Best Management Practices for Developing Legislative Maps

The attached “Best Management Practices (BMPs) for Developing Legislative Maps” document provides BLM staff with guidance on the development of legislative maps requested by Congress.  This guidance will help accurately depict congressional intent and facilitate efficient implementation of enacted legislation. 

Legislative maps are critical to many legislative proposals.  During the preparation of legislative maps, there is an opportunity for congressional staff and BLM program staff to examine lands identified in proposed legislation, locate boundaries on the ground, and readily define what is and is not included within those boundaries.  Well-prepared legislative maps prevent needless ambiguities and controversy while simplifying surveys, legal boundary descriptions, signage, enforcement, communication, and overall management.

Effective communication between BLM staff and congressional staff is critical in the map-making process to provide congressional offices with the information needed to make decisions, define boundaries, and provide for allowable public land uses.  For example, a map covering expansive areas may obscure certain features such as campgrounds, bike trails, parking lots, grazing infrastructure, etc., that may be incompatible with the objectives of a legislative proposal.  Successful communication during development of legislative proposals can prevent unintended outcomes for the public, members of Congress, and the BLM during implementation.  Once legislation becomes law, it is often impossible to correct boundary issues that were overlooked during the map development process absent enactment of new legislation.  For this reason, it is critical to invest time up-front in addressing map details.

Once legislation is enacted, legislative maps are cited and used for management decisions until a congressionally-required map and/or legal boundary descriptions are available.  Even with thorough BLM participation and review during the map development process, errors may be discovered during implementation.  The legislation itself typically has explicit language allowing for correction of clerical or typographical errors.  These BMPs also address methods to interpret and correct certain common errors.

The attached BMP document was developed in coordination with various BLM offices, including staff of Legislative Affairs, Communications, Lands and Realty, Wilderness, Cadastral, and Geospatial Information Systems, and it is intended to supplement Permanent IM 2013-169, Policies & Procedures for Handling Congressional Map Requests.  For additional information please contact Patrick Wilkinson, Division Chief, Legislative Affairs, at (202) 631-6346 or p2wilkin@blm.gov.