip the provisions or secure a 60-vote supermajority — with Republicans holding 53 seats in the Senate — if the provisions stay in. Committee Chair Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who introduced the land sales in the budget, reportedly has offered an updated version of the bill to the parliamentarian. 

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On Monday night, Lee posted on X that “the Byrd Rule limits what can go into the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward.” 

“We’re just getting started,” he wrote. 

In the post, Lee wrote that he would exclude Forest Service land from the sales and “significantly reduce” the amount of Bureau of Land Management land in the bill by making only land within 5 miles of population centers eligible for sale. 

In the initial proposal, the bill would have required the sale of between 0.5% and 0.75% of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands over the next five years for housing. These percentages equated to between  1.2 million and 1.8 million acres of Bureau land and between 811,000 and 1.2 million acres of Forest Service land. The provision exempted parcels with certain protective designations, such as national monuments, national parks, and land with “valid existing rights” such as mining claims and oil and gas leases.” 

Lee wrote in his post that his new plan will “protect our farmers, ranchers and recreational users.”

“They come first,” he added.

Western Slope lawmakers dig in on public lands

Democrats and public lands advocates representing outdoor recreation, wildlife and conservation have balked at not only the initial proposal, which could have seen over 14 million acres of Colorado public land eligible for land sales, but at the sale of any public lands. 

“We may have won this battle, but we must keep fighting to keep this radical proposal out of the bill,” wrote a spokesperson from Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet’s office in an email to the Vail Daily following the parliamentarian’s ruling.  

Colorado Reps. Joe Neguse, a Democrat representing District 2, and Jeff Hurd, a Republican representing District 3, issued a joint statement to the press on Tuesday, also vowing to fight for public land sales to stay out of the reconciliation bill. 

“As consideration of the budget reconciliation bill continues, we must remain united in ensuring that its text excludes provisions that would permit the widespread sale or transfer of these treasured places,” the statement read.  “Neither of our districts asked for this land sale, and any efforts to sell off these shared spaces are deeply unpopular with the hunters, ranchers, fishermen, recreationists, conservationists, and outdoor enthusiasts we are proud to represent in Congress.”

The Western Slope lawmakers’ statement added that “public lands are not for sale” and decisions about public lands should be made by local communities. 

The Representatives both voted and rallied against land sales included in the House portion of the bill — Hurd being the only Republican in the House Natural Resources committee to do so. Ultimately, the House proposal — which would have mandated the sale of around half a million acres in Utah and Nevada — was stripped from the reconciliation bill’s final version. 

After it passes the Senate, the reconciliation bill will face another House vote before it heads to the President’s desk.

Federal land sales would have a local impact 

On Monday, before the Senate parliamentarian issued her ruling, Pitkin County-based nonprofit EcoFlight took representatives from local governments, organizations, media companies and more on a flight of the Roaring Fork Valley to share a different view of the lands that could have been sold under the original proposal. 

On the flight, conversations revolved around the value that public lands adjacent to the community provide in terms of recreation, revenue, wildlife habitat and migration corridors, ranching and protection of vulnerable landscapes and watersheds. 

In Colorado, the Forest Service manages 16 million acres and the Bureau 8.3 million acres — the majority of which are on the Western Slope and include significant recreation access for hunters, bikers, climbers, water users and hikers. 

“Recreation on public land contributes over 1.2 trillion dollars per year to the U.S. economy and supports over 5 million jobs,” said Whitton Feer, who piloted Monday’s flight. “Selling this land would generate far less money and could only do so once, as any future sales would not affect the budget deficit. The economic value of keeping land public far outweighs the value that land would hold on the market.”

Additionally, the sale of these lands and potential development could have serious downstream environmental impacts, Feer added. 

The value of public lands is amplified in mountain communities like the Roaring Fork Valley, where outdoor recreation and the ski industry, ranching and hunting drive the economy, said Erin Riccio, the advocacy director for the Carbondale-based nonprofit Wilderness Workshop. 

“The impact to our community would be huge,” Riccio said. “And I think the impact to our environment would be huge as well because our public lands also contain really important wildlife habitat, recreation areas, wildlands that we want to protect for future generations, scenery and more.”

“I think it’s shortsighted to sacrifice these places, Riccio added. 

While the initial budget proposal purported to be a solution to the country’s housing crisis, several community members, including Pitkin County Commissioner Jeffrey Woodruff, commented on how unsuitable many of the originally eligible parcels would be for housing development.

“I don’t think with this proposal that we would end up with employee housing,” Woodruff said, adding that any development outside of urban growth boundaries, specifically for multi-family housing and the infrastructure required for those projects, is “really expensive.”

The proposal also lacked guardrails to ensure it would be affordable housing developed through the sales of the eligible land, Riccio said.

Riccio added that while housing is how the bill has been framed, “from our standpoint, it’s clear it goes beyond housing.” 

While the budget process and public land sale proposal are evolving quickly and leaving a lot unknown, Lea Linse-Hirro, the conservation policy director for EcoFlight, said on Tuesday that “the sell-off of any public land sets a precedent that would threaten all public land in the future.”  

“Once we lose these places, we are never getting them back,” Linse-Hirro said. “There is no room for compromise here.”