Otter does a flip-flop on bill to sell federal land

BOISE – Congressman Butch Otter is withdrawing his support of legislation that proposes to sell millions of acres of federal land in the West to raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief, after being shelled by political opponents over his co-sponsorship of the bill.

“I was wrong,” Otter wrote in a statement distributed Thursday to Idaho media outlets. “It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.”

The Republican Otter, who represents Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, is running for governor this year.

In this case, he said, his critics – chiefly Jerry Brady, his Democratic opponent and a former eastern Idaho newspaper publisher – are “correct that this bill is not the right approach.”

Informed of Otter’s reversal on the land-sale bill, Brady replied: “I’ll be damned.”

“I’m glad Congressman Otter did the right thing,” he added in a statement. “However, it raises a serious question about whether he makes careful, reasoned decisions about serious matters. It took Otter l7 days and a lot of angry Idahoans who found his position to be completely unacceptable to come to his senses.”

Otter issued a statement Dec. 20 affirming his support for the measure after Brady called it “simply a forced sale of 15 percent of our state.”

The bill calls for setting aside up to 15 percent of U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land in Western states and offering it for sale beginning Oct. 1.

Other Idaho Democrats also criticized Otter’s support of the bill.

In a Dec. 27 op-ed article published by the Post Register newspaper in Idaho Falls, former governor and Interior secretary Cecil Andrus portrayed the bill as selling off Idaho to “high-dollar campaign contributors and the big-time power brokers” at the expense of hunters, anglers and campers.

“Once we sell off this land, it’s gone,” he wrote.

And state Sen. Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, said Thursday his party plans to sponsor a measure in the 2006 Legislature declaring territory in Idaho off-limits to most private buyers.

“The state of Idaho’s position is not to sell off federal lands – not for Katrina relief, not for anything,” Stennett said at the Statehouse.

The land sale legislation is sponsored by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and was introduced Sept. 21. Otter signed on as one of 13 co-sponsors.

“I joined Congressman Tancredo as an original co-sponsor of the bill, in part, because I was frustrated that Congress had identified no revenue source to cover the cost of the billions of dollars already appropriated for Hurricane Katrina relief,” Otter wrote in Thursday’s statement.

“At the same time, the measure provided a chance for another in a series of ‘shots across the bow’ on the issue of federal land management that I have supported during my time in Congress.”

Otter said he would continue seeking to have the federal government “carry its own weight” but had made a mistake in backing the Tancredo measure.

“I’ll take my lumps as they come,” Otter wrote. “No one in public life should consider themselves above error.”