Whatever their take on Donald Trump, plenty of Coloradans cheered his decision to relocate the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters last year from “the Swamp” to Colorado’s scenic and sunny Western Slope. And all our state’s D.C. delegation was on board.

Not only does it bring home some of the federal payroll our state helps support, but it also places the agency 1,900 miles closer to so much of the public land it governs. For Colorado’s U.S. senators and seven U.S. House members, the move is simply good politics irrespective of party affiliation. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both Democrats, supported it. Former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, first proposed the idea in 2016.

So, you’d think it all would be settled by now, especially considering the move itself was made a year ago. Yet, as developments last week in Washington reminded us, the permanent address of the BLM still seems very much up in the air.

President Biden’s pick to lead the bureau, Tracy Stone-Manning, has criticized the relocation in the past. And at her Senate confirmation hearing last Tuesday, all she offered senators was platitudes when asked by Hickenlooper about plans for the office’s future.

As reported by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Stone-Manning said the Interior Department and new Interior Secretary Deb Haaland are reviewing the headquarters status.

“… They are surveying employees, and if I have the honor of being confirmed and get there in a timely way, you have my commitment to dive in and carry the folks of Grand Junction and their concerns with me to the consideration,” she said.

Not exactly promising the moon. More like she’s trying to let Hickenlooper down easy. Then again, Hickenlooper didn’t exactly give her the third degree at the hearing.

As also reported by the Sentinel, Colorado’s newly minted junior senator recounted the disappointment over the modest number of jobs that initially came with the move. Modest, in part, because much of the BLM’s entrenched management didn’t feel like heading west.

“The victims of the last administration’s action weren’t just the BLM employees but the people of Grand Junction,” Hickenlooper told her. “I wanted to make sure that as you consider the future of the headquarters of the BLM, you recognize that those 41 people in Grand Junction are in the balance in some way.”

“Victims”? “... As you consider the future of the headquarters … ”? Hick’s never been known as a poker player, but this time it seems he didn’t even bother to look at his hand before folding.

Senator, you have more leverage than that. Certainly, over a controversial nominee who is bitterly opposed by Republicans in a narrowly divided Senate. (Pssst: She needs you more than you need her.)

At the time of last year’s move, it drew discernible pushback only from two relatively small groups — the BLM’s own careerist bureaucrats and environmentalists like Stone-Manning. The latter group was only too happy to have the agency far removed from the Westerners its regulations affected. Of course, neither the bureaucrats nor the environmentalists were on the Trumps’ Christmas card list, so the BLM seemed to be settling into its new Colorado home.

But elections have a way of changing things. A lot. Green groups almost immediately descended on the incoming Biden administration with a laundry list of to-dos. On the list, as we noted here last November, was to move the BLM’s HQ out of its new home and back to its old one. A group of former Obama administration officials had ginned up an agenda for climate action they dubbed the Climate 21 Project. It was essentially a manifesto to the Biden White House “to hit the ground running and effectively prioritize its climate response from Day One.” One of the Day 1 actions was, “Bring the BLM national leadership back to Washington, D.C.”

How moving back to Washington is supposed to help the war effort against climate change is unclear. What’s clear is the value of keeping the BLM where it is now.

The BLM is a big landlord. With oversight of 247.3 million acres, most of it in the West, the agency governs oneeighth of the nation’s landmass. Living closer to many of its tenants could be the start of a whole new, more agreeable relationship.

Indeed, the BLM at times had been the bane of Westerners who work the land. Its controversial policies on wide-ranging federal land holdings have rankled ranchers, farmers, miners, loggers and assorted other public lands stakeholders over the decades.

It only makes sense to keep the office here. And we doubt that one of the world’s largest bureaucracies, back on the Potomac, even noticed the BLM was gone. We urge Colorado’s entire Washington delegation to renew their vows to keep the agency here.

Only, this time, maybe let Bennet lead the charge. At least, he knows how to give a rousing floor speech.

Elections have a way of changing things. A lot. Green groups almost immediately descended on the incoming Biden administration with a laundry list of to-dos. On the list … was to move the BLM’s HQ out of its new home and back to its old one.