Our View - Sunday

Last stand

Senators must slow anti-expansion stampede

Bam, bam, bam, bam. That’s not the faint echo of live-fire training at Fort Carson: It’s the sound of nails being hammered in the coffin of Piñon Canyon expansion. All hope is not lost, but the venture hangs by a thread after a series of political and public relations setbacks. Perhaps the only thing that can stay the execution — and buy the Army more time to make its case — is if Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar act more like senators and less like politicians.

Members of the U.S. House are expected to focus narrowly on pleasing district constituents, which is why Colorado Reps. John Salazar and Marilyn Musgrave amended a defense spending bill to forbid the Army to even study expansion. They’re pandering to ranchers’ fears and urban-rural tensions.

But senators are supposed to rise above the fray and dispassionately defend the larger interests of the nation and state. Expansion of Piñon Canyon may serve those interests. But we’ll never know, or have a balanced debate on the issue, unless the senators remove this poison pill from the final spending bill and use their influence to slow the process down enough to let cooler heads prevail.

We’re not convinced expansion is justified. And as stalwart defenders of property rights, and opponents of eminent domain abuse, we share some concerns of expansion opponents. But we’ve tried, despite the rhetoric flying around, to not slam the door on expansion before all the facts are presented and arguments are heard. And we would hate to see the Army routed, and options foreclosed, due to the lopsided public relations war. Holding back the anti-expansion stampede would be a true show of senatorial mettle.

Allard has yet to show any leadership on the issue, although he’s a short timer who can afford to take a little political heat for doing what’s right. He met with Army brass last week, but came away as cautiously noncommittal as he went in. It’s time for Allard to get off the fence.

If he just doesn’t believe expansion is justified, there’s no real downside to saying so. He’ll ride off into the sunset a hero to angry ranchers everywhere. But if the senator believes expansion is in the nation’s interest, failing to take a position and to fight for it is a disservice to the country and state (not to mention a city where he’s garnered a lot of support).

Salazar at least seems to be looking for ways to forestall the plan’s premature demise, even though some of his ideas could backfire. He sent a letter to the secretary of defense last week, throwing out ideas for possible win-wins and asking for a rapid response from the Pentagon. A few of the proposals — including one to permanently station a brigade at Piñon Canyon to boost to the local economy, and another involving cash payouts to local governments — border on the silly.

It may be another “moderate’s waffle” before Salazar takes the path of least resistance. But at least he seems to be taking a stab at salvaging this thing — which is more than can be said for other “leaders” in the state.

It’s now up to the Army to go on an information offensive and provide Allard, Salazar and other fence-sitters with a compelling reason to take a position. Unless the service can win more hearts and minds in Colorado, and rally more allies on Capitol Hill, it’s taps for Piñon Canyon expansion.

Udall takes wrong fork in the road

Roads were crisscrossing the American West long before the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service existed; rudimentary roads by today’s standards, perhaps, but roads nonetheless. When these agencies were created, the roads suddenly traversed “federal lands,” though local people and local governments assumed, correctly in our view, that this didn’t give Washington the power to close or regulate them.

That was then. This is now.

Today, public lands exclusionists are trying to close or restrict use of these roads as a way of curtailing access to federal lands. “Roadless” advocates are waging war on the miners, ranchers, loggers, and oil and gas developers who also make use of these roads, as well as Americans who recreate on motorized vehicles. The fight’s not really about roads, but about whether federal agencies maintain a multiple-use management philosophy balancing economic and aesthetic values — an approach that has served America well, for the most part.

With this in mind, we strongly object to an effort by Colorado Rep. Mark Udall, a Boulder Democrat seeking Wayne Allard’s Senate seat, to block the Bureau of Land Management from recognizing state and local claims to rural roads.

Udall “has proposed the amendment to the budget bill for the Interior Department forbidding the BLM from spending any money toward using administrative decisions to validate rights-of-way claims from states or counties,” the Associated Press reported last week. These rights of way mostly involve rural roads. “The claims are being made under an 1800s-era law called Revised Statute 2477 that allowed roads to be built across federally controlled land. That statute was reversed in the 1970s, but claims that can be justified are still valid.”

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton gave BLM authority to validate the claims. Udall is trying to reverse Norton, making it harder for states and counties to maintain control of RS-2477 roads. Udall and his extremist allies say Congress should validate these claims. But Congress has twice recognized counties’ rights to these roads.

This suggests Udall cares little about the rights of rural Westerners to use byways their great-grandfathers used before Washington “owned” everything, and that he will cater to green extremists and the anti-access elitists if he ever becomes senator. Coloradans wanting to keep their roads and lands open and accessible should keep that in mind.