By Mike Koshmrl

WyoFile.com

As the Wyoming Legislature met in early February, a lawmaker from the state’s southwest corner announced to his fellow representatives that the Trump administration had thrown out the Bureau of Land Management’s controversial Rock Springs resource management plan, completed just weeks before.

But word of its death, parroted by some in the media, was premature. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s “Unleashing American Energy” order, which triggered the erroneous reports, said that the final plan for 3.6 million acres of the Red Desert and checkerboard region would be “reviewed and, as appropriate, revised.” Months later, the federal resource management plan remains in effect.

“It’s still active. It’s not frozen,” BLM-Wyoming spokesman Micky Fisher told WyoFile. “We are now just identifying possible options.”

What path BLM takes to satisfy Burgum’s order is being decided at the agency’s Washington headquarters, Fisher said. Amending the plan through the established National Environmental Policy Act review process is among the options, policy experts have predicted.

Congress, however, could take away BLM’s ability to decide for itself. Wyoming’s lone U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman has brought such bills. Her staff did not respond to a request Monday seeking comment.

There has also been talk of using the Congressional Review Act to overturn the land-use plan, which was nearly 14 years in the making.

Yet another possible route for Congress to undo the plan, which caused a political furor during its draft stages, is to address it during the ongoing budget reconciliation process. That remains on the table.

Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, included two provisions in his draft reconciliation bill that address BLM resource management plans in Wyoming. One would not allow the BLM to “implement, administer or enforce” the RMP for its Rock Springs field office. The other includes the same prohibitionary language for BLM acting on its new plan for its Buffalo Field Office — which includes a coal-leasing ban in the Powder River Basin that’s now being litigated.

A markup of the draft reconciliation bill is scheduled for 8:15 a.m. MST on Tuesday. Ultimately, the provisions could lead to the Rock Springs and Buffalo plans being killed by only a simple majority vote — budget reconciliation isn’t subject to the filibuster, so only 51 votes are needed to get it through the U.S. Senate.

That’s a possibility that has conservation groups in Wyoming on guard. Congress — via budget reconciliation or otherwise — has never successfully thrown out a federal land-use plan, said Julia Stuble, Wyoming director for The Wilderness Society.

 “We can’t find an example of this kind of congressional overreach … being successful,” Stuble said. “We’ve certainly seen some attempts at this.”

It’s not a sure thing that the resource management plan provisions will carry forward. Provisions in budget reconciliation must have a direct effect on the federal budget, and it’s unclear if congressional rules would allow for RMP provisions.

If congressional Republicans do carry the provisions forward successfully, it’d set a bad precedent in Stuble’s view.

“I think anyone who believes that the small government closest to the people is the best form of government should be opposed to this kind of overreach from Congress,” she said. “Because land-use plans, like RMPs, are developed at a local level, with tons of input from elected officials, community members and stakeholders.”

Not everyone in Wyoming is on that page. Rep. Cody Wylie, a Republican representative from Rock Springs who prematurely announced the RMP’s death during the legislative session, believes that local interests were cut out of the BLM’s process. That decision charted the future of millions of acres of public land surrounding his legislative district.

“The way it was written, it was completely biased — not even conservation, but preservation,” Wylie said. “That’s just not realistic for the state of Wyoming. Our economy has run off of the extraction industries.”

Efforts to strike more of a balance between conservation and industrial development in the final plan didn’t alleviate his concerns.

Wylie prefers that Congress not throw the plan out entirely, so the BLM doesn’t have to start from scratch. An amendment to the 2024 plan, he said, would be ideal.

“Then they can [include] all that informational work that’s been done over the last 15 years,” he said.

But if congressional Republicans successfully throw out the new plan and BLM has to revert to its 1997 RMP, he won’t protest.

“I think we can live with that until we redo the RMP process,” Wylie said.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.