What happens when the Federal Government can't enforce it's own laws the States don't like?

What's to be done when a centralized government such as the U.S. Federal Government, makes laws and claims lands that the local constituants abhore, and when the local government decides it is probably in their best interests to do what their people want than to obey the centralized government? Do you charge people fines - what if they don't pay them and the state/county governments don't enforce them? Do you go in with federal troops to try to force compliance? What if the state puts up a defense, do you start a civil war? Does the federal government have enough power to stop this from happening? Does it have enough willpower to do it? Will it change the laws before it makes outlaws of it's citizens?

Posted on Sun, May. 27, 2007

Utah defies U.S. land policies
National parkland is a flash
point. Residents demand it for grazing and off-road vehicle use.
By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

RECAPTURE CANYON, Utah - It's a small gesture of
defiance: a narrow metal bridge that allows off-road vehicles illegal access to
this archaeologically rich canyon. But the structure, built by San Juan County
on U.S. government land, is a symbol of the widespread local resistance to
federal authority across much of southern Utah's magnificent
countryside.
Historically, people in the rural West have challenged federal
jurisdiction, claiming ownership over rights-of-way, livestock management and
water use. But nowhere is the modern-day defiance more determined, better
organized or well-funded than in Utah, where millions of taxpayer dollars are
spent fighting federal authority, and where the state is helping to pay the tab,
much of it, critics say, without oversight.
For a decade, the legislature and
two state agencies have funneled money to southern Utah counties for legal
challenges to federal jurisdiction. Most recently, a state representative
persuaded the legislature to provide $100,000 to help fund a lawsuit by ranchers
and two counties seeking to expand cattle grazing in the Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Grand Staircase is one of a dozen
parks and monuments that draw tens of millions of visitors to the region every
year to take in the spectacular high desert and red-rock canyons that have awed
travelers since John Wesley Powell voyaged down the Green and Colorado Rivers in
1869.
"This is a beautiful and unique land," said Bill Smart, retired editor
of Salt Lake City's Deseret News. "It's distressing that we can't all be more
appreciative of the values that other people see here. To me it's very
disappointing that our own people can't see what we have."
A deep resentment
In southern Utah, where the federal government controls as much as 90 percent of
the land in some counties, many residents feel they are permanent tenants on
land their ancestors pioneered. The resentment hardens whenever Washington
restricts ranching, mining, energy development or motorized recreation.
"Who
gets to control the land is the great American story," said Karl Jacoby,
associate professor of history at Brown University. "In part it is about
economics, but a lot of it is about identity and who we are as a
people."
Officials of one county have written a bill, pending in Congress,
that would order the sale of federal land, with the proceeds given to the
county. Other Utah counties have said they would follow suit. And officials from
the two counties surrounding Grand Staircase have lobbied in Washington to
dramatically reduce the two-million-acre national monument.
Elected officials
have flouted federal authority by bulldozing roads in the Grand Staircase
monument and Capitol Reef National Park, and by tearing down signs banning
off-road vehicles in Canyonlands National Park. A handful of counties have
developed transportation plans that declare federally closed roads
open.
Selma Sierra, Utah director of the federal Bureau of Land Management,
insisted that the agency's relationship with counties was good.
"The BLM
manages a substantial amount of land in this state," Sierra said. "Yes, those
lands belong to everyone in the country, but the decisions we make affect those
[local] individuals more so than anywhere else."
A threat to the land But
federal officials say increases in motorized recreation and scarring of the
landscape from energy exploration threaten historic and cultural treasures and
damage wildlife habitat.
A BLM archeological assessment of third-century
Anasazi ruins and cliff dwellings in Recapture Canyon found evidence of looting
and off-road-vehicle damage. According to the assessment, the new, county-built
bridge "can be expected to hasten and increase indirect impacts to cultural
resources here."
"It's quite common in Utah to hear people say, 'The federal
government should give the land back to the state.' But the state never owned
it," said Daniel McCool, director of the American West Center at the University
of Utah.
McCool said rebellious county commissioners no longer represented
the demographic of the American West.
"There is a new rural resident," he
said. "They didn't move here to ranch and raise cattle. They moved here for the
amenities value of the public lands. That's what's driving the economy now.
Today, the single largest nongovernmental components of Utah's economy are
tourism and recreation."
According to an economic analysis commissioned by
the National Parks Conservation Association, national parks generate at least $4
for state and local economies for every dollar in the parks' budgets. Zion
National Park, in southwest Utah, had 2.5 million visitors last year and
provided nearly $100 million in annual recreational benefits to the surrounding
county, according to the study.
But Lt. Gov. Gary R. Herbert said in an
interview that Utah had endured an "erosion of rights."
"We're not going to
sit back anymore. We're going to be proactive. We are going to protect our
rights," he said.
State Rep. Mike Noel, a Republican from the southern
community of Kanab, said it got down to "sovereignty and autonomy."
"It's
Western independence," Noel said. "We own the water, we have the right to graze,
the minerals are still available, and the roads belong to us. By dang, we are
not going to give them up."