Call, who has been the ombudsman for the last eight years, said he handles 1,000 calls a year. Of those, he works on about 300 cases where property owners need an outside diplomat to work with an agency on their behalf. Roughly 100 cases require him to serve as a mediator, and Call recommends a couple dozen or so cases for arbitration each year, he said.

His job ranges from answering questions over the phone to taking a case to arbitration in court. Call wants to see a federal ombudsman who could handle the calls he gets about federal takings in Utah, of which nearly 70 percent is owned or controlled by the federal government.

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Utah ombudsman's role

Utah's ombudsman, Craig Call, is serving as the model for Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch's federal bill about private property rights.

Call, who has been Utah's private property ombudsman for eight years, answers questions and serves as a mediator for private property owners who face city ordinances or state eminent domain takings, among other things. He can negotiate prices for property taken by eminent domain or help people sort through a city's rules about improvements to property.

He has served as a go-between for the Utah Department of Transportation and a property owner who faced eminent domain for a road project, and he has helped Sandy city officials craft a law that distinguishes between individual property owners and large developers when it comes to payments for improvement to public property.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com