PINEDALE — Sublette County elected officials, from the Board of County Commissioners to the county treasurer, assessor, clerk of district court, coroner and every position in between, wrote letters to Rep. Harriet Hageman and Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis this week urging them to protect public lands against a proposed selloff. 

The decision to pen the letters came at the June 17 county commissioners meeting following public comments made by Pinedale woman Karla Bird. 

WyoFile reported on Monday night that the Senate parliamentarian — a referee of sorts who interprets and advises on the rules of the chamber — nixed a provision to sell up to three million acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land across 11 states, including Wyoming, finding that it violated a rule limiting budget reconciliation bills to measures that are directly related to federal spending. 

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the architect of the provision, intends to introduce a new measure removing Forest Service land from the bill and narrowing the amount of BLM land for sale to tracts within 5 miles of population centers. 

The updated sale proposal has not yet been released and is being reviewed by the Senate parliamentarian, said a spokesperson for Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, who sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with Lee.