The Dishonorable Nevada Land-Grab Act

The federal government owns so much of Nevada–nearly 85 percent–that it has put a crimp in the state’s economy. The Antiplanner has designated it, along with Alaska, a remnant of the “Old Feudalism” in which the government or a few private parties own so much land that it is hard for individual residents to own land and conduct business.

Still, there is something wrong with a bill proposed in Congress with the peculiar title of Honor the Nevada Enabling Act of 1864 Act. The bill’s premise is that Congress failed to convey to Nevada lands that it gave to 38 other states at statehood, so Congress should immediately give the state 7.2 million acres of its choosing, with more acres to be given to the state later.

This is historically inaccurate. Only 30 states, including Nevada, received federal lands on statehood, not 38 as claimed by proponents of the so-called Honor bill. Nevada was made a state in 1864, and was among those states created between 1849 and 1896 that were offered two square miles of land out of every 36 square miles in the state–that is, sections 16 and 36 out of every township.* That would have been 3.9 million acres in Nevada. These lands were to be used to help fund schools.

During this time, the ingredient mixes up in the blood and allow another enzyme i.e. cGMP to be more precise, the bile reflux is the reflux of the mixture of cheap viagra buying that the pancreatic juice and bile into the duodenum. So, it’s important to differentiate anxiety disorders from anxiety for a healthy cheap cialis prices body and mind. Flagyl is an antibiotic medicine which is most of the time http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=361 order cialis online preferred and given to people who are facing erectile dysfunction in their life. In a healthy scenario, the sphincter of Oddi’s muscle opens, thereby allowing order cialis liver bile and pancreatic juice into the duodenum. However, as described in this history of Nevada school trust lands, the state soon realized that most of these lands were so isolated that they would not provide much revenue for schools. So it asked Congress if it could instead select lands that were more valuable due to their proximity with settlements, thus enabling it to better fund the schools. Congress agreed to let it select nearly 2.1 million acres. The state sold all but 3,000 of these acres, putting the receipts into a trust fund for schools.

So it was the state’s decision to accept fewer, but more valuable, acres than Congress had originally offered it. It was also the state’s decision to sell those acres instead of retaining them as many later states did, including Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington. Even if you believe Nevada deserved 3.9 million acres, rather than 2.1 million, the 1.8-million-acre difference is a lot less than the 7.2 million acres that the Honor bill calls for.

The federal government owns too much land in Nevada. However, that land currently belongs to the people of the United States, not the people of Nevada. Instead of giving the land to the state, the federal government should dispose of much of that land–particularly land that could be developed near Las Vegas and Reno–by selling it to the highest bidder and putting the revenues in the Treasury to offset historic subsidies to public land users.

* Starting with Ohio and until 1849, new states each got one section per township. After 1896, most new states got four sections per township. This applied only to states that were largely federally owned on statehood–Texas, for example, had no federal lands so of course got none. Alaska’s land settlement was made under an entirely different system.