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Show feiiistEits Eorgos rehear ei of feisrol Mtaiod Imi One of the prime objectives object-ives of PLUC (Public Land Users Coa.ition) organized right here inMilfordin 1977, and which attracted national membership, was the return of all public lands to the states. House Joint Resolution Resolu-tion 6, which has been passed by the 43rd Utah Legislature is a step in that direction. The resolution, which will be passed on to Washington, D.C., demands equal treatment treat-ment with other states, in that the federal government, under the constitution has no rights to control lands other than 100 square miles, which is the capitol, and such other lands as may be purchased with the consent of the states. Several Supreme Court decisions have supported eastern and southern states in gaining control of their public lands. The resolution, co -sponsored by Carl Saunders, Gary Peterson, DeMont Judd and Glen Brown is printed below. Similar legislation had been introduced in several other public land states in the west, prompted by PLUC's public lands act. If they are also passed, they should compliments -25, co-sponsored co-sponsored in the U.S. Legislature last year by Senators Garn and Hatch. They have vowed to reintroduce reintro-duce the bill in this sssion, H.J.R. 6 A JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL SESSION OF THE 43RD LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF UTAH MEMORIALIZING CONGRESS CON-GRESS TO RETURN DED-ERALLY DED-ERALLY OWNED PUBLIC LANDS TO THE STATE OF UTAH Be it resolved by the Legislature Legis-lature of the State of Utah: WHEREAS, only 32 of the land area of the State of Utah is in nonfederal ownership; owner-ship; WHEREAS, the very high percentage of federal land ownership in the state violates vio-lates the interests of the state in that, interalia, it seriously restricts the state's tax base, and limits nonfederal control of land within its borders of the state; WHEREAS, the people of the Territory of Utah were compelled, as a condition to statehood, to disclaim these lands in favor of the Federal Feder-al Government (Enabling Act, Section 3; Constitution Constitu-tion of Utah, Article III); WHEREAS, the Constitution Con-stitution of the United States provides that the Federal Government shall acquire lands within the states only through purchase and with the consent of the state legislature legis-lature for the establishment of forts, magazines, arsenals, arsen-als, dock-yards and other needful buildings (Constitution (Constitu-tion of the United States, Article I, Section 8); WHEREAS, the State of Utah has a rightful legal claim to the public lands within its borders retained retain-ed by the Federal Government Govern-ment because: (1) In the case of the State of Alabama, a renunciation re-nunciation of claim to unappropriated un-appropriated lands similar to that contained in the or-diannce or-diannce adopted by the Utah Constitutional Convention was held hv the fiiinremp Court of the United States to be "void and inoperative" because it denied to Alabama Ala-bama "an pnnal fnnHncr with the original states." (2) The State of Texas, when admitted to the Union in 1845, retained ownership of all unappropriated land within its borders, setting a further precedent which inured to the benefit of all states admitted later "on an equal footing;" and (3) The Northwest Ordinance Ordi-nance of 1787, adopted into the C onstitution by the reference refer-ence of Article VI to prior engagements of the Confederation, Con-federation, first proclaimed the "equal footing" doctrine, and the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo by which the territory, ter-ritory, including Utah, was acquired from Mexico, which is "the supreme law of the land" by virtue of Article VI, affirms it expressly as to the new states to be organized or-ganized therein; and WHEREAS, the people of the State of Utah are denied equal "privileges and im -munities" with those states which came into the Union without the Federal Government Govern-ment owning or withholding public lands. NOW, THEREFORE, BF IT RESOLVED by the 43rd Legislature of the State of Utah that the United States Congress be memorialized to relinquish the lands previously pre-viously disclaimed to the United States in order that the people of the State of Utah may enjoy the benefits of those lands. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, RESOL-VED, that the United States Congress be memorialized to enact legislation permitting per-mitting the state each year to select and have returned to it a specified quantity of lands from the public domain within its boundaries. bound-aries. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, RE-SOLVED, that the Secretary of State forward copies of this resolution to each member mem-ber of the Congressional delegation from the State of Utah, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, President pro tempore of the United States Senate, the Secretary of the Interior, and the President of the United States once every three months beginning May 15, 1979 and ending October 1, 1982. |