Idaho wilderness bills await Craig’s comment

BOISE – Key Senate Democrats are waiting to see what Sen. Larry Craig says Wednesday about a pair of bills designating new wilderness areas in Idaho before they declare publicly whether they’ll back the measures.

Craig, R-Idaho, will chair a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday morning of the Senate Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee to hear testimony on a House-passed bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, to create new wilderness areas in the Boulder and White Clouds mountains of central Idaho, and on a measure sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, to create new wilderness in the state’s remote southwestern Owyhee desert.

Both bills have split the conservation community for the myriad potential trade-offs they include, from privatizing public lands and allowing motorized vehicle access, to banning mountain biking and undercutting wild and scenic rivers protection.

Democrats on the Senate Energy Committee are being lobbied by warring green groups over the measures, but the ranking member on the panel, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, has not said which way his caucus is leaning.

“Senator Bingaman has not really decided what his position is, and part of the reason he hasn’t is because Senator Craig hasn’t taken a position,” Bill Wicker, Bingaman’s spokesman on the energy committee, said Monday. “The etiquette around here is you wait to see how the lead senator or the state delegation views a public lands bill before you publicly discuss it yourself.”

Craig has been mum on both bills because he’s waiting to hear what supporters and opponents have to say at Wednesday’s hearing, according to his spokesman.

“Larry will be interested to see what the minority does as well,” said Dan Whiting, Craig’s press secretary in Washington, D.C. “We haven’t heard anything from the minority on Owyhee, but (Simpson’s bill) had floor debate in the House and the minority certainly had some problems with it there.”

House Democrats blasted Simpson’s bill during the brief July 24 floor debate prior to passage. The handful of minority party lawmakers in the chamber complained many of the provisions would weaken wilderness protection.

While Simpson’s bill is a modified version of previously introduced measures, Crapo’s Owyhee legislation was introduced for the first time Aug. 3, just as lawmakers left on a monthlong recess. Democrats are still studying both measures, said Wicker.

“There are quite a number of provisions in both bills that we’re likely to have questions about,” he said. “There are some land disposal provisions in the central Idaho bill that have raised concerns and we have some questions on land management provisions on the Owyhee bill because it’s a very atypical way that’s been put together.”

Whiting said Simpson’s bill may have the best chance of passage before this Congress adjourns for the year because it’s familiar to many lawmakers, while Crapo’s measure is brand new and has not cleared either chamber.

But both bills could be blocked from a Senate floor vote by a parliamentary “hold” on all public lands legislation by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., since they authorize hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to ranchers and local governments affected by the wilderness designations. A hold is a Senate privilege that allows a single lawmaker to prevent a bill from coming to the floor for a vote.

“The reason he objects to these types of bills is that they are authorizing new spending in programs without going back and cutting existing spending to offset the cost,” said Coburn’s spokesman, Aaron Cooper. “A normal American can’t authorize new money for spending like Congress does, they have to sit down and make a tough decision on where to cut. Senator Coburn believes Congress should do the same thing.”

Coburn’s hold on public lands bills has prevented a floor vote on Craig’s separate bill to conserve land in the Boise foothills through a federal land exchange since April, when it was placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar.