April 2001

Finding the balance between protecting children and securing and preserving families is a very delicate one, and one that we work hard to constantly to preserve and to improve.

Reporters in (order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
ROD DECKER, KUTV
DAN HARRIE, SL TRIBUNE
TOM JORDAN, METRO NEWS
LEE AUSTIN, UT PUBLIC RADIO
JENNIFER TOOMER COOK, DESERET NEWS
SUNDAYS HUNT, KSL-TV

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us today. On Wednesday a group of concerned citizens, including several members of the state legislature, delivered a letter to your office highly critical of the state’s child welfare system, particularly the division of child and family services in the office that affords children legal representation to the guardian ad litem office. They describe a system run amock. How do you respond?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I find it ironic. On one hand we’re responding to litigation that we’ve been working on for several years, now, alleging that the state acts too slowly in taking children out of harm’s way. We now are receiving a similar kind of response from the other side of this issue, saying that the state responds too quickly. Finding the balance between protecting children and securing and preserving families is a very delicate one, and one that we work hard to constantly to preserve and to improve. Our system is improving, it isn’t perfect, but all efforts are being made to find that balance. I will, as a matter of fact, however, indicate that over the course of the last couple of years, the number of children that we have under protective custody has dropped by 350 or so children. We are still in excess of 2300 children that we have in protective custody or in some kind of foster care. That’s more than I would like, but in every one of those cases it’s responding to a situation where people of judgment, in every case a judge, felt that the children were in some danger, they were being neglected, or that there was the potential of some harm. I don’t question that there are times when the judgments of human beings are flawed, and that they may act too quickly or too slowly. We lament in each case that that happens. But we are doing the best we can to protect children, and recognize the need for us to work to preserve families as well.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: It sounds as if you don’t believe that some sort of fundamental change in the system is needed, that, say, the guardian ad litem’s office should be abolished or changed so that they’re volunteers instead of lawyers, or that DCFS should be somehow, its mission fundamentally changed. It sounds as if you think what we’re doing now is, we can improve it, but it’s about the path that we ought to be on.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, it’s the product of lots of different acvocacies, as well represented by the lawsuit that we’re fighting on one hand, saying we act too slowly, and then this kind of advocacy saying we act too quickly. There’s a balance there, and you’re just going to get it from both sides always. I mean the people who do this on a day-to-day basis are, they do one of the most difficult jobs in state government. Solomon had to be good one day, and it made him infamous forever. A person who is in child protective services has to walk into a situation, see a child and make a judgment as to whether or not that child should be taken from that family. It’s an awful situation to be in for anyone. They take them to a judge, the judge then acts, according to the information, puts them into a protective circumstance. We’ve found over time that everyone in that situation needs to be adequately represented, including the interests of the child. Now, may I add that many of the signators on that letter were members of the state legislature. If the system needs to be changed, that’s the place where it needs to start. We’re responding in the department to legislation created in the state legislature defining those rules. Now, there are advocates in the state legislature on both sides. "Governor, the division is acting too rapidly to take children from families." "Governor, you can’t imagine that they haven’t taken this child out of a home." There’s a difference of opinion here that’s based, in many cases, on a different settle values or a set of priorities. I think everyone wants to protect children, I think everyone wants to secure families, but every one of these situations boil down to a set of facts, and they’re almost always disputed. And so the reason we end up with a system that’s this complex is because the circumstances are complex and very emotional.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: You know, it sounds as if you’ll take what you’re given. You don’t have a clear idea of what you want, you’ll take whatever the legislature comes up with, or the Federal Courts, or whoever is deciding. Do you have a clear idea of what you think ought to happen?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I think that would be an unfair characterization. We have advocated very clearly a set of standards, and we’ve implemented them. It’s clear that we needed to improve the response time when a report came in. When I became governor we had 13,000 calls the first year that we had to respond to. This year we’ll have somewhere in the neighborhood of 28,000 calls. We’re responding in many cases in as little as two hours, and in many cases 24 or 48. I also recognize that there is a need for everyone in these circumstances to be represented. I would not eliminate the office of guardian ad litem. It needs to be there. Now, there may be times when they are, it’s cumbersome, but the children need to be represented. On the other hand, there are times when I think we allow the legal process to become so cumbersome that we step over common sense, and that’s not just a function of rules, it’s a function of training. But every one of these circumstances is different. I’ve been in the middle, trying to sort through dozens of them, because they ultimately, in some way, end up coming to our office. We try to keep them being managed by professionals. I don’t perceive myself to be a professional, but I do offer, in many cases, a sense of common sense. But in most cases we’re dealing with judges, who have the rule of law that they have to adjudicate.

DAN HARRIE, SL TRIBUNE: I believe one of the requests the critics are making is an audit. Do you support that idea, or do you think we’ve had enough audits of the system up to this point?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There have been more audits and studies and new boards. There are too many- - If I could make one change in that system, I would streamline the number of boards that we have, because there are just- - I mean it’s just- - This is an area of just limitless emotion and passion, and complication. Because you’re dealing, not just with a system, but you’re dealing with, well, in this last year, 28,000 calls, or something in that neighborhood, responding when someone believed that a child was being harmed or was in harm’s way. You cannot fail to respond in those situations. And it’s a tragedy when circumstances collide to allow a child to be injured because we didn’t respond fast enough. On the other hand, I’m very sympathetic with parents, and frankly, I’ve talked with parents and in a couple of situations found places where I thought the division acted too quickly. But not always, and not often. And you can’t make perfect judgments all the time. So we do the best we can to have a system that sorts through them in an organized and deliberate way, we have judged in our juvenile court system that are tasked by our society to make these decisions, and I know there are people who disagree with them, and I know that there are- - Typically you end up with an I parent who’s distraught because the state has stepped in and may have taken temporary custody of their children. And the neighbors will come to their defense and say, "That couldn’t have happened. These are people that are fine parents." And their family members will come forward. And you know, in many cases it’s just a doctor saying this child’s been bruised in a way that is conspicuous. Now, I do think society can respond too quickly to that, because there are circumstances when a child can be injured in a way that would make it look that way, and you can put a stain on a family and people in a very unfair way. And I suspect that it happens in the large picture of things. But it’s also difficult for us not to respond when a child’s being hurt. So I don’t pretend to have perfect wisdom on this. But I do know that we’re committed to finding the balance between preserving families and responding to children. And we are going to have, I think, as a matter of certainty, we’ll have pressure on one side and pressure on the other, and at some point in the middle we’ll find the balance.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NEWS: Governor, I talked last week, talked recently, with several environmental activists who were puzzled by the lawsuit you filed with the attorney general last week against the forest service to overturn the roadless policy. They rather saw this as sending a message that you don’t trust the Bush administration to overturn Clinton environmental policy. And that if it isn’t that, then why file the suit?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I don’t think there would be anyone who could rationally say I don’t trust the Bush administration. I have a lot of confidence in the Bush administration. But what I don’t have a lot of confidence in always are bureaucratic rules, and I also recognize that those inside the administration have a difficult job. And I just want to make sure that we end up having to litigate that we’re well under way. I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that the Bush administration feels like the Clinton administration stepped well beyond the mark in doing that which was not consistent with either the spirit or the letter of the law. And I’d be pleased, delighted, and relieved if the Bush administration could, in short order, reverse those rules. I’m prepared to have them engage in a new rule-making process, but in the meantime they ought not to be enforcing a rule that was both illegal and illogical, and we ought to take a more measured course.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor let’s turn our attention to Logan and a question from Lee Austin. Lee?

LEE AUSTIN, UT PUBLIC RADIO: Thank you. Governor, Congressman Maurice Hinschi is apparently ready to reintroduce his bill to create about 9.3 million acres of BLM wilderness in Utah. Two-part question, is he wasting his time? And secondly, what’s happening in your office currently on the wilderness issue?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don’t expect, with Jim Hansen as the chairman of the resources committee, for Congressman Hinschi’s bill to go anywhere. I also don’t believe that we’ll see the same pattern followed in the Department of Interior that we did in the past administration, where they would take the largest, most speculative wilderness proposal, and begin to manage those lands as though they were wilderness. My office is currently focused on roads. We’re working to both negotiate and litigate to receive quiet title to nearly 5,000 roads that cross public lands. Those are closely connected with the wilderness, because wilderness is, by definition, areas that are roadless. And we need to clarify, once and for all, what is a road what isn’t, where they are, and who maintains them. That’s the focus of my effort. I am in conversations, and have certified periodic conversations with Congressman Hansen, who is working to find some resolution to wilderness. I think that the doctrine that I’ve put forward as a state, of incremental progress, is one that likely will be followed, but I’m not personally engaged in the development of a specific proposal on wilderness. Our priority will be roads.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: You said negotiation on roads, can you tell us about negotiation?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, there are- - There’s an atmosphere of cooperation right now between the state, the counties, and the BLM. I’ve met with the state BLM director on a number of occasions, I’ve met with the Secretary of the Interior, I’ve described for them what we’re doing to prepare for litigation, and demonstrated for them what it’s going to take for the federal government to respond to this litigation. By the end of the summer we’ll have literally a battalion-sized force of people out on the roads taking pictures, geographic satellite positioning on maps, on being able to take affidavits, and preparing for this litigation. It’s massive. It’s undoubtedly the largest single piece of litigation that the state will have ever undertaken, and may have ever been undertaken in the state’s history. And I, the federal government’s going to have to respond to that, and I don’t think they see- - I mean I think they can begin to see now that that’s not fruitful. And so there is a discussion going on in a number of counties, on a county-by-county basis, to see if we can’t resolve the road issue in a negotiated fashion.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Okay, now, but you’re hoping for negotiations. You aren’t actually, the federal government hasn’t actually appointed a negotiator who’s meeting with somebody from the state and they’re saying, "Let’s see if we can’t arrive at a settlement." Is that what I’m hearing?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There are county-by-county discussions going forward.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Between whom?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Between representatives of the department, with the Bureau of Land Management, and county officials. The state is assisting in those, but we’re not conducting the negotiations, and- - But we are certainly promoting the idea, and we’re providing information, and we’re doing all we can to assist that.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NEWS: This battalion is coming from where? The battalion-sized operation?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We’re forming, as part of our office of roads litigation, a team of people that will work throughout the state, of volunteers, who will be trained. They will be provided equipment and will be, we actually have hired a person, a well-experienced person who knows all of the county organizations, Dixie Minson, who is currently finishing service with Senator Bennett. Her job will be to organize volunteers who will not just be casual volunteers, they’ll be well-trained, well-equipped workers who will go out on the roads, drive the roads, take pictures on the roads. We have a system set up that’s really very elaborate and quite remarkable, where we use satellite technology to spot on the road, where they drive along the road and if they find a culvert or something that makes it very clear this is a road and it’s been constructed and repaired and so forth, they’ll get out and take a geographic satellite positioning on the map, and then they’ll take a picture with a digital camera. That is then downloaded into a computer, and we have the capacity when we then go to court, to literally drive the road digitally, stop at a place, click on it, a picture comes up, shows exactly what evidence there is of that being a road and repaired, then you’ll click on another spot and it’ll bring up an affidavit that in many cases, in most cases will have come from an oral interview done with people who have used that road, and we’ll assemble evidence. We’re referring to this as the preservation team, and we anticipate over time, and having several hundred people engaged in this. We have to, in order to gather this information on the level of detail that’s required, it will necessitate that kind of an effort. For historians, this is going to create a massive database of history of this state. It’s a really kind of exciting project, but more importantly, just as importantly, it will create an absolute evidence of the history of these roads. At issue in this litigation is whether or not these are roads or not, and if they’ve been maintained as roads. And in many cases they’re on federal maps. And the federal government in the ‘40s and the ‘50s and ‘60s said, "Here’s a road," and now they’re denying it even exists. That’s the nonsense that has energized people throughout the state to be willing to take 20 and 30 hours a week to volunteer for this effort. Now lots more will be said about it, but that’s where the battalion-sized force is going to come from. And when I lay this out to the federal government, I think very logically, they say, "Maybe we ought not to have to go through all of this. Maybe we can just walk out and say, you know, it really is a road, let’s agree that it’s 52 feet wide in the right of way," and just come to an agreement. That would be smart and it would also be, it would save a lot of resources that could go into the management of land.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, you’re describing a change in atmosphere in dealing with the Department of the Interior. Obviously we’ve alluded to the Babbit administration, now we’re alluding to the administration of interior secretary Norton. You did forge with interior secretary Babbit a grudging respectful negotiating style, where it seemed both of you came together on a couple of key issues. Wasn’t that in the best interests of public policy to have two views represented, rather than everybody being perhaps on one side of a lands issue?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I don’t question the fact that there’s a different atmosphere. There is. It’s a problem-solving atmosphere as opposed to a contentious atmosphere. I did forge what I thought was a good working relationship with former secretary Babbit. I suspect I had a better working relationship with him than many people in the west did. We worked at it. And I’ll tell you that I think that, while he was criticized greatly, I think he was at least willing to sit down and solve problems far more than I think there were people in the opposite environmental quality, for example at the White House. I think that we could have worked out a lot more things if common sense would have been the prevailing attitude, as opposed to just one of throwing obstacles. We could have done a lot more if the White House and the former administration hadn’t been throwing obstacles in the road, so to speak, at every turn.

JENNIFER TOOMER COOK, DESERET NEWS: Governor, some parts of the state are going to be facing a water shortage. Will the state step up for water conservation or water development?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We will. In fact, I think a piece of our future is going to be surrounded by the need to create an ethic of conservation, not just in water, but in energy, and all use of natural resources. Our state’s growing. We’re seeing what’s happening now with energy throughout the west. The same thing will be true of water this year and in other years. We cannot continue to see a doubling of our population over a 30- or 40-year period with the same amount of water, and not expect that there’ll be times when we’re short. So conservation must not just be a short-term ethic, or short-term plan. It’s got to be a long-term ethic.

DAN HARRIE, SL TRIBUNE: Governor, the once-in-a-decade redistricting is starting, in fact the committee’s having its first meeting today, and some of the Congressional members have been public about their opinions that we should have the three Congressional districts each have a rural and urban component. What do you think about that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I really have not expressed any views about redistricting, and I likely won’t start today. I’m just in the early process of trying to look at what the options are. I’ve heard that expressed, it’s not illogical to me. I think it might have some value in that it would clearly there is an urban and a rural component to the state. And if we could have a system of representation where each had a stake in both, there could be value. But that, that’s not intended to be agreement or disagreement, but simply commentary.

DAN HARRIE, SL TRIBUNE: Is there any argument to the idea that the urban area is a community of interest and that should be held together to have its own viewpoint, rather than diluted by rural interests?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That is an argument that has been made, and will be made, and it’s certainly a legitimate argument.

DAN HARRIE, SL TRIBUNE: You don’t necessarily ascribe- - It sounds like you subscribe more to the first one though.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, again, I haven’t weighed in on this, I don’t intend to do so today. We’re at the early part of a process, and as I become more familiar with the arguments, and as I become more familiar with the dynamics, I may have more to say, but not today.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Democrats suspect that what’s really at stake here is changing the second Congressional district, to change it so that instead of a Democratic incumbent, Jim Matheson, a Republican challenger would have an advantage. Do you reject that motivation? Do you say that the Republicans, who are going to control this, shouldn’t change the second Congressional district with an eye toward getting Jim Matheson?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There has always been, since the first census in the 1790s, until the last one in the 1990s, and in this census, a political component. And I don’t doubt that there will be one in this one. The degree to which it’s limited, I suspect we end up with better public policy.

SUNDAYS HUNT, KSL-TV: Governor, the Utah economy is still looking fair and up to par, but others are not. What can you tell residents to expect in the future?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I believe there’s reason for great optimism in the Utah economy. We are repeatedly now, almost monthly, the subject of a ranking somewhere as being in the top 10 in terms of economic vibrance and the, and the nature of our transition in the new economy. There’s good reason for us to be optimistic. Now, will very have an uninterrupted sense of vibrant growth? I doubt that. But I do think we’ll continue to see a strong economy through the course of the next several years. We have seen, along with the rest of the economy, a softening in the last several months. I expect that that may prevail for a period of time. But that’s not entirely unhealthy. It allows every aspect of the economy to form, to get a level of efficiency that’s not always found when you’re at a high pitch. We’re working very aggressively to make the Olympics a powerful economic opportunity for the state, not just in terms of the 17 days, but the way it positions us in the world. We have a message that we want to demonstrate during the Olympics. We’ll have the world focus on us with a great big spotlight, and we want to assure that the world leaves understanding that we’re a place of ideas, that this is, as a work force that is doubling as it’s growing at twice the national average. That we’re a tech-savvy education-minded state, that this is a place where high quality of living, where it’s a safe and clean and affordable place. I think we can communicate those messages and it will continue to assist us for years after the Olympic games, because of through this we are all of those things.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, we have less than one minute, which is usually a time I reserve for asking a very complex question. So let me avoid that by saying, the Olympics are going to motivate 26,000 Utahans to come together as volunteers. What’s the long-term benefit to the state of that?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I just- - The Olympics is going to stretch us. This is a big event. It’s complex, it’s worldwide, we’ll have 3 billion people focused on us. It’s going to require that we’re on our best. It’s one of those moments when you just, when everyone’s heart beats together, and we pull together, that we unify. And there will have been division, and there’ll be bumps and there’ll be bruises, but when that flame enters Rice-Eccles Stadium, we’ll be ready and it will benefit us for generations.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: And on that note thank you for joining us for the governor’s monthly news conference. Good evening.

 

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