Latest news with #publicland
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Senate to Add Public Land Sales to Help Pay for Trump's Tax Cuts
Senate Republicans plan to add the sale of public land into their version of President Donald Trump's massive package of tax cuts, according to a key lawmaker. Senator Mike Lee, the chairman of the committee with jurisdiction of energy and public land, told reporters Wednesday that a version of the plan would be included in their portion of the budget bill the panel plans to make public, likely on Monday.
E&E News
30-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Interior moves closer to allowing drilling in Alaskan reserve
The Trump administration took steps this week toward reopening the country's largest tract of largely undisturbed public land to oil and gas drilling. The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed its review on Wednesday of a draft rule to rescind a Biden-era regulation that banned drilling on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). The draft rule now returns to the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which would need to publish the proposal in the Federal Register and take public comment before finalizing. BLM said in a statement to POLITICO's E&E News that it plans to pursue removal of the Biden-era rule, but it did not provide a timeline. The Office of Management and Budget, which houses OIRA, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Advertisement The move comes amid the Trump administration's aggressive push to increase oil and gas activity on U.S. lands. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered agencies to encourage fossil fuel production to 'unleash' American energy, and the administration has also drastically cut environmental review timelines for energy projects.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
IMBA Addresses Public Lands Sell-Off Proposal
The International Mountain Bicycling Association has issued a statement concerning a House Committee on Natural Resources amendment to the reconciliation bill that would sell off nearly 500,000 acres of public land in Utah and Nevada. 'IMBA is concerned that proposed public land disposal sales have not allowed for proper public review to assess the value of recreation against the intended goal of the sale. IMBA discourages large-scale public land sales. Public lands are essential for trails, outdoor recreation, and healthy communities. Any proposed sale should carefully consider impacts to recreation and overall landscape health, and should include the opportunity for public review and public comment.'- Todd Keller, Director of Government Affairs, International Mountain Bicycling Association On May 7 the House Natural Resources Committee passed a reconciliation bill that, if it progresses and passes into law, would in part sell off nearly half a million acres of land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service. That public land includes 300 acres adjacent to Zion National Monument in Utah and land surrounding Las Vegas, Nevada. The public land sell provision of the full reconciliation bill was added after midnight on the morning of the vote and had not been included in the initial draft, avoiding public scrutiny and debate. The land sell amendment is part of the reconciliation package that the Trump Administration's "Big, Beautiful Bill" that Republicans say could add $18.5 billion in revenue and savings to help fund tax cuts in the bill. See a map of the proposed public land to be sold here. Supporters of the proposed bill argue that federal land should be monetized to support local communities and the country, and that the land sold off would be a small percentage of federally owned land. Detractors say that allowing this bill to pass would pave the way for more federal land to be sold, thereby denying the public use of it to recreated and hunt, destroy critical habitat for wildlife, and profit only private citizens wealthy enough to purchase the land. The land sale provision was introduced by representatives Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Celeste Maloy (R-UT). Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO) was the only Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee to not vote for the sell off. Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) joined Republicans in voting to advance the full reconciliation bill. The vote was 26 to 17 in favor of the bill. Under the proposal, the land would be sold to local governments which could then sell the land to private owners for everything from mining to vacation homes. In Utah, popular outdoor recreation areas in the St. George area that could be impacted by the proposal include Bear Claw Poppy Trail System, Coral Canyon Ridge Climbing Area, the Plateau Passage Bikepacking Route, and the Hurricane Cliffs Trail System. In Nevada, acreage in Clark County that includes Las Vegas, and Pershing, Lyon and Washoe counties could be impacted. 'The sales from these small parcels of land will generate significant federal revenue, and have broad local support. It's a tailored, parochial budgetary measure,' said House Natural Resources Committee spokesperson John Seibels. 'In the dead of night, Representative Mark Amodei pushed House Republicans to move forward with an insane plan that cuts funding from water conservation and public schools across Nevada,' Sen. Cortez Masto (D-NV) said. 'This is a land grab to fund Republicans 'billionaire giveaway tax bill, and I'll fight it with everything I have.' Former Dept. of Interior Secretary Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) has joined with Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) to lead a bipartisan Public Lands Caucus who's intention is to protect and expand public lands. "As Co-Chairs, Vasquez and Zinke bring a shared passion for public lands from two very different parts of the country—Vasquez as a first-generation conservationist from the borderlands of New Mexico, and Zinke as a Navy SEAL and former Secretary of the Interior from Big Sky Country. Alongside Vice-Chairs Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI-06) and Chairman Mike Simpson (R-ID-02), the Caucus bridges rural and urban, East and West, conservationists and sportsmen alike," a statement on Rep. Zinke's web page says. IMBA joins several outdoor recreation, environmental, hunting and conservation groups that have voiced concern over the proposal, including Trout Unlimited and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. The full reconciliation bill is expected to be voted on by the full House before Memorial Day, May 26. It would then go to the full Senate for a vote. If passed it would go to the President for signing into law. Groups opposed to the public land amendment are asking constituents to contact their representatives to voice their opposition. Representatives' contact information can be found here.
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Greece is booming again. This time, will it last?
Cranes are finally whirling over a long-blighted stretch of wasteland on the Athens Riviera, just 6 miles from the Acropolis, which has been a symbol of Greece's rise, fall and rise again over the past two decades. Yet it remains to be seen whether the country's latest economic spring will prove more durable than past spikes in its historical cycle of boom and bust. The Ellinikon construction site, soon to feature luxury residences, the tallest apartment building and largest shopping mall in the country, two hotels, a marina, a resort complex and sports, recreational and cultural facilities, is an ambivalent symbol of peak Greece. To the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, darling of the European centre-right, the development is emblematic of the new dynamism of the Greek economy and the country's attractiveness as an investment location. To its critics, Ellinikon is just another luxury real-estate project built by oligarchs for the super-rich and foreigners, on public land bought for a steal, while ordinary Greeks continue to see their living standards stagnate and public services decline. The 6.2 sq km Ellinikon site was home to the capital's airport from the 1930s until 2001, when the gleaming, EU-subsidised Eleftherios Venizelos international airport opened to the east of the city in time for the spectacular 2004 Athens Olympic Games. That was the last time Greece was on top of the world. The country had just joined the euro single currency – by fiddling the books, it later transpired – and a modernising socialist prime minister, Costas Simitis, was hailed as the Tony Blair of the southern Balkans. Greek was chic (remember the hit film My Big Fat Greek Wedding?). Tourism was booming. Even the national football team had become improbable European champions. Fast forward a decade and Greece was at rock bottom after defaulting on its debt and enduring three EU-IMF bailout programmes that shrank the economy by 26% and imposed draconian austerity. The debt crisis erupted when it was revealed in 2009 that the country had massively understated its budget deficit. Bond markets panicked and stopped lending to Athens, forcing it to appeal to the EU for loans that came with harsh conditions. The ensuing descent caused mass unemployment, widespread impoverishment and a brain drain of some 10% of the population. It also blew up the country's politics, long dominated by the rival patronage systems of the conservative New Democracy and the socialist Pasok parties. An anti-austerity government, led by the radical-left Syriza party, was elected in 2015 and won a referendum to reject the bailout terms, only to bow to the creditors' conditions weeks later when faced with the alternative of ejection from the eurozone. The so-called troika of the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank forced Athens to raise money by selling off state assets, including the port of Piraeus to the Chinese national shipping company Cosco and the disused Ellinikon airport-to-nowhere to the only bidder at the time, a consortium led by the billionaire Spiros Latsis, who has sprawling banking, shipping, real-estate and oil interests. Public protests, squatters and court challenges long prevented any development of the site, which had been due to be turned into a park before the debt crisis. The old terminal buildings had been used to house mostly Afghan refugees in squalid conditions during the 2015-16 migration crisis, as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers poured into Greece across the Aegean Sea from Turkey. The makeshift refugee camp was eventually closed in 2017. In 2023, builders finally broke ground on the Riviera Tower, a 50-floor beachfront apartment complex designed by the star British architect Norman Foster's firm, and the 200-metre skyscraper will open next year. There will eventually also be a (smaller) public park, Latsis's company, Lamda Development, has pledged. Whether Ellinikon is really a sign of an enduring Greek renaissance is hotly disputed. For many Greeks, not much has improved since the dark days of the debt crisis. Unemployment has fallen but wages and pensions have barely increased, inflation – especially in rents – has eroded living standards, and schools, hospitals and public transport have not recovered. The country is still seething over the lack of accountability for a head-on train collision two years ago that killed 57 people and exposed chronic safety failures, raising accusations of a political cover-up to evade responsibility. This year's 10th Delphi Economic Forum, a sort of annual Hellenic Davos in the home town of the ancient Greek oracle, was disrupted by a nationwide general strike over wages and public services that prevented many foreign delegates from arriving. Mitsotakis, whose approval rating has slumped, used the occasion to trumpet Greece's healthy growth rate and take a dig at Germany, the most Scrooge-like of its creditors during the crisis. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion 'We're no longer the sick child of Europe. Our economy is outperforming most European countries. When I look at, for example, the reforms that the German government is currently announcing, lots of those reforms we have already implemented in Greece,' he told an interviewer in Delphi. Greeks remember only too well when they were caricatured as profligate, lazy crooks by German media, a depiction epitomised by a German magazine cover that featured the goddess Aphrodite giving the finger to Europe, with the caption: 'Cheats in the euro family: is Greece robbing us?' On the surface, Greece is generating a healthy primary budget surplus, and the credit-rating agency S&P has just upgraded its rating to BBB. After the strike, Mitsotakis found enough spare cash to announce a €1bn (£850m) support package for low-income pensioners, tenants and other vulnerable groups. Public support for the EU in Greece has also recovered from record lows during the debt crisis. Two-thirds of Greeks now say EU membership is good for their country. But Greece's boom is fuelled by real estate, tourism and shipping rather than a revival in manufacturing or innovation. 'Once you scratch beneath the headline macroeconomic and fiscal data, there is darkness,' says Nick Malkoutzis, the editor and co-founder of the Greek economic website MacroPolis. 'Mitsotakis runs a tight fiscal ship, but we can't rely on tourism and real estate for ever.' Underinvestment in forestry and emergency services means that Greece is particularly ill-prepared for climate-induced disasters such as the wildfires and floods that have become increasingly frequent, Malkoutzis says. A handful of powerful, politically connected oligarchic families continues to dominate the economy, with highly concentrated media ownership. Corruption remains corrosive, while the country is near bottom of the table in the EU for press freedom and the rule of law. So on closer inspection, the new Greece looks uncannily like the old Greece, with stronger public finances but enduring social and economic imbalances. They may well return to haunt a country where hubris is never far from nemesis. Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
The Herald
08-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald
Government to free up buildings, land in inner cities for low-cost housing
President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced an initiative to help people find homes closer to where they work. 'We will address the apartheid legacy of spatial inequality, which has forced millions of South Africans to live far from economic opportunity,' he said on Wednesday. 'The poorest South Africans spend as much as 40% of their income on transport to get to work, more than almost any other country in the world.' He proposed changes to the government's housing policy to provide people with 'demand-side subsidies' for home ownership and affordable rentals. 'We will accelerate the release of publicly owned land and buildings for affordable housing, with a particular focus on inner cities. 'And we will clear the backlog of title deeds for affordable housing, while making the titling system more accessible and affordable. This will turn houses into an asset for poor households. It will enable these households to access credit and use this asset to advance themselves.' Ramaphosa said the government would also to seek to remove barriers to low-cost housing development and incentivise investment in urban centres as opposed to outlying areas. TimesLIVE
