Greenwood Village, CO. – Today, the Colorado GOP is calling on Senator Bennet and Senator Hickenlooper to stand up for our state by putting a hold on Rep. Deb Haaland’s nomination to lead the Interior Department until she publicly commits to keeping the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters in Grand Junction.Senator Gardner accomplished a major win for Colorado by getting the previous administration to move the Bureau of Land Management headquarters closer to the lands they manage. Since this win, Bennet and Hickenlooper have both paid lip service to keeping the HQ here. It is now time for them to step up and fight for it. 

Biden’s radical Interior nominee, Rep. Deb Haaland, has previously been critical of the decision to move the BLM headquarters to Grand Junction and yesterday she refused to commit to keeping the HQ closest to the lands they operate. 

Statement from Colorado GOP: “Senator Bennet and Senator Hickenlooper have a choice. They can either follow Schumer in blindly voting for this extreme nominee or they can stand up for Colorado and place a hold on her nomination – they can’t do both.

“Today, the Colorado GOP is demanding that Senator Bennet and Senator Hickenlooper place a hold on Rep. Haaland’s nomination until she publicly commits to keeping the Bureau of Land Management headquarters in Colorado,” stated COGOP Spokesman Joe Jackson. “Colorado and Grand Junction are worth fighting for – as Colorado’s current voices in the U.S. Senate they need fight to ensure that the BLM stays closest to the millions of acres they manage.”

– Senator Hickenlooper sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and could deny the confirmation from moving forward by placing a hold on her nomination in committee. Likewise, the nomination will have to go before the full Senate, Bennet could place a hold on her nomination until she publicly commits to keeping the BLM HQ in Grand Junction. 

– The Grand Junction Sentinel has reported that the move has had “significant” impact on the local economy. “… the total economic impact over the last four years of the companies that have moved into the area thanks in part to recruitment efforts has been pretty significant.”

– The move has had an “$11 million initial local impact” according to the Grand Junction Economic Partnership.

– The agency “manages 245 million across, largely in 10 Western states.” 

– The BLM “manages 8.3 million acres of public lands and 27 million acres of federal mineral estates in Colorado.” The BLM has mentioned that most of those public lands are “concentrated on Colorado’s Western Slope.”