By Hank Stephenson | Arizona Capitol Times
Back in the mid-1990s, Republican Sen. Sylvia Allen was a rebel. A Sagebrush Rebel.
Long before she was a state lawmaker, Allen was pushing back against environmentalists and the federal government as part of a long-standing movement to force the federal government to turn over federally-managed lands to the Western states.
As a native of the rural eastern-Arizona town of Snowflake whose brother is in the timber industry, Allen saw firsthand the effect of the environmental policies of the 1960s and 1970s that later sparked the first wave of what became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion.