Whatever the answer, what has been characterized as a "clarification" from Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s office late last week regarding a possible state legal challenge to the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has a lot of people scrambling to read the tea leaves.
Not the least of them are the Outdoor Retailers, who are converging at the Salt Palace for their semiannual convention. Represented by the Outdoor Industry Association, the retailers are the largest convention group in Utah, bringing 35,000 visitors and $32 million to the state annually, as well as growing political clout. Some of the retailers I spoke with this week - who move within business and environmental circles alike - are still confused about the new governor's position.
News broke Jan. 19 that the Utah Attorney General's Office was seeking permission from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit challenging the creation of the monument in 1996 by President Clinton. It seemed the state was jumping right back into a tired old fight, with the AG's office arguing the boundaries of the 1.7 million-acre monument should be shrunk, potentially opening lands to oil, gas and coal exploration.
Having fought previously with Gov. Mike Leavitt on wilderness, the Outdoor Retailers felt like they were stuck in a bad rerun. "Everyone just about freaked out," said Peter Metcalf, sounding more like an aging hippie than the millionaire founder and CEO of Black Diamond Equipment Co., based in Holladay. Metcalf said online discussions exploded among association members. They urged that the group either "disinvite" Huntsman as a Saturday morning speaker to the group, or "give him a chance to backtrack on this deal," Metcalf said.
"Backtrack" is not the word from the Huntsman camp. Hours after industry representatives met with Huntsman on Friday, the governor's legal counsel, Mike Lee, told The Salt Lake Tribune the "details" of the brief hadn't been hammered out yet. The state merely wants the federal government to understand it should consider the size and scope of a monument in a state where 70 percent of land is already federally owned.
On Wednesday, Lee again emphasized that any assumption that Huntsman wants to chop the monument was based on incomplete information. "Anytime you file a brief it goes through a series of drafts," Lee said. "Governor Huntsman has been in office only a few weeks. We were brought into this only last week."
Metcalf declined to discuss details of what he considers a mostly private discussion with Huntsman, but he said he left "satisfied after the governor strongly emphasized he has no desire to shrink the monument."
Huntsman spokeswoman Tammy Kikuchi suggested I call the Attorney General's Office to learn more about the genesis of the brief. "The whole review of this started there," she said. Mark Ward, the deputy attorney general who set the friends-of-the-court issue in motion, did not return my phone call.
If it was just a glitch in a new administration getting up and running, it was a doozy. The words "flip-flop" wafted around for a bit among the outdoor retailers, but they want to give the new guv a chance.
"Hey," said one conventioneer, "if it was a flip-flop, it worked in our favor this time, and that's fine by me."
hmullen@sltrib.com
