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Show THE ZEPHYRMARCH 1993 PAGE 8 An Interview with the Governor by Cherie Gilmore On February 17, Cherie Gilmore interviewed Governor Mike Leavitt. The questions followed no logical sequence, so anyone looking for that will be probably mostly confused. Anyway, here it is. It has been edited a little, not much, far clarity. Zephyr: When yon look office, you incbded education and the environment aa two of the bigg eat iaanea facing Utah. And with your aland againat a nuclear waate atorage aite in Utah, I think people can aee that you're aerioua about protecting our environment But what are you oaying to the people in San Juan County who were counting on die joba they thought that " would bring in? , Governor: I'm saying, 1 understand you have a problem and I want to be part of the solution, but this is not the solution." . Zephyr: What ia the solution? Governor: I have in the legislature right now a bill called the Rural Enterprise Zone, which is designed to provide businesses with incentives to either invest in existing businesses or bring businesses to rural Utah. It provides them with some very handsome tax incentives to do that. I'm also putting forward a bill, coupled with that, that would pay an additional incentive for higher paying jobs in rural Utah. The second thing I'm trying to do is bring in a new level of technology. We've got some serious dilemmas that are structural in rural Utah. The irony of this is that I think rural Utah will ultimately be the greatest economic asset the state has. I look at rural southern Utah and I see solitude, lack of congestion, a lifestyle that you can't find anywhere else in die world Add to that an electronic highway where you can do business with anyone in the world with a plentiful workforce of people who want to live there for a reason. Someday somebody's going to want that. I think we could in time make that our state's best economic development asset Because we'll have high quantity of something that is in very limited supply in the world. We've got a ways to go between now and the time we get there. We've got to build an electronic highway that will bring telecommunications technology to every area of rural Utah; we've got to build infrastructure that will allow higher education and postsecondary training to be delivered into those areas; we've got to make it an attractive economic environment for people to do business in; we've got to solve some of the disputes in terms of natural resources that may be part of the solution there. All those things still have to be done, but I think that's the answer not bringing a nudear waste dump to San Juan Goumty. People say to me, "You talk a lot about state's rights. You say that the states ought to have the capadty to be independent of the federal government in making decisions." I strongly believe that Then they say, "Why don't you let San Juan County make that decision for themselves?" I have to point out that in the Constitution of die United States, states are sovereign. They are the unit around which the United States was formed. Counties are not sovereign. They are a function and a subdivision of the state. That decision had a lot more to do with the state of Utah than just San Juan County. I fed deeply about it I fed deeply about the Goshute Indians doing it It is an issue on which I do not intend to back down and I may have to use all the tools available to me to predude it, but I don't believe it is a good thing for the state of Utah. Zephyr Moab sits in the middle of some of the most beautiful country in the world and as a result sees a high amount of tourist-relate- d impact. Of the transient room tax that we get from those tourists, 70 is allocated for promotion. How amenable would you be to legidation which would allow counties a little more leeway in using that money for, perhaps, dealing with those impacts? Governor Oh, I think we need to find other ways of mitigating impacts than just the transient room tax. I think it needs to be reserved for promotion. It's a tax that's specifically targeted, it's a nice fit and I'd hate to see us start to eliminate that as an alternative. Zephyr What do you see as the one most serious environmental issue facing Utah? Governor: The intransigence of all the parties negotiating to resolve federal land disputes. Zephyr. Do you see a way of dealing with that? Governor: I've been working awfully hard at trying to find a way to deal with it, but I think what we have right now is a federal environment where things have shifted a lot We've got a new administration, a new Secretary of Interior and I don't see the atmosphere being real fertile need to keep working at it right now for an immediate solution. We just seems to have deteriorated enormously just Zephyr: Speaking of atmosphere, the air quality Wasatch Front What do you think can be done from die been in die three years that I've away maybe just in die next few years to dear that up? problem. One of the perspective Governor: We have an air quality problem and it's a long-terlot of time outside of Salt Lake is I a problems that comes from a person like you or who spend we lose touch with how bad it was before. In other words, coming from Moab back, it looks a lot worse than it did every day when you got up and went to work living here in Salt Lake Qty. I'm not saying it's not a serious problem. But I've wondered the same thing is it getting measurably or substantially worse? I don't think it is getting multiples worse, but we've got to of basic areas. a get it multiples better. And the way we do that I think is by focusing on couple with deal can we with air start government programs all day long. quality, dealing Anytime you or a And there's not enough money government program big enough to solve the problem until people are prepared to change their hearts. Until it becomes important to the individual to take the steps to have dean air, government programs are going to be ineffective. We need to have more public transportation, but first of all we've got to have people willing to ride it We all want more public transportation so our neighbors will ride it so there'll be more room on the freeway for us. So it's got to became important enough to all of us to be willing to do what needs to be done. And then we can start doing things that will include more public transportation, deaner auto emissions, maybe finding ways to create incentives for people to automobiles. We've got to keep the pressure dean their automobiles up, more natural on industrial polluters, we've got to put the pressure cm home polluters (I'm talking about law but by a willingness d woodbuming stoves etc). All of those are driven not just by of people to care about whether the world's being polluted or not. When that starts to happen, well start to see change. There's a symbol of this hanging in the back of my broom closet at home. It's a plastic bag full of aluminum cans. For many years we didn't recyde our aluminum m - gas-drive- n iron-fiste- - THE KOKOPELLI COFFEEHOUSE Sundays 6PM to 8PM 24 Hours A Day Local Shows Contemporary Accoustic and Folk Music LEMA INDIAN TRADING CO. Moabs Finest Selection & Quality of 860 South Main Authentic Native American Indian Art. 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