SALT LAKE CITY — First they felt betrayed by President Bill Clinton, now they feel betrayed by their own governor. Garfield County residents in Utah’s remote desert
believe their population of only 4,000 has made them inconsequential to elected leaders.
Clinton gave no warning when he declared 1.7 million acres of Garfield and Kane county
land to be a new national monument in 1996. Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt used the same tactic earlier this month when he signed an agreement to swap land with the federal government robbing rural Utah of any hope for resource development, according to critics of the deal.
“We had no idea that the school trust lands were being thrown in with the monument
exchange,” said Liston on Talk USA Investigative Reports http://talkusa.com. Leavitt held no public hearings and did not consult with Garfield County officials in advance of signing the agreement. “Now we know why we could never get him to enter into the law suit,” she added.
The State Institutional Trust Lands and the Utah Association of Counties filed lawsuits in an effort to reverse or alter the formation of the monument on the grounds that the 1906 Antiquities Act as amended by Congress was not followed by Clinton. No public hearings were held, and no elected officials from Utah were consulted in advance of the
presidential executive proclamation.
“We could never get the governor to join us in the lawsuit. We were frustrated by that.
We could never understand why. Now we know,” said Liston of the agreement made by
Leavitt.
Liston claimed that Leavitt used the same tactics as Clinton when he signed an agreement with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. No public hearings were held, and the elected officials in Kane and Garfield counties were not consulted.
“I doubt many of the ranchers in our county even know what has happened yet,” said Liston. She said she was aware of the 60-year battle to get a federal exchange of lands dealing with past formations of national parks, but no one in Garfield County had any idea the lands in the monument were part of the deal being created by Leavitt and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
“There was no one else involved,” confirmed Utah Speaker of the House Mel Brown.
Leavitt did not consult with legislative leaders who first learned of the agreement when
Leavitt held a press conference to make the announcement earlier this month.
“There were some double signals that went out. First we heard this was something that
happened quick over just a few weeks. We also heard this was in the making for years. So
which version do you believe?” Brown asked as he expressed his frustration of being left
out of the loop.
The Utah legislature was to be briefed on the agreement today, but that briefing has been
canceled because everyone involved is in Washington, D.C., for the Congressional hearings. Asked if he planned to oppose the efforts, Brown said, “You can’t oppose it until you know the details. I don’t know any of the details.”
The details are hard to come by. Leavitt and Babbitt claim that the exchange is equitable
for each side. The land being given up by the state is supposedly equal in dollar value to
the land being obtained from the federal government. Brown wants to see the figures. The legislature is meeting in their monthly interim session today with absolutely no knowledge about the deal beyond what has appeared in the press. The dollar values of the land have not been provided.
Environmentalists, pro-development groups, schools, elected officials in both parties, and the plaintiff in a suit against the U.S. all told the House Resources Subcommittee on
National Parks and Public Lands they like the proposal. Those who were opposed say they decided not to do anything to derail the benefits of the deal for Utah school children even though their counties would suffer from the swap.
Liston was invited but could not attend the hearing. She said she was expecting others
from the Utah Association of Counties to detail the problems the land swap would cause
for residents of the monument area.
Garfield and neighboring Kane counties say they got the raw end of the stick in 1996
when Clinton declared 1.7 million acres within their boundaries a new national monument. The richest deposit of high compliance coal in the world was removed from development because it was now within the new Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Monument. Both counties were devastated economically when the monument prevented any natural resource development.
Leavitt and Utah’s Congressional delegation were extremely critical of the way
Clinton went about making the monument in 1996. Now Leavitt says nothing negative
about the monument, and claims the entire Utah Congressional delegation supports the
proposed land swap. Spokesmen for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-UT, expressed surprise that Leavitt’s announcement of the deal mentioned
support. They were clearly uninformed and unprepared to make any statement.
Clinton never consulted with Utah leaders, and no public hearings were held prior to the
executive proclamation just before the 1996 presidential election. It appears Leavitt also
failed to consult with any Utah leaders on any level.
The new land swap agreement, if passed by Congress, drops legal action initiated by
Utah’s State Institutional Trust Lands. All claims to lands taken by the federal
government will be dropped by Utah. Previous lands taken in the formation of five national parks, national monuments, and national forests totaling more than 2 million acres are exchanged for 139,000 acres of federal land outside those areas. The 62 billion tons of coal in the new monument, plus many other minerals, will be exchanged for $50 million immediately, $13 million in future guarantees, and 160,000 tons of lower quality coal.
Cannon represents the area where the monument was formed. He was conspicuously absent from the Congressional committee hearing yesterday. Utah’s remaining two Congressmen were present, James Hansen and Merrill Cook, both Republicans. Both spoke in favor of the proposed land swap.
Cannon’s office said he was on a flight and nothing should be assumed from his
absence. Utah’s governor and county officials were apparently able to get better
airline connections. Cannon had been a vocal critic of the monument, and has not issued
any statement on the Leavitt land swap agreement. The bill coming before Congress for
approval of the deal is being carried by Hansen, a Republican whose district is at
the opposite end of the state and who is the chairman of the committee which held the
hearing.
“The way they’re (Utah Congressional delegation) perceiving it is that it was lost
anyway and this way they got something,” explained Randy Johnson, Emery County
commissioner and board member of the Utah Association of Counties who testified.
Johnson likes the agreement for the benefit it brings the schools, but does not want to
end the legal effort questioning the legality of the formation of the monument. He told the committee that the exchange is good for the school children of Utah, but there are many inequalities that need to be worked out.
“This is a land exchange that was on the table many years ago that’s just suddenly
been accepted. It’s really irrelevant to the monument and how it was created or
anything else,” Johnson explained before leaving for Washington.
All of the lands which will be exchanged if the proposal is approved by Congress were
already being negotiated for the exchange for the past 60 years, according to both
Johnson and Liston. The exchange of those lands only compensates for earlier takings by
the federal government prior to the formation of the new monument. Now compensation
has been offered for the enormous loss of natural mineral resources contained in the new
monument.
All land containing minerals in Garfield and Kane counties will be given to the federal
government in exchange for federal lands in other counties to be given to Utah. Garfield
and Kane will be left with no future and no economic base, according to Liston. Because
of the major impact on those counties, Liston is very angry that Leavitt did not consult
with anyone there before taking action.
Hansen has a great deal of respect in Congress, and is apparently prepared to do anything
that is needed to assure passage of H.R. 3830, the bill which will give approval to the land swap. Although a new bill just starting committee hearings this late in the session does not usually have much chance of passage, this one is expected to make it, according to Allen Freemyer, staff director for the House subcommittee chaired by Hansen.
A report in the Deseret News painted a bleak picture for the bill’s chances of
getting to the floor for a vote before the session adjourns in October. Freemyer says he
explained how difficult it is to pass a bill this late in the session, but he says he also
explained that “we will do what we have to to get this one passed.”
