Rep. Bob Thorpe’s bill, HB2585, passed in the Arizona Senate on Tuesday on a bipartisan vote. The bill requires “the Arizona State Land Department to maintain a catalog of each existing or newly created national monument in this state.”
More significantly, the legislation requires the Department to “determine whether the limits of a parcel comprising a national monument” in Arizona “are confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected by the national monument.”
The Department must notify the Attorney General if the Department “determines that the limits of a parcel comprising a national monument in this state are not confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected by the national monument.”
Should the Department find that the parcel is not the smallest area, the bill allows the Attorney General to take legal “action to confine the limits of the parcel.
“My National Monuments bill will push back against existing and newly created monuments within Arizona, which is nothing more than a Federal land grab. Arizona has already had the greatest number of monuments created within a state, and has lost over 100,000 acres of state trust land within those monuments,” said Thorpe in a statement he released on Tuesday. “We will lose another 30,000 acres if the 1.7 million acre Grand Canyon Watershed NM is unilaterally created by Obama. Every acre of lost trust land is less money for our students and schools… truly a criminal act!”
| Member Name | Vote | Member Name | Vote | Member Name | Vote |
| Sylvia Allen | Y | Nancy Barto | Y | Carlyle Begay | Y |
| David Bradley | N | Judy Burges | Y | Olivia Cajero Bedford | N |
| Lupe Contreras | N | Andrea Dalessandro | N | Jeff Dial | Y |
| Susan Donahue | Y | Adam Driggs | Y | Steve Farley | N |
| David C. Farnsworth | Y | Gail Griffin | Y | Katie Hobbs | N |
| John Kavanagh | Y | Debbie Lesko | Y | Barbara McGuire | Y |
| Robert Meza | NV | Catherine Miranda | Y | Lynne Pancrazi | N |
| Steve Pierce | Y | Martin Quezada | NV | Andrew C. Sherwood | N |
| Don Shooter | Y | Steve Smith | Y | Bob Worsley | Y |
| Steve Yarbrough | Y | Kimberly Yee | Y | Andy Biggs | Y |