This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In the overheat against Utah's newest national monument, there comes outrage over the harm President Obama has supposedly inflicted on Utah's schoolchildren.

When the Bears Ears boundaries were announced last week, more than 100,000 acres of school trust lands were inside the 1.35 million-acre monument. School trust lands are managed by the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) to provide funding for Utah schools, and a monument limits SITLA's options for such management.

State Treasurer David Damschen issued a statement that says the president "is showing reckless disregard for Utah's public education system and its funding" by making the monument designation.

What the treasurer fails to acknowledge is that those trust lands produce virtually no income for Utah schools now. They're just sitting there, and there aren't a lot of prospects for making more money off them. The president, in his proclamation designating the monument, called for those lands to be traded out, which would take an act of Congress that gives SITLA some federal land elsewhere in exchange.

And that's where Damschen ignores history. The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument produced a similar situation 20 years ago, and it turned out to one of the most lucrative moments in SITLA history. The lands they traded for were oil and gas properties, and the parcels they gave up in the monument were producing little or no money. Utah schoolchildren get millions every year because of that monument and the resulting exchange legislation, and there is every reason to believe the same thing could happen this time.

Whatever one might think of President Obama's use of the Antiquities Act, it arguably shows reckless disregard for funding public education to oppose this monument. It represents the best opportunity to turn those 109,000 acres into a revenue stream for Utah schoolchildren.

That is why you see more careful statements coming from SITLA's spokesman and from Tim Donaldson, School Children's Trust director for the Utah Board of Education, who expects the hindrance to a timely exchange to come from Utah political leaders who want to litigate or legislate the monument away:

"Any land exchange that we agree to, the Legislature would have to approve. It's hard to see an agreement, exchange, sale, what-have-you, being quickly wrapped up. It seems more likely to have prolonged litigation or political fights on this issue."

Utah leaders' angry fist-shaking may score with their political patrons, but it won't buy any pencils and books.