Rep. Pombo steers public lands to private hands

Bill Berkowitz
November 23, 2005

DeLay clone sponsors legislation putting America's public lands up for grabs

Rep. Richard Pombo, a California Republican who represents the state's 11th District and who is the chair of the House Resources Committee is making a name for himself these days by offering up a series controversial bills relating to land use in America's national parks and other critical environmental issues. In a recent iteration of the House budget bill (Deficit Reduction Act of 2005), Pombo authored a proposal that would have opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling (that provision was removed from the budget reconciliation bill but it could still be re-inserted). Pombo also made headlines when he recently proposed privatizing 15 of America's national parks. He later claimed to be only joking!

Now it appears that Pombo is no longer joking. The former real estate salesman now in his seventh term in Congress came up with another doozy of a proposal that was tucked deep into the same 187-page House budget bill in a section called "Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Mining."