Judge to rule on monument

Did former President Bill Clinton violate federal law in 1996 when he set aside 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument?

That decision finally comes down to U.S. District Judge Dee Benson, who heard arguments Thursday in a 6-year-old case by Utah counties challenging the legality of the presidential proclamation, made in the weeks leading up to his re-election in November 1996.

"Our contention all along has been that this monument was politically motivated," said Garfield County Commissioner Clare Ramsey.

And "politics" is not something mentioned in the 1906 Antiquities Act as a reason presidents can use to designate national monuments, the counties argued.

"Congress never contemplated the size and scope of the monument in Escalante," said Amanda Koehler, an attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which joined the counties in the lawsuit. "Political purposes were used to justify the monument."

The Utah Association of Counties and the Mountain States Legal Foundation challenged Clinton's designation, which they said was to block an imminent coal mine on the Kaiparowits Plateau and thereby curry favor with environmentalists, who were leaning toward Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Clinton later designated other national monuments around the country, and several of them were challenged in court. In every case, the courts upheld the president's right to designate national monuments.

So what makes the Utah case different? County officials say it is wilderness. Some 94 percent of the monument is now managed as wilderness, and the monument designation ensures it remains that way. But only Congress can designate wilderness areas, not the president.

"This is a wilderness national monument," said Connie Brooks, attorney for the Utah Association of Counties. "It is being managed as wilderness. Not to be glib, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it really is a duck."

Attorneys for the federal government say how a monument is managed is not the issue. The president has the right to designate monuments and he did.

"The management plan is not before the court," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlie Christensen.

And, she added, the presidential proclamation does not speak to wilderness values, but to the unique archaeological, paleontological and historical values.

Attorneys for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and other conservation groups made arguments on behalf of the government, claiming "the motives of a presidential action are not subject to scrutiny by the courts," said attorney Stephen Bloch.

Besides, he said, the monument is now 7 years old and the county is reaping the economic benefits of monument visitors. That comment had county commissioners from economically depressed southern Utah shaking their heads in disbelief.

"County commissioners don't seem to agree with you on this," Benson observed.

Benson promised to rule on the case as quickly as possible.

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