Eagletrail Mountains Wilderness, an area west of Phoenix managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Photo by Bob Wick | Bureau of Land Management
If Arizona loses even a single acre of land from its tax base, the state is doomed, Republican Sen. Mark Finchem told legislators on the Senate Federalism Committee in February.
That’s one of the many reasons that Finchem said he sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 1018, which encourages the transfer of federally-owned land within Arizona to state or private control.
Resolutions like SCR1018 don’t have the force of law, but rather are intended to send a message. In this case, the message is that legislators don’t believe the federal Bureau of Land Management is doing an adequate job of managing the land under its control — and that the ownership of that land should be transferred to the state so that it can be better managed and used for “economic purposes.”
Those purposes could include sales to private corporations or leases for things like coal mining and oil drilling.
“Once land is taken by the federal government, it is often squandered, locked away forever from economic production,” the resolution reads, avowing that, if the land isn’t making money, it is being misused.
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SCR1018 also renounces former President Joe Biden’s plan to conserve 30% of the country’s land and water by 2030, commonly referred to as the 30×30 plan. The Biden administration described the plan as a way to maintain biodiversity, preserve nature and provide equitable access to the outdoors, which was part of a larger global conservation effort.
Finchem’s resolution describes the plan as a land grab by the federal government, which he compared to the actions of Chinese dictator Mao Zedong when he created the People’s Republic of China in the mid-20th century.
“The Biden administration wanted to take 30% of privately held land and put it under control of the federal government,” Finchem said. “So, I ask anybody who’s watching this: What is the first step towards communism? The government that controls the land controls the people. The first thing that Mao did was confiscate land from everybody. It all became the people’s land.”
One of the guiding principles of the 30×30 plans was to honor private property rights and support voluntary stewardship efforts of private landowners.
Finchem didn’t mention that President Donald Trump immediately rescinded the 30×30 plan via executive order when he took office on Jan. 20.
The far-right Project 2025, the 900-page political instruction manual for the second Trump administration that was created by the conservative Heritage Fund, called for both the recission of the 30×30 plan and the transfer of federally-owned land to the states.
Upon taking office for his second term just over two months ago, Trump immediately began implementing the project’s directives, undermining his campaign claims that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 and hadn’t even read it.
Finchem is not only taking direction from Project 2025 and the Trump administration in his efforts to encourage the federal government to give up federally-owned land to the state.
On Jan. 27, Finchem’s friend, Daniel Martinez, a rancher who lives in Nevada but owns property in Greenlee County, gave the legislators on the Senate Federalism Committee a lesson of sorts in his interpretation of land rights law.
“He has come to be one of probably the most trustworthy individuals in my world when I have a question about what’s the history of land law in Arizona,” Finchem said of Martinez.
During a meandering 30-minute presentation full of outrageous and legally dubious claims, Martinez claimed that the federal government doesn’t have the authority to own land in Arizona in the first place, nor does it have police powers within its boundaries, because the state hasn’t specifically granted those rights to the federal government.
“It’s a fraud,” Martinez said. “It’s a sham that they’ve been telling. One of the 10 points of the communism manifesto says if you tell a lie long enough, people would begin to believe it. Well, everybody believes these agencies, that they own federal land.”
The quote that Martinez is referencing is not one of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto, but is often attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Martinez also called the Endangered Species Act a “fraud” and questioned why the U.S. government was enforcing it since he claimed it was international law. Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and it was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.
The committee didn’t hear about Martinez’s own conflicts with the federal government. In 2005, he sued employees of the U.S. Forest Service for what he described as “rustling” some 300 cattle from his ranch in Greenlee County, which borders the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. He accused the Forest Service employees of being involved in a “criminal enterprise.”
Martinez purchased the ranch and its cattle from his father in early 2004 but did not update his grazing rights permits for neighboring national forest land. After he continued to allow the cattle to graze on the federal land without following the rules of the original permit, renewing it or paying for it, the U.S. Forest Service ordered him to remove his cattle. Martinez claimed that preexisting water and forage rights accompanied the property, and said he wasn’t required to obtain a grazing permit.
Martinez refused to move his cattle, claiming not just that the Forest Service didn’t have the authority or jurisdiction to take them since, but that the federal government has no jurisdiction inside the boundaries of any of the 50 states. After sending him several warning letters, Forest Service employees rounded up his cattle, which he said were worth a total of $250,000, and sold them at auction.
Martinez went on to return mailed notices from the U.S. District Court for Arizona and the 9th District Court of Appeals claiming that the court didn’t have jurisdiction or that the judge wasn’t truly a judge unless he’d taken a specific oath and provided a copy of it to Martinez.
He also created his own “criminal complaint” laying out the alleged crimes of the Forest Service employees and called the legal process “a sham.”
The U.S. District Court for Arizona, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, years later, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims all dismissed Martinez’s cases.
“Most of the time I’ve had to defend myself in court,” Martinez said. “They (attorneys) won’t take me on because I bring up issues that they don’t want to discuss.”
In 2012, Martinez was listed as a speaker at the Independent Cattlemen of Wyoming Convention, where Cliven Bundy was scheduled to speak later the same day. In 2014, Bundy, a large group of his family members and other volunteer “militia” launched an armed standoff that successfully thwarted the efforts of the Bureau of Land Management to round up his cattle after he refused to pay for grazing rights on federal land for around 20 years.
The federal government owns about 42% of Arizona’s land, more than most other states. Around 13% of the state’s land is owned by the state land trust and 18% is privately owned. The remaining 27% is held in trust by the federal government on behalf of Native American tribes.
Zachary Santoyo, a member of Back Country Hunters and Anglers, argued during the Feb. 17 committee meeting that if the state takes over Arizona’s federal land, it would be less accessible and was likely to be sold instead of maintained for recreational use. He pointed out that Arizona’s state lands are managed specifically with the goal of generating the most money for the state, not to allow people to enjoy them, and that those lands can be closed to the public for various reasons and often are.
“Let’s call the land transfer movement what it is, an attempt to privatize our public lands,” Santoyo said.
He said he doesn’t believe most Arizonans would opt for strip malls, warehouses and data centers — even if they add to the tax base — to replace affordable outdoor space for recreation.
Sandy Bahr, the executive director of the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club, told the House Land, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee on March 24 that Arizonans have shown their support for federal protection of public lands in numerous polls. She pointed out that federal public lands bolster the economy through recreation opportunities, protect watersheds and help to provide clean air.
On Feb. 17, Finchem accused the people who praised the access that the federal government affords to its public lands and its management of those lands of “reprehensible misrepresentation.”
“Now, I don’t use the word lying very often, but some of the misrepresentation I’ve heard here today is epic,” he said, adding that he believes it’s time for Arizona to “take control of its own destiny, as it should have since 1912.”
Legislators on the House Land, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee voted 6-3 along party lines to send SCR1018 to the full House for a vote. It already passed through the Senate by a party line vote of 17-9 on March 5.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
