Update: Sen. Mike Lee withdrew his public land sale bill entirely Saturday night under opposition from Republicans in western states.
Republicans in the U.S. Senate are retooling their controversial proposal to sell-off Western public lands.
It was previously stripped from the budget bill for violating Senate rules.
Utah Senator Mike Lee is behind the proposal and says it’s needed to address housing shortages in western communities.
Lee’s new effort leaves forest service land untouched and limits land sales to within five miles of a population center.
If passed, it would sell off more than 160 million acres of public land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management in 11 western states, including Arizona.
Like the previous plan, the effort excludes national parks and monuments, as well as wilderness and other areas with additional federal protections.
The proposal has raised an outcry across the political spectrum, including from hunters, anglers, and environmental groups.
Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity says it's essentially a stripped-down version of Lee’s prior proposal.
“But nonetheless, this new language is still the largest attack that we've seen on public lands in U.S. history," Jordahl says. "If you look at a map of this proposal, it lights up huge swaths of Arizona for permanent privatization."
Jordahl says it’s unclear if the new proposal will also be struck for violating Senate rules on what a budget bill can contain.
The Senate parliamentarian determined that the first plan did not comply with the "Byrd rule," which limits the kinds of measures that can be included in a budget reconciliation bill.
Unlike other bills moving through the Senate, budget reconciliation bills can be passed just once a year and cannot be required to surpass a 60-vote filibuster.
Lee’s office did not immediately respond to KNAU’s request for comment.
