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(Des Moines, IA) -- A proposal disallowing the Iowa Department of Natural Resources from buying land at an auction will live passed this week's funnel. Senate File 1198 advanced through committee this week. It's a proposal that's come up in the past as State Sen. Tom Shipley (R-Nodaway) mentioned.
"We've been down this path before," Shipley says.
According to the DNR, around 400,000 acres of land is owned by the state which equates to less than 1%. Opponents used that data to fuel their arguments. State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott (D-Waukee) is one of them.
"What I hear from Iowans repeatedly, over and over," Trone Garriott says. "The one thing that they want more than anything is more access to public land for recreation, for hunting, for fishing...It would take a lot of years and a lot of money for the DNR to actually become a real threat to any other land holders."
But Shipley says he's heard the opposite.
"I have yet to get more than one email from my district that's opposed to us doing this," Shipley says.
He says the bill would help increase access to land for recreational purposes.
"In my part of the world, one of the biggest issues for many of them is that there's thousands of acres that are released by landowners to landowners for deer hunting purposes," Shipley says. "There's a lot of local people who don't particularly like that either, but that's the business that they're in."
He says he's heard from constituents who believe the government oversteps in its control of land. The bill is now eligible for the Senate floor.