Ann is sensible, dedicated to achieving good, honest government in AZ and understands the issues involved. She makes a fine appearance and is also a very charming and considerate person.
Ann is sensible, dedicated to achieving good, honest government in AZ and understands the issues involved. She makes a fine appearance and is also a very charming and considerate person.
The votes had barely been counted before the campaigning in the First Congressional District resumed.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Doney Park, saw his bill to swap federal lands for private ones in order to expand mining near Superior clear the House on Wednesday.
"Copper's king again. The mining jobs create great employment," he stated in an online video to the public.
But the bill omits consultations with area tribes and an environmental analysis on the land swap, said former U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Flagstaff Democrat who is seeking to reclaim her office in 2026.
She introduced a similar bill two years ago, but with some key differences sought by key Democrats in the Senate, where the bill is headed next.
"Mr. Gosar's legislation differs from mine by eliminating the NEPA environmental impact study and government-to-government tribal consultations prior to the land exchange," she said in a prepared statement. "I included these provisions after careful and thoughtful community outreach and input."
Kirkpatrick called for an environmental analysis on the land exchange itself.
The bill includes a requirement that the land be analyzed under the National Environmental Policy Act before a mine is opened if federal laws call for it, but those rules don't commonly apply on private land.
"It's trying to greenwash something that is a huge rip-off of the American public," said Sandy Bahr, chapter director for the Sierra Club.
Kirkpatrick and former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Flagstaff, had each tried to pass measures to allow Resolution Copper to establish the largest copper mine in North America, but their bills never passed the full House.
The Gosar bill would allow copper mining underneath a site considered sacred to some tribes, and it swaps various pieces of Resolution's private lands for public lands at the mine site.
Gosar called it his "major jobs legislation."
Democrats proposed amendments to exempt Native American cultural sites from the transfer, require the mine owner to pay an 8 percent royalty on all minerals extracted from the site and require that the mine hire local workers and use U.S.-made machinery.
All of those amendments failed in the House.