May 25, 2000

I would hope this debate could be about safety, and not about money. The waste that they're talking about moving within a stone's, well, at least within an hour's drive of where we sit right now in Salt Lake City, a population center of a million and a half people along the Wasatch front, is lethally hot for 10,000 years.

Reporters (in order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
ROD DECKER, KUTV
VINCE PEARSON, KUER
TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS
CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX
CYBILL WALLACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
MIKE WEIBEL, HERALD JOURNAL
DENNIS ROMBOY, DESERET NEWS
STEVE SPENCER, KUER|

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us this morning. The Tooele county commission has signed an agreement with a private consortium of utilities for the storage of low level nuclear waste. The commissioners are pointing to some two hundred to three hundred million dollars they believe will flow to the county over the life of the contract. They say they have the interests of their constituents at the heart of their decision. How do you respond?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I would hope this debate could be about safety, and not about money. The waste that they're talking about moving within a stone's, well, at least within an hour's drive of where we sit right now in Salt Lake City, a population center of a million and a half people along the Wasatch front, is lethally hot for 10,000 years. And they're going to store it in concrete casks in the open, in the same area where we've had two incidents of cruise missiles going astray, one had to be shot down and the other one that crashed into a trailer. I think this is a public safety issue. I understand the point that the commissioners are making. They believe that it is inevitable that it will come. I hope that isn't true. I wish they hadn't signed the agreement. I'm going to continue to do all I can to prevent it coming, but it's clear that we have a situation of eleven large utility companies that are armed with a lot of money and they don't want it in their back yard and they're prepared to move it to ours.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Is there any more danger- - Some people from the Goshute Nation out there say this way, "Look, yeah, this is on our land and we don't much like it. But you guys didn't ask us when you put all that nerve gas out there, when you put the biological warfare at Dugway, or when you put USPCI or all that hazardous waste out there. Why should we ask you about this?" Is this any worse- - I mean it sounds worse. It's scarier, but in fact, is it any worse than 60 percent of the free world's nerve gas, or anthrax toxins, or all those other things that your predecessors welcomed out there?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I'm not sure we ought to be using as the criteria, "Is it safer than nerve gas?" There's a lot of things that fall into that category, and I'm not sure it is. We don't want it here. If it's so safe they ought to leave it where it is. We don't produce it. Obviously these utility companies are under some pressure from their own constituents to move it someplace. We are doing all we can to resist it. It's not inconceivable we won't succeed, but it's worthy of our efforts to prevent it.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: You said that this is an emotional issue with you. Partly because of your background from southern Utah. Are you being emotional here, rather than rational? If it's going to come, would you do better to cut a deal and get some money now, rather than wait, fight through court for several years, and then they end up with a court order and they walk in and it will be to your successor, but whoever it is, doesn't get anything?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: The existence, within a very short distance, of lethally hot nuclear waste is something that sort of makes me emotional. And I think it makes a lot of people feel strongly they would not like it to be within 40 miles of the Wasatch front. We'll do all we can to resist it. It's pretty clear that utilities are willing to spend billions to move it out of their back yard into ours. They were able to satisfy the needs of the Indian tribal nation--with money. They were able to satisfy the needs of the private land owners--with money. They were able to satisfy now the needs of the county--with money. I don't think this ought to be about money. I think it ought to be about the safety of people who live as neighbors to this potentially, I think, harmful installation.

VINCE PEARSON, KUER: At least one commissioner has said that they signed the deal in part because they didn't think that you could stop the deal from happening. And I'm wondering what tools are at your disposal to stop the deal now?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, we're obviously using every tool we can, both in the environmental process and the legal process and the political process. And so far we haven't succeeded, and there's no guarantee we will. But we're going to use every tool available to us.

TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS: Have you contacted President Clinton--he vetoed Yucca Mountain--are you trying to involve him at this level?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, he hasn't exactly been a friend to us as a state in terms of issues involving federal land or other issues. Our congressional delegation has been the place that we've turned first. I should indicate that the administration, through the Department of Energy, has indicated that they don't see any rationale for moving this to a temporary storage site. I thought that was encouraging.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: Governor, several news organizations, including the Deseret News, the Tribune, and News 4-Utah have asked the Salt Lake Olympic Committee to release confidential documents. And I believe it was in February of last year you expressed, I think, a desire for SLOC to be more open. Do you think SLOC should release these documents to the public?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I think they should be as open as they can under the circumstance that they're in with respect to the investigation that's being done, and I think at some point they should all be released.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: I put this same question to your Republican primary opponent, Mr. Davis, and he concurred with you, he said the documents should be released. But he also added that he still doesn't think you're completely telling the truth about whatever involvement you might have had with the so-called bribery scandal. How would you respond to his comments?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: My involvement's been very clear, and I've been forthcoming with it. From the minute I knew that there were problems I stepped in, I cleaned it up, I brought Mitt Romney on, you put it back on track, and I view it as one of the best pieces of leadership I have provided during the course of my administration.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: So you don't think that'll be a campaign issue?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't- - I can't predict what people will raise. I think it's not helpful to the state for that kind of unfounded thing to occur, but nevertheless, people will say what they will say.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, you've been spending some time meeting with rural government officials throughout the state of Utah. Some characterize it as mending fences, others say just shoring up support. But clearly you understand there's a need for you to reach out to these officials. What brings you to that point?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, these are my friends. We've been through a lot together the last seven and a half years. We've struggled to solve the same problems. And I'm working right now on a piece of litigation that we have announced that we're going to bring action against Bruce Babbitt and the federal government to get quiet title to all of our roads. And so one of the things I wanted to talk with them about was, how do we go about that? I wanted to make certain everyone was feeling comfortable with the process and the procedures, so we spent a good share of that time. I'm also now moving toward a campaign, and I wanted to make certain that my friends were all with me, and I found that they were.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: So you don't feel necessarily there was a need to mend fences. Or was there a perception that perhaps the rural counties of Utah had been left behind at times in your administration?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There have been a lot of issues over the course of the last seven and a half years that we've not always had exactly the same approach to. And I wanted to talk with them about it, and I did. I talked with them at length and in great candor. We reflected on the approaches that we have had, the frustrations. There's a huge amount of frustration in those areas. A huge amount of frustration. Not just over public land issues, but about government in general. And I spent a lot of time listening to them, I wanted to make certain that they were with me as we move into an election, and I was very gratified to find out that they were.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: So when a chief executive states emphatically that he will attempt to block an economic development initiative by a largely rural county, such as Tooele County, are you, in fact, sending mixed signals to the rural counties of Utah, saying "Economic development fine, but on my terms"?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I don't think you'll find many rural counties that are seeing the virtue of making Utah the home to high-level nuclear waste. Tooele County, obviously we've had disagreement in approach, but the rural counties of this state know that I have launched an initiative for the economic resettlement of their communities. I've forced, or forged progress in the area of delivering infrastructure, high technology infrastructure in the form of fiber optics throughout that part of the world. We have put in place rural economic development zones. We have emphasized rural economic development, to some success. There's still lots to be done, but to some success. I spent a fair amount of time on this last trip talking with the leaders of Kane County about the dilemmas of the monument. I don't see any double message. That is not an economic development message. Or rather, it is not an economic development issue, it's a safety issue.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Your primary opponent says, one of the things he said at convention was that government has grown too much under your administration, budget almost doubled in your years in office. Has government grown too much?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: In the time that I have been governor, people in this state have been asked to spend no more from their tax dollars, or from their pay checks, than they did eight years ago. We have reduced taxes 31 times. Our Republican legislature and myself, Republican legislature passing the budgets, have been able to hold spending in this state below the level of inflation and population growth combined. We have built freeways, we've been able to invest in education at a point where we desperately needed to do it, and at the same time not taking any more of a person's pay check than we did before. I think that's been a commitment that I made, it's been a commitment that I kept. The Republican legislature and I have work hard at being able to cut taxes 31 times in order to keep that promise, and I feel very good about the fact that we've been designated as the best managed state in America. We've been designated as such by Financial World Magazine, not by our own declaration. And I think people are feeling pretty good about the way the state is managed.

CYBILL WALLACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: I had a question. The Department of Justice announced this morning they're not going to seek an indictment against SLOC. Is that going to open a way for more information to be released to the public?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's the first time I've heard that spoken, and that's good news. I would think it likely would.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: We'll now turn our attention to Logan, where we have reporters standing by. And the first reporter up with a question is Mike Weibel of the Logan Herald Journal. Mike?

MIKE WEIBEL, LOGAN HERALD JOURNAL: Governor, you mentioned the litigation involving the RS-2477 roads. I've got two questions. One, how much is the state prepared to spend on this, and two, are you hoping to push it into court, or is the purpose behind it simply to bring the federal government to the negotiation table?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: At the last legislature we passed a number of pieces of legislation that positioned us to do this. One was we provided a means by which the state was given an undivided interest in all of the county roads, which allows us standing in this litigation. The second was that we provided an appropriation of $2 million a year to undertake it. That's a substantial sum of money, but this is a very important piece of litigation, because it's about the extent to which we have access to our own state. These are historic rights that we have always had. They've been protected by legislation that emanated from 1866; many of these roads have been used since that time. Some say as many as 5,000 of these roads that the federal government, in many cases, has been blocking or has threatened to block. These range from old roads that run through important areas of the state that have been used for a long, long time, to small tracks going through the sage brush. And there has been a lot of dispute as to what a road is and how wide a road ought to be. The difficulty of this litigation is that we're going to have to take each one of these road tracks and find a way to litigate on the facts of that road. In some cases it'll be maps that become the evidence, in other cases it will be the historic memories of people that have lived in that area for a long time that'll be presented as evidence. Now, once we have litigated, I'm guessing, four or five hundred of these, it'll become quite evident, both to the federal government and to us, which ones of those are, in fact, roads, and which ones of them aren't, and how wide they should be. And we'll find that we win some and we lose some. And I think at some point in time, I hope at some point in time, we can sit down with the federal government and say, "Look, you're losing all of these, and we're losing all of these. Why don't we find the ones that fit into this category and drive a solution?" This is about solutions. It's not about litigation. But it may be the most important piece of litigation that we've engaged in, certainly during the time that I've been governor, and I think it may also be a landmark in terms of being able to define the way that rural Utah will be managed and the way it will be lived in over the course of the next century.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: That speaks to Mike's first question, which, if these are, in fact, an enormous series of lawsuits, great expense associated with that. How will that be paid for, and do you have any projection of the expense?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, we've allocated $2 million a year. This could take several years. I hope it doesn't, because it will be an expenditure on the part of the federal government as well. I have hoped and believed and negotiated and worked toward being able to settle this with agreements, but it's just become very clear to me it's not going to happen. And I'm hopeful that this will be a step toward being able to accomplish that.

VINCE PEARSON, KUER: You talked about county commissioners being frustrated with government. Would you be more specific about what their concerns are?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't think it's just county commissioners. I think it's everybody. While I was in Roosevelt I had a very poignant conversation with a fellow that is a contractor, he builds, by himself with maybe one other person, sprinkler irrigation systems. And he told me about an experience he had with his one-ton truck that he followed with a trailer with a backhoe on it. And he said, "I went to a checking station so I could haul my trailer to Emery County, and they told me I had to have a particular fuel permit." And he then said, "I paid the money, and then I was told I had to have a commercial drivers license. So I went and got a commercial drivers license. I got a commercial drivers license, and they said because I had a commercial drivers license I had to get drug tested. I'm the only employee without a commercial drivers license, but now I've got to get myself drug tested in order to be able to pull my trailer to Emery County." And you could just feel the level of frustration, not just about that incident, but government in general making it more and more difficult for people to live their lives and to do their business. Rural Utah feels as though they have had these lands that they've used for years, for centuries, for decades, that have been part of their family, part of their livelihood, suddenly you've got this roadless initiative by the Clinton administration to shut off 46,000 acres of public land--46 million acres rather--it's shutting down all logging, it's shutting down all mining. The frustration level is just at a peak, and they are feeling it. And I understand it. And it's not new, but it's growing.

VINCE PEARSON, KUER: Did you come away from your meetings with county commissioners with new insight into what you can do differently to shore up support within the Republican party for your re-election?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This wasn't just about my re-election. This was about this road lawsuit and other things, and we talked about, "What are the things we can do?" And one of the- - And there have been four basic areas of public lands that we worked on together over the course of the last nearly seven and a half years. Roads is one of them. Water issues is another. Wilderness is another, and school trust lands. We're making very good progress on school trust lands. We have now been able to negotiate the second largest land swap in the history of the state. The first one being the one that we were able to finish a couple of years ago. The counties are very supportive of that because we're taking land that has not been utilized by them, and we're trading it for land that can be. It's a good win for the school children of the state. It's a good thing because we're actually going to have less land in public management than we will in private management as a result of this swap. So we talked about the four areas: One, the road litigation, second, continuing to work on land swaps where we can get land that can be better utilized for development and used by local communities. The third is the wilderness area, the wilderness proposal. It's pretty clear to me nothing's going to happen on wilderness during the course of the rest of this year. The best thing we can do on wilderness is to begin to deal with the road issues. And I think they agree with that strategy. I think we're together on a strategy, but we're certainly not eliminating all the frustration. It's getting worse. And the kinds of things that the Clinton administration are doing with this forest service land is a perfect example of why they're feeling that way, and it's going to affect not just rural Utah. You want to take a picnic on a forest service piece of land now that you've been accustomed to using it, it's not going to be very long when those roads are completely out of disrepair, and the way the proposal is being set up, you can't go off and do a picnic on a road that's been used for a long time because they're not allowed to repair it or reconstruct it. This is going to be a growing issue, and it's about one that more and more people are going to feel that frustration that's been going on in rural Utah for some time.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: Are you looking- - Are you going to be buying TV advertisements for the primary?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I'm going to be campaigning actively, and I'm going to use all the tools that campaigns that go about it. I would not have chosen to have a primary, I don't know who would. But I am going to actively campaign, I'm going to use it as an opportunity. I'm going to be going all over the state. I'll be using all the tools of campaigning. Whether I'll use television or not is unknown.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: One of the tools that you have is about a million dollars in your campaign chest in the bank. I don't know the exact number, but it's a large one. How much of that will you budget for a primary?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't know the answer to that. I'm going to run an active campaign. I'm going to be setting aside time for a campaign, I'm going to be going in neighborhoods, I'm going to be knocking on doors, on main streets, I'm going to be meeting with people, I'm going to be talking about the messages that I'm going to talk about, not just in the primary but in the general. I'm going to talk about the need for improved education, I'll be talking about the need for us to be thinking about jobs, post Olympics, I'm going to be talking about the need for more roads, where we need them. All of those things are about campaigns, and I'm going to use this as an opportunity to get that message out.

ROD DECKER, KUTV: I understand you'll be personally active. You clearly thought about the campaign. What do you think with respect, what are you thinking with respect to using some of the large sum you have reserved for campaigns on the primary?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: There's no question I will need to spend money on a campaign. It's an expensive proposition. And it's June the 27th. That's not exactly a red letter day in everyone's life, and one of the things we have to do is make certain people are aware that the primary is going to happen, something I expected you and the news media will be jumping in to help us publicize.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: But this is not the way you expected to spend your summer, or at least the early weeks of June. In the month since the convention, as you've given this some study and some retrospect, what kind of conclusions have you come to about the message that was sent in the state party convention?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: The convention was not exactly a good day for the Republican party, and I don't think it's going to be on my highlight reel either. But it was- - It's past. Obviously they made the decision that the nominee of this party will earn the nomination at the ballot box. And I'm prepared to do that. And it was not what I'd hoped for, but I'm- - politics is full of surprises, and now I'm going to move to an active campaign mode, I'm going to do the best I can to make this an advantage for not just me, but for the Republican party, because I do want to talk about issues that I think have, up to this point, not been discussed to the point that they should be, and that the general public will want to talk about. Education, how do we improve schools? How do we deal with jobs? What are we going to do to make certain we preserve the level of quality in our lives in this state? How do we make certain that we're preserving that quality? Those are all issues that are very important, I think, to the people of this state, and have not yet been talked about in the context of an election, but they will be now.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: What are you going to do if you lose?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't intend to. I think I've got a pretty good chance to win.

CHRIS VANOCUR, KTVX: You're guaranteeing victory?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: No, I just think I've got a pretty good chance. If I didn't think I did have a pretty good chance, I probably would have been giving more thought that. But at this point I'm going to do my best. When you run for governor, whether it's your first time or whether you've done it before, you have to be willing to run against anybody and everybody, and let everybody put their vision up, and let the people take their choice, and then you have to live with the choice of the people. And that's my intention.

DENNIS ROMBOY, DESERET NEWS: The debate has heated up in the past week, especially petitions being signed and signatures gathered. Do you favor or oppose the initiative to ban guns in schools and churches?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I've actually not been involved in that. I've made myself pretty clear on the issue itself. The conversation I told you about, the fellow with his truck, interestingly enough that came up in the context of a discussion about guns. And one of the things that I discovered--maybe this should have been even more clear before--but this is not just about guns. This is about government. This is about people being fed up with the fact that government is intruding in every part of their lives. And I'm seeing this debate now manifest itself in an even more direct way. This is about government, and government intruding on people's lives, and that's one of the reasons that people feel so passionately about it.

VINCE PEARSON, KUER: Are you talking about state government or federal government as the problem?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I'm talking about government. People don't distinguish in their minds, and that's one of the reasons that assembly government sometimes gets an earful on this. And I think it's important that those of us who are in government hear it loud and clear.

STEVE SPENCER, KUER: Governor, what are you planning to do about the adoptive parents, and the problems that they're facing with the cut in funding that the DCFS has- -

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We'll fix it. There's no excuse what happened, and we're going to fix it. Jim?

JIM WOOLF, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Did the convention prompt you to rethink any of your positions? You've been fairly moderate, working with Bruce Babbitt, you were sort of blasted by the real people, the gun control you're sort of backed down a little on that, are you? Have you rethought where you're going to go on some of these issues in the primary?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't believe I've changed any position. You can't go through an experience like that convention and say to yourself, you know, "Maybe there are some things out there I haven't heard." I've been listening very carefully, and I've been talking to lots of people. I've been now working to unite the party. I've bean meeting with members of the party leadership, I've got with members of the legislature, and I'm very pleased to say that I have very strong support in all of those areas, in rural Utah, among members and leaders of the party, among members of the state legislature. This is going to be a bona fide election. I'm going to run a very aggressive campaign. I'm going to use it to my advantage to be able to get a message out that will position me ultimately to continue to govern. I would like to keep serving the people of this state for another four years, because I don't feel like I've ever been in a better position to do public service, and I think the opportunities for this state are enormous for us to create jobs for the future, improving our schools, to be able to assure that we preserve the sense of quality we've inherited from our forebears, and make it our legacy. Those are things that I feel deeply about, and that's the reason I've offered to continue to serve.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: And Governor, on that note, we're out of time for this edition of the Governor's Monthly News Conference on KUED. And a programming note that in June the Governor's News Conference will not be held, but join KUED for a series of public debates involving the candidates in the primary, the election season. I'm Ken Verdoia, thank you for joining us, we'll see you next time on the Governor's News Conference.

Recorded: May 25, 2000, 10:00 a.m. Eccles Broadcast Center
Broadcast: May 25, 2000, 7:00 p.m. KUED-Channel 7; and 11:00 p.m. on KULC-Channel 9

 

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