While the governor wrote a personal check for $11,800 to convert his shiny black taxpayer-owned Suburban to run on natural gas, the rest of the state fleet has turned to - get this - ethanol.

I always suspected government bureaucrats were more cynical than newspaper reporters. And jaded state workers have picked a doozy - a richly-subsidized fuel made out of corn mash - to show off their collective ennui.

Here's how corn took root west of the Farm Belt: State workers assigned to drive alternative fuel vehicles over the years couldn't bother to find one of two-dozen natural-gas filling stations.

At the same time, Detroit stopped making cars that run on natural gas, leaving Honda the only provider. State fleet managers intent on saving a buck reviewed the car industry and concluded more plentiful ethanol cars are the future. They mothballed the natural-gas cars and bought 600 brand-spanking-new corn-fed ones - that despite the fact that there are just five ethanol stations statewide.

The half-argued logic of this one is as flimsy as corn silk.

"If it is too hard to find fueling stations for natural gas vehicles, why would anyone think that ethanol flex-fuel vehicles would be filled with anything but traditional gasoline?" asks Republican State Rep. John Dougall, an ethanol critic. It's "environmentally meaningless."

The practical result of all this is that state workers will be filling ethanol vehicles with conventional gasoline, making the cars run less efficiently and churn more pollution into Utah's skies.

"It is the letter of the law and not the intent," shrugs Margaret Chambers, fleet director.

That's red tape-itis talking. Utah's fleet shift is a not-so-unintended consequence of just one more politically correct mandate from Congress, the 1992 Energy Policy Act (EPACT).

That law requires that three-fourths of all new state fleet vehicles run on alternative fuel. Detroit gets a credit for every flex-fuel car sold. Washington bleeding hearts pat themselves on the back for setting a good example for the masses, cutting pollution and reducing America's dependence on foreign oil. There's just one catch: The law says nothing about actually filling up with something other than petrol.

So state fleet managers have complied, with a wink and a nod to the east.

"The state has had [alternative fuel] vehicles for a long, long time. And for almost that amount of time, they've not been happy about it," says Beverly Miller, former coordinator of the Clean Cities Coalition. "They've been doing it begrudgingly."

Actually, they've been hostile. While state workers actively avoided natural-gas stations, fleet managers turned away the hoi poloi who wanted to fill up at six state-subsidized stations.

Ethanol will be no better. In the entire 7,500-car state fleet, just a few have been filled with E-85 in the last year. One state worker says he was chastised for filling up with ethanol - gas is cheaper. At JP's American Car Care in Clearfield, a gallon of ethanol costs $3.07; petrol is $2.93. For the record, natural gas costs 73 cents a gallon.

State workers and fleet managers and the governor would say they are resigned to reality.

But blaming circumstances isn't enough. Congress and the corn lobby and the car industry might have set up a Catch-22, but Utah could buck it by sticking with natural gas and actually encouraging employees to use it.

Instead, Huntsman has moved on to a plan to fill state garages with hybrids. Not immediately, of course. And in much smaller numbers - 40 to 100.

It might work. State drivers resistant to alternative fuels won't have to go out of their way to fill up.

There's just one more problem: The gas-electric cars don't qualify for that EPACT requirement. So the state still will be buying ethanol cars.

walsh@sltrib.com