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Show DECEMBER 1996 this is the place SCORECARD Bogey G Just when you thought things > couldn’t get any crazier in en Resides afew trees, there is no drfrerence betwe the land [4m offering you and this Snow Basin property Southern Utah, the Garfield County Commission has gone one better Calling it “blood money,” the commission said it won't accept $100,000 from the federal government to aid the Department of Interior develop a management plan for the new Grand Staircase Monument. In a prepared Escalante National statement, the commis- by John Helton He's right! hy, without the SK resort, ce +h€ Olympics and | AIS S via THis land is pracheally worthless too! sion said it wouldn’t participate with a “cruel and insensitive’ Clinton Administration. The commission then lashed out at Rep. Bill Orton, saying the money was an attempt by the congressman to gain votes for re-election. To his credit, Orton sniped back, saying the commissioners are out of touch with reality. We couldn't agree more. Birdie And speaking of Garfield County, the US Attorney for Utah, © has filed suit to stop illegal grading of roads in designated Wilderness Study areas there. The suit also was aimed at stopping illegal bulldozing by < Kane and San Juan Counties. Thank goodness that some sanity has been brought to bear by Scott M. Matheson Jr., who filed the suit. These three counties, and perhaps others, have taken to grading wild lands to keep them from being listed in a new review of Utah’s wild lands. All the lands in question are federal lands and quite unique. County governments saying they are only making routine maintenance on their roads appear to be speaking out of both sides of their face. To them, fed- eral lands are theirs to do with as they please. Double Bogey G_ The jig is up, the deal revealed: Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Jim Hansen accepted campaign con- tributions every time an important vote came up on the Snow Basin land steal. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Responsive Politics says green backs flowed to Hatch and Hansen from oil magnate Earl Holding every time that so-called land trade came up for a vote. Now passed, the law gives Holding 1,320 acres of US Forest Land at Snow Basin for a massive real estate development. The deal was sold to Congress by Holding and the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee as necessary for the Olympics. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It's just part and parcel of an Olympic Movement tarnished by the rich and powerful lining their pockets in the name of the Games. @ EDITORIAL Dangerous Republican Range-War Rhetoric udging from the political rhetoric of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and his Orrin Republican colleagues: Sen. Hatch, Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Jim Hansen, you would think we were involved in a shooting war with the federal government. These Republicans, among others, raised the level of rhetoric to a blisterwhen Pres. Bill Clinton ing pitch named the Grand Staircase — Escalante Canyons National Monument. They may have done it to make their own political cover — after all, these politicians were left looking quite impotent. What better way to remove scutiny from their own lack of effectiveness than to scream bloody murder. But that apparently wasn’t enough. Leavitt, Hatch, Bennett, Hansen and the entire cast of Utah sagebrush rebels applauded a suit filed against Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt to stop him from taking another inventory of wild lands in Utah. Something the secretary took up on a challenge from Jim Hansen, in the first place. Claiming that Babbitt was locking them out of the process, the Utahns again were righteously indignant that Washington should tell us how to manage our lands. Their indignation, however, now plays like a broken record. Hatch went so far as to say he was fighting for the freedom of all Americans. What he seems to forget, however, is that the lands in question belong to all Americans, not just those in rural counties who have used them carte blanche or who would develop Christopher Smart out in Washington during the last Congress. It ought to be clear by now that Utah’s Republican leaders don’t favor protecting unique and wild iands here. They want them left open to any and all development, whether that is coal mining, gas exploration, timber harvesting, grazing or building dams, roads, communications towers, power plants or anything else that could turn short-term profits. them for personal gain. Stewardship this is not. On top of all this political posturing, is the governor’s new proposal to create wilderness designation in a piecemeal fashion. Disguising this plan as a place to begin negotiating with lands everyone can agree are wild, Leavitt seems intent on striking the pose as the concilliator. But that simply won't fly. The move to create minimal wilderness seems aimed at derailing a larger wilderness — one greater than the 2 million acres that Hatch and Hansen introduced in Congress, and one that Leavitt, himself, supported. It seems rather ironic that Leavitt, who created a process allowing rural county commissions to dictate the wilderness outcome and ignored the voices of most Utahns, is now insisting Sec. Babbitt is shutting him out of decision-making. Some 70 percent of all comments received by the governor's office on Wilderness favored 5.7 million acres. The governor turned his back on those people and left them to fight it PAGE 2 But while they are at that, they have raised their rhetoric and, yes, federal hate-mongering to a dangerous level that could come back to haunt us all. Their Fed-baiting has already caused state legislators to say they are ready to “fix” bayonets” and “throw a second Boston tea party.” It is exactly this sort of rhetoric that led to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Leavitt, Hatch, Bennett and Hansen put their political careers ahead of the public good by raising their rhetoric to this level. It has been this kind of approach from the beginning that has pitted them against Babbitt and others, who were willing one or two years ago to forge a compromise. Now compromise seems out of the question. Leavitt and his Republican colleagues have some explaining to do and they ought to do it before this dangerous course leads to violence. Further physical confrontation over public lands in Utah, like the one recently witnessed in San Juan County, we can Republican lay at leaders. the @ feet of these |