Bureau of Land Management rangeland near Millican, east of Bend.

When will the Bureau of Land Management start being open about a private home built on 18 acres of public land near Prineville?

Jeff Kitchens, the BLM’s Prineville field manager, told us Monday that the BLM is in “no way trying to hide anything from anybody.” Really? Starting when?

The BLM needs to answer questions. This is the public’s land that we are talking about, after all, and the public deserves to know how its disposition is being handled.

Why is there no map of the property on the project website? The public needs to be able to understand where it is, so it can understand what’s at stake. Kitchens told us it was a mistake that the map is not available on the website. OK, why is it still not on the website?

Why is the BLM considering selling the land in question rather than conducting a land swap?

The BLM does not even consider a land swap in its proposed actions. According to comments on the project, that’s what was done in another such incident in the area. Why not here? And what was that incident? Details about it aren’t easy to come by, as the BLM has scratched out the names and addresses of the people who submitted the comments. That’s despite telling them explicitly in the letter requesting public comment that their names and addresses “may be made publicly available at any time.”

Kitchens also insists that incidents like this are common in this region. He says there are hundreds. OK, let’s see a list of the last 10 and how the BLM resolved them. Will BLM be transparent about what happened?

The BLM is apparently considering selling the 18 acres to the people who thought they bought it in 2008.

Bulletin staff discovered that was Chuck McGrath and Jennipher Grudzien, co-founders of Bend-based Grace Bio-Labs Inc. They also own other adjacent property, which is not BLM land. On the BLM property, there’s a 2,500-square-foot home. There are outbuildings. There’s a buried water pipeline. There’s an access road. It’s located between Prineville and Post.

The BLM’s mission is to manage public lands for public benefit. But on this issue the BLM has been on a dodge-and-deny mission.