Clinton Land Grab Concerns Us All Pure Arrogance Public Lands Too Important For One Man To Decide

President Clinton continued his administration’s war on the West in September by ordering what U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, described as “the mother of all land grabs.”

Pandering for the “green” vote at the time, Clinton trooped to the Grand Canyon, unilaterally designated as a national monument a chunk of Utah about the size of Yellowstone National Park, and then posed for pictures. Never mind that administration gofers had ordered a few trees axed to improve Clinton’s photo op.

No Utahns appeared with Clinton.

Most of them, including U.S. Rep. Bill Orton, an independent Democrat, were too busy seething. At a stroke of Clinton’s pen, Utah lost $1 trillion in coal reserves and the prospect of thousands of good-paying mining jobs. On Tuesday, Orton lost his job, although he tried valiantly to put distance between himself and the president’s arrogant action.

No wonder several groups are preparing suits to overturn Clinton’s executive order. No wonder the Idaho delegation and U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, are pursuing legislation that would require congressional approval to establish similar “monuments” in the future. No wonder the wise-use movement is alive and well in the West.

It should take an act of Congress to create a national monument - not a vote-hungry politician. And states and communities affected by proposals to lock up natural resources should have a say in the matter - not just the environmentalists.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, had it right when he said: “There must be public participation before public lands are designated a national monument. No one wants the president, acting alone, to unilaterally lock up enormous parts of any state.”

Idahoans, with their millions of acres of potential wilderness, have reason to worry.

If Democrat Clinton can brush aside Utah’s objections to please Vice President Al Gore and his disciples from the Sierra Club, he surely would do the same to equally Republican Idaho. After all, here’s a guy who sold out his own party on welfare reform.

No one, particularly a president who has proved his disdain for conservative Western states, should be allowed to decide important natural-resource policies by fiat.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: A monument of good sense

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