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Show Leavitt Meets With County Leaders And PFUSA Reps In Escalante ESCALANTE Governor Michael Leavitt called meetings in Escalante. and Cedar City on Tuesday, Sept. 28 with Garfield and Kane County commissioners and with representatives of People For - i '.'!:. from both counties lor the purpose of discussing roads and access issues prior to his meeting with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Leavitt met first for nearly two hours with city and county representatives including Garfield County Commissioners Louise Liston, Clare Ramsay and Maloy Dodds, Garfield County Engineer Brian Bremner, legal counsel Barbara Hjelle, Escalante Mayor Lenza Wilson and Representative Thomas Hatch (R -Dist. 73). Also present from the Governor's office in addition to Leavitt were Lt. Governor Olene Walker, Special Assistant to the Governor Andrew Croshaw, Deputy Director of Planning and Budget Brad Barber, John Harja over Resource Planning also from the office of Planning and Budget, the Director of the Governor's Rural Partnership Wes Curtis and legal counsel Gary Doxey. At the second meeting (with approximately 50 PFUSA members), Commission Chairman Louise Liston spoke briefly about their session with the governor. She said she felt the earlier two-hour two-hour session with the Governor was "very positive" and that Leavitt wouM now go meet face-to-face with Babbitt and report back how negotiations has proceeded. Governor Leavitt also addressed the group briefly receiving a warm round of applause from many of the same people he had spumed during his earlier trip to Cedar City for the Utah Rural Summit. The mood in the room was one of frustration, with a serious tone, but neither hostile nor unfriendly. Leavitt said his just-completed two-hour meeting with -Garfield County's leaders had been "mostly about roads. Litigation Likely "My objective," he said, "is simply to make certain I understand what the county feels it needs and wants, and my purpose is to put those as well as I can with the Secretary of the Interior. "I don't know if we can produce any kind of agreement on that or not ... I think I understand what the county wants. I'm going to go back now and talk to him Babbitt about it and see if there's any way we can produce it. If we can't," Leavitt continued, "then we'll end up, I'm sure, in litigation. In fact, I hate to tell you but I'm pretty sure we're going to have more litigation anyway. Leavitt Explains Proposal Leavitt continued "I've proposed an approach where we would define the roads that we could agree ought to be roads, that we agree ought to be maintained that ought to be a corridor. And I proposed we put those on one list. Then I proposed that we put all the roads we can't agree on, on another list. "The county proposed that there's a bunch of roads out there that nobody has thought about yet and we'd like to call on the citizens of the county to help us know where they are and which ones they need. And I've invited them to do that. I think that's a good idea so we can get a lot of people involved in developing a list of any roads that have not been considered. Agree On Some, Sue On Others "What I had hoped we could do is to come to an agreement on the roads we agree on and then agree to sue each other on the ones we don't" "I have told the county and I will tell you that my interest in that litigation is to find the areas where there are long term binding precedents that will help define what RS2477's are. Some of those lawsuits might come in Garfield County and some of them might come in Kane County and some in : Uintah County. I'd just like to find ; the roads in which we are best ; positioned to establish a positive precedent and access to as many roads as possible." "Then the btate is willing to use state funds to back the counties ... Other Impacts to County We did spend some time talking -about the fact that there are other impacts that are happening in the county. The county needs to find some money to take care of these. We discussed some ideas for how we might get some money, either state or federal, to come to the county for the purpose of being able to take care of those impacts." "The other thing I would just like to say before we open it ... I think I understand how deep seeded this issue is and how strongly you feel about it. And I want you to know I am committed to doing everything I can to reach either an agreement or an outcome with litigation that gives you maximum access to roads ..." Questions and Answers "Just let me make this observation," said Rick Crawford, president of the Escalante chapter of People for the USA, "then I have a question. I kind see this road issue as an old heifer that has a brand on one hip and a brand on the other side, three ear tags in one ear and two notches in the other and a couple of waddles on her neck. And everybody fighting over who she (See GOV. LEAVITT on page 5-A) GOV. LEAVITT From Front Page belongs to. And of course we can leave it to the courts that clearly define, you know, that they're the county's ... Before the turn of the century they were RS2477 rights-of-way. Now we're going into the next century. My question is, are what you saying is that you're planning to let the county decide on these roads and then you're going to help back the county in these lawsuits or does the state have some kind of concern on the roads that they are going to actually end up..." Leavitt responded "I don't see any position that ... the state's interest is to maintain these rights-of-way. Ultimately they were state rights-of-way ... the state clearly has an interest in protecting those rights-of-way and it's going to be, I believe, the highest priority we have in terms of our Constitutional defense ... to protect the RS2477 rights ..." He continued, "Let me just tell you one of the things I have been promoting with the county leadership, is an idea that really came from your group down in Kane County..." "A guy said he was a BLM employee for 30 years and he said up until the mid-80's we didn't argue about this stuff. We just had an agreement, they could think that is didn't exist and we could agree that it did exist..." Leavitt expounds "and I think that's really a pretty good idea to get back to. And so what I would like to do is take the list of roads on which we agree. The Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt has committed to me that they would provide an agreement on the roads on which there is agreement. That they wouldn't challenge the existence of the RS2477 right-of-way. "Now the value of that in my mind is: you've got it. If they're not going to challenge it, you've got it. So why fight for something you've basically struck a value on? "To me what we've got to do is narrow our losses, potentially, or narrow our disagreement to the ones on which we don't have agreement. And then, within those roads we've got to figure the ones we've got the best chance to win on. We don't want to go out and litigate every one of those roads... "And they may not come in Garfield County. The best lawsuits to do that may come in Kane County or Wayne County ... we just don't have enough money to litigate every road. So we have to find the best ones, find the best legal minds we can and do the best to litigate." Lowell Mecham, Tropic, spoke up next saying, "I am the Bryce Valley Chapter president for People for the USA. I want you to know Governor, the Mecham name in our part of the country is just as important as Leavitt in Mesquite and St. George. We've been there a long while." Leavitt retorted "What I have found is being a Leavitt in Mesquite and 35 cents will buy you a cup of coffee." Mecham continued, "I'm a fourth generation person of our area. Born and raised here. Born in 1935. I remember when things were tough, the second World War. We had the garden, the orchard, we put things away, when the summer door was closed, when we'd gone out and got our loads of wood, we were ready for winter. And we were left alone! "Then along comes the Federal government and things have really clamped down. ... And here's what we've lost: the Alton coal fields, the Kaiparowits power plant, the Andalex coal mine, C02 deposits, at Alvey Wash there's a mineral there that's just in limbo, oil production, stone, and even movie production .... Then we've seen the State Trust Lands, I mean, we just don't feel like we have any voice at all. It just happens and we're the losers, our hope is gone... "But to say, tourism is the answer is not right because after I retired from school, I work now for $7 an hour, no benefits. That's ; what these people, most of them, are looking at down here." Governor Recalls the Past Leavitt, too, spoke of his past as a youth in southern Utah, "I remember as a kid, being out there with our cattle and in the back of my grandfather's truck there was a wooden box and he had a big sack of grass seed. And the BLM would give us the seed and the deal was, when you stop for lunch, then my job was to take the grass seed, wherever you sat, you'd go out and plant seed. "And that was the kind of cooperative relationship that you had with the Federal government. And we'd build fences and they'd bring supplies and we'd build fence. It was a cooperative relationship. And I have seen in my own experience a deterioration of those relationships and a change in the fundamental way that people interact. I see it, I feel it, I've experienced it, and I feel frustrated by it. "I remember expressing to my dad once something very similar to this on a different subject. And he said, "Mike, we are where we are. We've just got to move forward now the best way possible. A Promise to Return ' "I'm feeling regretful that I'm not able to stay here for the two hours or three hours it would take for us to really talk this through. But regrettably, I've got to go to Cedar City to meet with Kane County on this same subject. But, I am willing to come back. And if you'll gather this group up again, I'd like to listen to every one of you. And I'd like to have you understand that my goal is to do the best I can under the circumstances to move this forward.' But as my dad said, 'we are where we are.' "I guess I can only make one appeal and that is, I am very worried about the level of emotional energy that's starting to crop up in communities all over this state. Particularly in this end of the state. I'm very concerned that somebody is going to do something stupid. And it will set our cause back decades ... Because the emotion of this will so swing against the position of the local communities that we'll simply not be able to recover in my political life time or in the life time of many people. "So I just appeal to you that while we're working through this process, let's use our heads. I know that emotions are high and I guess that's all I want to say. The Governor answered only a few more questions and was officially presented a letter regarding the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument from the Garfield County Planning and Zoning committee by member Jeanne Harshman before departing by plane for Cedar City. |