Ensuring Public Involvement in the Creation of National Monuments Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 1459. This bill is a solution in search of a problem. The reference to public participation in the name of the bill implies that there is a complete lack of public input in the process of designating these monuments, that these designations are dropping abruptly and arbitrarily out of the White House.

I will tell you, as the Representative of the newest national monument in the country, that is just not the case.

Before President Obama added Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands to the California Coastal National Monument, literally, the entire community in that area that I represent, all of the interested stakeholders were not only engaged, they had been engaged for several years.

That includes everyone from the business community, local tribes, conservation groups, and local governments, to schoolchildren in the area. There was no opposition to this proposal.

People came out to public meetings, and that included a public workshop that Secretary Sally Jewell had herself. She came out to the area. I assure you, there was no shortage of public input, no shortage of public participation, so this premise that there is a lack--an absence of public participation is, at least in my experience, totally false.

But so is the political narrative behind this bill, this idea that President Obama has somehow overreached in his exercise of executive authority. In fact,

President Obama has been much more judicious than many of his predecessors in deciding when to designate these monuments.

Prior to this President, 16 Presidents from both parties have used this authority under the Antiquities Act over the course of more than a century, and that ranges from President Roosevelt's designation of the Grand Canyon to 140,000 square miles of marine monument that were designated around Hawaii by President George W. Bush.

By comparison to his predecessors, President Obama has been very sparing in using the Antiquities Act, and he and his Cabinet have been very careful to bring the public in and to be very transparent, so the narrative about executive overreach is also false.

Limiting the Antiquities Act, as this bill would do--and I want to emphasize this--will harm jobs and economic growth; and in the case of my district, in Mendocino County, the community understood that one of the reasons for broad support of this monument designation is that the community understood it was good not just for the environment, but good for the economy.

The travel and tourism industry is one of Mendocino County's biggest industries, bringing in over $300 million annually, and everybody understood that this monument designation was going to significantly boost that part of our economy; and it is going to happen now, this summer, thanks to what President Obama did.

So why should a community like Mendocino County wait on a monument designation, especially in a situation like this, where there was no opposition to the proposal? No one is saying that Congress shouldn't play a role in protecting our public lands.

It is important to note that bills to protect this part of the Mendocino coast were introduced first more than 2 years ago, so the 112th Congress had a full chance at it.

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