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Show Stand On Principle County Commissioners Reject Secretary Bruce Babbitt's $100,000 PANGUITCH On Monday, Garfield County officially rejected $100,000 offered by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to aid the county in planning for the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument. With no funds in its budget to aid in the national monument planning process, the commissioners nevertheless decided that they " cannot trust a bureaucratic bureau-cratic Department of Interior." The $100,000 offer was accompanied by a nine-page Cooperative Coop-erative Agreement for commissioners commis-sioners to sign. It was subject to national policy requirements and, in order to obtain the funds which would be disbursed in payments each quarter within the guidelines of strict administrative management standards. "We simply have learned the hard way that any agreements that rely upon commitments made by this administration are usually not worth the paper they are written on," the news release stated. Charging that Babbitt has "consistently tried every means in his power (and sometimes beyond his power) to deny access on RS2477 roads, shut down mining, eliminate grazing, control water rights, and establish wilderness by his own set of rules," county officials said they cannot be beholden to "someone in Washington D.C. who dictates what we can or can't do on our county roads, who has sued us for steepening a cut-slope to partially alleviate a dangerous blind turn, and charged the county with four trespass notices just last week for maintaining our class D roads." "Garfield County has been planned and studied to death. We can't count the number of times we have gone through that process. Should we then consent to yet another time-consuming and costly effort with the hopes that it will somehow make a difference with an administration and Department of Interior famous for broken promises and unfair treatment with regards to federal land management?" "Garfield County will not be party to an attempt by a cruel insensitive administration obviously obvi-ously void of integrity, to 'smooth over' this maliciously orchestrated land grab with their token of 'blood money.'" "Likewise, we cannot be party to Congressman Bill Orton's attempt to use this issue to gain votes for re-election," the county's (See Commissioners Refuse Babbitt's $100,000 On Page 2-A) County Commissioners Reject Bruce Babbitt's $100,000 Offer news release concluded. An angry Congressman Orton responded to the county's attack with, "These county commissioners have lost touch with reality. It is partisan political stupidity displayed by some radical Republicans who take political party loyalty to a new extreme in an obvious decision that is to the detriment of their own constituency." Not so, said Garfield County Commission Chairman Louise Liston from Salt Lake City on Tuesday where she met with state legislators angered over Orton's "offensive attack" on Garfield County's officials. Utah's Speaker of the House, Melvin R. Brown, President of the Senate, Senator Leonard Blackham, Representative Tom Hatch, and Representative Brad Johnson agreed in a news release and at a press conference that Orton's-claim that Garfield County's commissioners '"have lost touch with reality' demonstrates the arrogance to which local officials have been subjected in trying to resolve public lands issues." The four men agreed that "Orton owes an apology to the commissioners and the citizens of Garfield County." Senator Blackham said, and Brown, Hatch and Johnson agreed, " These commissioners are some of the most dedicated and common-sense common-sense people in the state of Utah. These are people elected by citizens they are accountable to on a daily basis. These are people who know first hand the issues and the problems this monument creates. They have, for many years, tried to work on similar issues with federal bureaucracies with little resolved. To suggest that turning down the money is being out of touch is totally false. In fact, there is nothing closer to the grass roots of the people than rural county commissioners. Is Bill Orton suggesting that county commissioners commis-sioners are out of touch with their citizens and local needs?" Hatch added his part, to which the other three agreed, that "Orton insinuates that 'Washington knows best,." that "local citizens or their :lected officials do not know what is in their best interest, and that the great minds' inside the beltway lave all the answers. "To assert," Hatch said, with approval of Brown, Blackham and Johnson, "that Garfield County's refusal to accept federal monies will preclude then from the public process is ludicrous. There is a difference between participating in 'public process' and being coerced into compromising values by acceptance of federal dollars." On Monday after learning of the county's refusal of the federal funds, Orton said, "I'm going to recommend to the Secretary of the Interior that they transfer the entire $200,000 to Kane County." Commissioner Liston said Tuesday night in Escalante, "The people of Garfield County can rest assured that we will be a part of the planning process for the monument and we do not need the $100,000 to do that. There are many sources available for us to turn to, along with our County Comprehensive Plan, already in place, that will guarantee our active and credible participation." "Reference to political motives is ridiculous," said Hatch in his contribution to the Salt Lake City news release. "Garfield County has a long history of standing up for its convictions. For Orton to say that this action is a detriment to our constituency is a slap in the face to the people of Southern Utah and we call for an apology." But Orton spokesman Dave Lemmon said Tuesday night in Washington that Orton's reaction to the Monday's decision by Garfield County Commissioners to reject the funds "astounded" the Congressman. "They're cutting off their nose to spite their face," he said. "It's absolutely unbelievable!" "The monument is there whether we like it or not," said Lemmon. He said that Congressman Orton was most offended because the county's commissioners had made their decision based upon the first "very rough" draft of the Cooperative Agreement. He said that they had already discussed some issues that the Orton camp felt could be resolved. He said that Orton had felt that things were being worked out. "They the commissioners have a right to be frustrated for the way they have been treated in numerous cases in the past in dealing with federal agencies," Lemmon said. But he added that by their most recent decision, they no longer will be the "very effective voices" they have been in the past. He said that Congressman Orton had felt that problems in the agreement were being worked out, that progress was being made on making direct advance payment to resolve the county's dissatisfaction over the payment process and that a "long list" of objections brought by Commissioner Liston were being addressed. Initially, "they were the ones who came to us and asked us for the money," Lemmon said. Their "out-of-hand rejection of the first rough draft without ever notifying us or getting back to us in any way" is what was unbelievable, he said. Lemmon called a letter to the editor signed by Met Johnson on his own stationery, a "piece of trash." Johnson charges in the letter that Orton's chief aide has alliances and allegiances" to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), chaired by former (See Commissioners Refuse Babbitt's $100,000 On Page 5-A) Commissioners From Front Page Congressman Wayne Owens. He asks Orton to explain why Owens has been raising funds for Orton in a letter that refers to Orton as "our friend in Washington." Lemmon countered charges of alliances to SUWA contained in Johnson's letter against the Orton camp with, "Preposterous. We are public Enemy No. 1 to SUWA." Johnson is executive director of the Western States Coalition and has widely distributed the letter to news media. He said Tuesday in Salt Lake City that the Mountain States Legal Foundation located in Denver, Colo, will file a lawsuit Thursday in behalf of the Western States Coalition against the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument. Back in Escalante Tuesday night, Liston said, "It is easy for people like Bill Orton and others to sit back and criticize and name-call, but they have no idea what frustrations and disappointments we commissioners have gone through in trying to deal effectively with local federal agencies that are bound by final decisions coming from Washington, D.C." She said that the commission's particular concerns about the proposed Cooperative Agreement put forth by the BLM centered on certain vague and broad foundational concepts in the document. Specifics cited included the BLM's right to "review and incorporate in the Plan, to the extent appropriate, the information provided by the County pursuant to this cooperative agreement." "The determination of what is appropriate", she said, "lies solely with the BLM." The document's Statement of Joint Objectives says "The general public will benefit from the protection and interpretation of the geological, paleontological, archeo-logical, archeo-logical, historic, and biological resources of the Monument." She says the vagueness of such statements, state-ments, making assumptions and drawing conclusions for which there is no reasonable and factual basis, is typical of statements the BLM is asking the county to sign How do we know that such will be the outcome of decisions made ? How can we possibly put our signatures to an agreement with so many open-ended statements? Liston is a 10-year veteran on the Garfield County Commission whose baptism into commission responsibilities began with the county's first Burr Trail lawsuit in the 1980's. She is widely respected as one of the most knowledgeable people in the West on public lands issues and serves on several boards and committees dealing specifically with public lands. Rep. Tom Hatch, also a Garfield County commission veteran before representing southern Utahns in Utah's House of Representatives, has been active in the same public lands arena for many years. All Garfield County commissioners commis-sioners have earned wide recognition recogni-tion for their perseverance in the face of what they and others have often perceived as an unending stream of federal attacks against not only Garfield County's public lands rights, but also public lands in other Western states.. |