Description:
As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources on January 28, 2014
H.R. 2095 would prohibit the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from acquiring new lands until the agency develops a public database of all BLM lands that have been identified for disposal. Based on information provided by the agency, CBO expects that BLM would need less than a year to construct the database, and we expect that the agency would defer the purchase of some lands during that period. Because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending, pay-as-you-go procedures apply; however, we estimate that the net impact on direct spending would be negligible. Enacting H.R. 2095 would not affect revenues.
Under current law, BLM has the authority to spend receipts from the sale of federal lands in southern Nevada to purchase environmentally sensitive lands. Because CBO expects that the bill would require BLM to defer the purchase of lands using those funds, we estimate that enacting the bill would reduce direct spending by about $7 million in 2015 and increase direct spending by that amount in 2016. Overall, we estimate that enacting H.R. 2095 would have no net impact on direct spending.
H.R. 2095 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.
On February 6, 2014, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for H.R. 2954, the Public Access and Lands Improvement Act, as posted to the website of the House Committee on Rules on January 30, 2014 (Committee Print 113-35). Title IV of H.R. 2954 and H.R. 2095 contain similar provisions, and the estimated costs are the same.
