At a recent committee hearing for Rep. Mike Noel’s House Bill 136, a bizarre thing happened. The committee chair, Rep. Keven Stratton, required all public speakers to be sworn in, warning the public that any comment found inaccurate or untruthful would result in a charge of a second-degree felony.
This swearing in under threat of a felony, which Rep. Susan Duckworth rightly labeled an intimidation tactic, was not required of the bill’s sponsor, nor of any other legislators speaking to the bill.
It’s a double standard that exemplifies the hubris of the House Natural Resources Committee and illuminates a contempt for public input – particularly input that runs counter to the opinions of the bill’s sponsor. The bill under discussion is another example of Noel silencing those with whom he disagrees.
The original version of the bill was a gag order disguised as legislation. The bill would have stopped any city, town, county, or entity receiving state funds – such as a university – from advocating for federal protections for public lands in the state. Under the original bill, entities were forbidden from supporting federal designation until the Legislature first passed a concurrent resolution in support of additional federal protections.
We all know that a conservation bill has little chance of passing the Utah Legislature – where Noel wields a disproportionate degree of power and where, as the chair of the House Rules Committee, he holds a Sword of Damocles over every piece of legislation hoping for passage. Quickly reviewing House Concurrent Resolutions over the past two legislative sessions reveals eight on the topic of public lands. Of these, none advocate for additional protections and a majority, sponsored by Noel and Stratton, seek to either strip federal public lands protections or take those lands for the state.
Now to get really mad.
Noel is on another state committee, the Constitutional Defense Council. At the Jan. 18 meeting, the council decided to move forward with state funded “County Sovereignty Grants” of $150,000 to support “rural counties and initiatives challenging federal restrictions and actions that prohibit or harm resource use, access and development on public (federal) lands.”
On one hand, Noel is stripping entities of their ability to voice support for federal lands protections with HB136, and on the other using taxpayer dollars to subsidize counties slashing federal protections and advancing the state’s takeover of these lands.
During the committee hearing for HB136, Noel falsely accused, though not under oath, the organization representing the five tribes advocating for Bear Ears National Monument of accepting significant funding from conservation organizations like the Grand Canyon Trust. This charge pales in comparison to Noel’s own actions before the House Natural Resources Appropriations Committee on the very same day.
In appropriations, Noel requested $350,000 taxpayer dollars be directed to NGOs doing litigation and public relations to assist counties in fighting federal land protections. These are taxpayer dollars used to advocate a specific political position, one that’s unpopular with a majority of Utahns. The tax dollars come with little oversight, anemic state supervision and no accountability. Just taxpayer dollars disappearing down the black hole of Noel’s dreams of a county sovereignty.
More egregious than these tax dollars disappearing into the pockets of these political NGOs is that these are appropriations which could be better spent on education, desperately needed clean air measures to improve air quality for a majority of Utahns or a number of other valid issues. Noel and his colleagues are taking the tax dollars that could have been used to solve real and pressing problems and using them to fuel their benighted dreams of sagebrush rebellion.
Citizens need to hold those on Capitol Hill accountable for their bullying, intimidation tactics and contempt for public input. Until we do that, the degradation of our physical environment will continue to be a direct result of the rot within our civic environment.
Rob DeBirk is the policy director at Save Our Canyons.