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Show Sen. Moss Announces Plans to Sponsor Public Lands Bill Senator Frank E. Moss has announced his co-sponsorship of a bill to create a Board of Public Lands Appeals in the Department Depart-ment of the Interior. He said the bill has two purposes. pur-poses. 1) To make it unnecessary for those who wish to appeal public land rulings to journey to Washington Wash-ington to be heard. 2) To vest final judgment in public land disputes in the U. S. Court of Appeals rather than in the Secretary of the Interior. Senator Moss said, "Under the present law, a citizen wishing to dispute a ruling of the Bureau of Land Management or Geological Geo-logical Survey may have a hearing hear-ing in Washington if the Secretary Secre-tary of the Interior grants him one. The Secretary makes the final decision as to the disposition disposi-tion of the case. "This means in practice that the appellant and his legal counsel coun-sel must travel to Washington and have the case tried by the Department thta made the ruling rul-ing from which he wishes to appeal. "As 75 per cent of Utah's land is federally owned, the actions of the agencies which manage our public lands ' vitally affect many of our citizens. "The bill provides that the new board's decisions must be in accordance with the applicable regulations issued by the Secretary Secre-tary of the Interior, but authorizes author-izes the Board to call to his attention at-tention an inequitable, unjust, or unintended application of the law, so that he may have an op- i s portunity to amend the regulations. regula-tions. "The laws and regulations governing the use and disposition disposi-tion of our public lands should be applied uniformly and equitably. equit-ably. I believe the establishment of a Board of Land Appeals and the provision of a court review will accomplish this goal." The bill creates a Board consisting con-sisting of a chairman and two associate members to be appointed appoint-ed by the Secretary of Interior with the approval of President. Appeals from final decisions of the Board would be to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Circuit in which the land involved in-volved is situated. |
