ROCK SPRINGS – The budget proposal approved by the Wyoming Legislature Friday afternoon includes a proposal Speaker Pro Tempore Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, made regarding the Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Rock Springs RMP and a parcel of Wyoming land that could be sold to Grand Teton National Park.

The budget was approved by the Wyoming Legislature Friday and awaits Gov. Mark Gordon’s signature. The budget also includes an earmark of $150 million for a new Rock Springs High School.

The Kelly Parcel that could be sold to the Department of the Interior is being used as a bargaining chip to get the BLM to remove elements from the bureau’s preferred management alternative for the Rock Springs Field Office. Stith’s proposal would require Gordon to consider if oil and gas development and agreeable rights of way are preserved by the BLM once it issues its decision on how lands administered by the bureau’s Rock Springs Field Office. The proposal saw widespread support from legislators form southwestern Wyoming, including Speaker of the House Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale.

“We don’t control how the federal government behaves, but this restores the balance in the discussion with the federal government over the future of Southwest Wyoming,” he previously said about Stith’s Kelly Parcel proposal.

“In tying the sale of the Kelly Parcel to Bureau of Land Management actions, we are telling the federal government that it needs a balanced approach to managing federal lands,” Stith said. “If they want us to play nice with them in northwest Wyoming, they need to play nice with us in southwest Wyoming.”