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Our View: Monumental considerations Friday Jan 27, 2017 at 12:01 AM Jackson County commissioners, smarting from the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, are turning to the new Donald Trump administration, hoping to win changes in the Antiquities Act that allowed President Barack Obama to expand the monument. While some changes in the Antiquities Act may be warranted, there are good reasons to retain the monument and its expansion. Congress passed the Antiquities Act in 1906 in an effort to protect Native American archeological sites that were being looted of artifacts. Since then, a series of presidential proclamations and court rulings have effectively expanded the scope of the act to allow presidents to protect vast swaths of federal land as monuments for reasons not limited to archeological artifacts. The act does not require any public input or the approval of state or local governments, which angers many, especially in the West, who see federal control of public land as an unreasonable restriction on ranching, mining and logging that benefit local economies. The act also does not require the environmental review stipulated in other federal land-use actions, because the courts have held that the president is not subject to those requirements. Two states managed to convince Congress to grant special protection against the use of the Antiquities Act: Wyoming, which objected to President Franklin Roosevelt's declaring the Jackson Hole National Monument to protect a wildlife reserve when Congress refused to expand Grand Teton National Park, and Alaska, which objected to President Jimmy Carter's designation of 17 national monuments encompassing 56 million acres in that state. In the Wyoming case, Congress overturned Roosevelt's monument designation, but FDR vetoed the bill. Congress eventually gave in and expanded Teton Park, but included a provision requiring congressional approval of any future monuments in Wyoming. In the Alaska case, Carter created the monuments despite the opposition of the Alaskan public, the state government and its congressional delegation. The courts upheld Carter's action in two lawsuits, and Congress eventually accepted a compromise that protected the land in question, but also placed a 5,000-acre limit on any future monuments in Alaska. Jackson County commissioners say they would like Oregon to get special treatment as well. That would be a bad idea. If Congress wants to modify the Antiquities Act, say, to require public hearings, it should do so for the entire country, not carve out state-specific exemptions. Congress has always had the power to rescind monument designations — and to create monuments itself. Congress has rescinded monuments on a few occasions, but not in recent years, and no president has ever revoked a monument created by a previous president. If President Trump were to attempt that, as some have urged him to do, it would almost certainly be challenged and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. There were valid reasons for creating and for expanding the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and it should remain in place. The Antiquities Act could benefit from some updating, but that should be done carefully and should apply to all states equally. Correction Replacing downtown sidewalks with solid concrete would cost at least four times as much as reinstalling pavers. An editorial in Wednesday's paper contained faulty math.