April 25, 2003

Campaigns are -- each one is new and they boil down to a contest between two people. As I have said, I don't think there's anyone on that list that wouldn't trade places with me politically.

Reporters (in order of appearance):

KEN VERDOIA, KUED
DAN BAMMES, KUER
TOM JORDAN, METRO NETWORKS
LISA RILEY ROCHE, DESERET NEWS
LEE AUSTIN, UTAH PUBLIC RADIO
JOHN DALEY, KSL-TV
KIRSTEN STEWART, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Transcript:

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, thanks for joining us today. This week the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado reinstated charges against former Salt Lake Olympic organizing officials. Several state leaders, including some people rumored to be candidates for Governor in 2004, have publically stated they wished this would go away. I wonder your reaction to the reinstatement of the charges and, more specifically, your personal reflection since you are likely to be called to testify if that comes to trial.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I wish I had something new to add to this conversation. I really don't. We have been going through this as a community for nearly three years. I'm among those both who are anxious for this to be finished and those who are rumored to be running for governor for a fourth term. I clearly believe that those who have been charged have endured enough. It's time to move on. It's time for our community to heal, and it's time for the community to focus on being able to build on the great success that tens of thousands of volunteers created. Now, if we go through a process in the courts, we will just have to go through that. And what happens, happens. But I'm among those that wish we could put it behind us.

DAN BAMMES, KUER:: Governor, if you are called to testify and you wind up running for a fourth term or have any political future at all, how will this impact what is ahead for you? Do you worry about it?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: This is an issue that's been with us for on long time and I have actually gone through a campaign with this in the heart of it. I think people have made up their minds about it, for the most part. There are really no new facts to come out, and we will just have to go through a process. I don't think that will factor into my decision at all.

DAN BAMMES, KUER:: When do you plan on making that decision?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I will make it likely in the late summer or early fall. I indicated that some time ago. It's a process that, frankly, I'm just putting off until I feel like the time is right for me to be able to see how I feel and make an assessment of my family and their needs and desires. You know, I like campaigns. I like the political process. I enjoy the work I do, and frankly, I don't think I have ever been better at it than I am right now. But there's lots of things to be considered that involve my own personal future, and my family, and obviously the good of the state.

DAN BAMMES, KUER:: Are you influenced at all by the recent poll results that basically indicate Utah voters say, "Thank you very much, Mike. Next."

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Campaigns are -- each one is new and they boil down to a contest between two people. As I have said, I don't think there's anyone on that list that wouldn't trade places with me politically. I have been supported by the people of this state in a way that is very gratifying to me. I -- it continues to be an enormous honor to serve them. I like what I do. I enjoy it every day. Time will tell what the best thing for me and for my family and for the state is.

TOM JORDAN, METRO: NETWORKS: It seems that one of the things that has been going on just recently is you have been trying to take some really serious leadership on wilderness issues, in fact obviously the RS2477 issue, the agreement just recently with the Interior Department. Are you finding you are in position at this point actually to exert serious leadership on issues that in the past you might have been a little more cautious about?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I think my capacity to both lead and to resolve problems has increased as time has gone on. Some of that is circumstantial and some of that is the fact that we have just worn problems to the point that we are able to ultimately solve them. But I will tell that you those are two of the most rewarding that I have worked on in the time that I have been in public service.

The roads issue has plagued rural Utah and all Utahans and all Westerners literally for years. And to be able to put on the table a common sense process, an administrative process that will resolve these, I think in large measure over the next 18 months, is enormously rewarding to me and I think will have a powerful, landmark kind of influence on rural Utah and on the West in general.

The wilderness discussion again has plagued us for a similar period of a quarter of a decade, rather for a quarter of a century, and there's no question in my mind that we will have more wilderness in the state. We need to have wilderness in our state and we need to get started to designate it.

If you were to take the maps of every interested stakeholder, if you took the wilderness organizations, the advocates, you took the BLM, you took the state, you took the counties and you overlaid those maps, you would find significant pieces of this state that everyone agrees ought to be wilderness. It is time now for us to move forward to make that wilderness and to quit jockeying on what we don't agree on, and begin to create wilderness out of those things that we do. And I have found the ability to move those debates forward enormously gratifying.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: But Governor, the Salt Lake Tribune weighed in with an editorial this weekend that says what they characterized as a secretive negotiation process between you and Interior Secretary Norton is designed covertly to undermine the wilderness process and the protection and designation of certain important lands in the western United States. So rather than respond to that editorial, how about the central contention that your efforts to break an impasse are undermining a clearly established process?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We have had a very closed process. It's called litigation. That's where we've been. This is opening up the process to an open administrative process where we can take each road and examine it on the basis of the facts.

Does this road exist now and did it exist before? If it did, if it can be indisputably determined to have existed, it very clearly and indisputably falls under the law that was passed in . If it didn't, then we shouldn't be claiming it.

I'm also suggesting that we ought not to be claiming any road that's in a national park. I don't want to argue about those roads right now. I don't think we ought to be claiming any road in a wilderness area, or even a wilderness study area. I don't think we ought to be claiming any roads in fish and wildlife refuges. And I don't think we ought to be claiming any expanded use of the roads.

We are simply looking to find a clear, open process where every Utahan, where every American can look at the facts, and if they dispute the facts they have an opportunity to state it. And then through an open administrative process, the BLM can make a decision and create some sense of certainty; not just for those who drive the roads but those who manage the lands.

There are resource planning processes currently going on right now in the state. Every twenty years or so the federal land managers have to create management plans. They don't know how to do that right now because they don't know what roads are actually roads. This resolves that. It will improve the road management, or the land management. Maybe just as important as that, it will save the federal government millions, probably tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, and it will save the state and the local government the same amount of money that can go to the management of the land, not into the court system.

TOM JORDAN, METRO: NETWORKS: Would you like to be Interior Secretary?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: The thought of spending full time arguing about these issues is exhausting to me.

LISA RILEY ROCHE, DESERET NEWS: Governor, if we could go back to the Olympics for a moment, you mentioned the amount of time that's passed has given you a good bit of time to reflect on what your role in the bid effort was. Do you think that there's something you should have done differently to keep a better eye on what was going on? You have been pretty clear about how little you knew about some of the things that are alleged in this case. But didn't you have a responsibility, as the governor, to know more about what was being done to get the games?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I have reflected on this, as I suspect every Utahan has; how could we have averted it? And it boils in my mind to this: I think there was concern on the part of Tom and Dave that we didn't have the toughness, as a state, that was required to do - to get the bid. And I think they sensed that there was some sort of implicit understanding that they would do what had to be done. There was no implicit agreement that I know of. There was no implicit agreement that I participated in. Whether there was otherwise, I don't know. And I want to say, as I have before, I'm not at all sure that what happened raises to the level of criminal prosecution. I have serious questions about that. But that's not for me to decide. I wish there were things that could have been done; but things weren't done and we are where we are and we just need to work our way through it. And I wish it were finished, as I know they do. I think they have endured enough. I think it's time to move on.

LISA RILEY ROCHE, DESERET NEWS: Is there, in your mind, though, something specifically that you could have done differently? You talk about sort of an implicit understanding out there. Is there a clearer message you should have sent about the bid and about representing the state in that process?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: We have all reflected, I suspect, every person has reflected were there moments that we could have averted this? And I don't think, in retrospect, there's any of us who would say if there weren't, or if there was we would have done it. And I -- you know, there are times I look back and say, "I wonder if I would have looked at that incident and looked behind it further, I would have found something." But in retrospect, we were all very busy doing lots of things, and we turned over to the bid committee the job of conducting itself in the way to get the bid and stay within the rules. And that was their job. And the rest of us were off doing other jobs, part of which was to do what we were expected to do in the getting - obtaining the bid. I had my job. I would stand and greet people and I would go to meetings and to dinners, as did hundreds of other people in the community, to do everything we could to get the games. We worked hard at it, we competed hard at it, and we deserved to get it. And we did a great job with it, and that's what we ought to be focusing on is the good that came from it, get this behind us and begin and continue to magnify it.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, we are now going to move our attention a little bit broader to our location in Logan, Utah and a question from Lee Austen of Utah Public Radio. Lee?

LEE AUSTIN, UTAH PUBLIC RADIO: Thank you. We are looking at another very dry summer, and I'm interested in your thoughts on what water districts, other groups in the state should be doing toward conservation. Of course, you were very up-front going into the budget session about water subsidies. That proved to be fairly controversial in the legislature -- so we're looking at higher fees. Would you favor enforcement, fines, water police going out and checking for violations? Give me your philosophy on that.

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, first of all, it's a moral ethic that we all need to respond to, not just now but literally in every decade before us because our population is just going to continue to grow, and our demands for water will continue to grow, and we won't have any increase in the supply. During periods like this one, where we are in the fifth year of a drought, every community has to take responsibility. We don't police water at the state level. We adjudicate it, we don't police it. And local authorities need to do so, meaning the cities and counties. They need to find ways in which they can, within the context of ordinances they pass, make certain that they are able to meet the supply and demand of their citizens. But at the root of it is the need for all of us to join together to do just that.

DAN BAMMES, KUER: Governor, Utah has, for several years, especially in the late 90's, created as many as 50,000 new jobs a year. Over the past year or so we have lost over 10,000 jobs. Just the actual number is diminishing. The Utah Bureau of Economic Business Research pointed that out yesterday. Does this frighten you, the fact that the first time since the s we are losing jobs in Utah?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I wouldn't say it frightens me. It certainly concerns we me. We'll come back. We are continuing to see some improvement, for the first time we are seeing positive growth numbers and that's good. So we are turning around very slowly and I expect it will accelerate as we get into the next year and the year following.

JOHN DALEY, KSL-TV: Governor, are you worried about the state's reputation, given the Tenth Circuit decision isn't the first of these, we've seen a series of these now, and that the state might start suffering a credibility problem when it comes to legal matters?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: No, I don't. I don't worry about that at all.

TOM JORDAN, METRO: NETWORKS: We have seen as a result of a nice piece by, Judy Fahys, maneuvering going on between the Interior Department and the Goshutes. If the Goshutes were to take this offer of land that might be adjacent to I-80, one of the things they obviously must be looking at is, "Just give us a few acres that are beyond the exit out there on I-80 and we'll build a casino," which is big bucks for an awful lot of tribes. Knowing that you are probably opposed to that, this, I suspect, might look like the state saying, "We don't like that economic development, either, and we are going to go beat up on the Indians again." Can you legally block a casino, and should you?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Yes, and yes. The state has a constitutional prohibition against gambling of any sort. And it's not just my opinion or the state legislature's; the people have had a chance on a number of occasions to overturn that and have never chosen to do so. They don't want it here any more than they want high level nuclear waste.

But let's not miss the point here. The Federal Government has offered the Goshute Nation a remarkable amount of economic opportunity in the form of providing them, I think it was I read in the paper 25,000 acres of land, and suggesting the State throw some in to help give them opportunity. For the life of me, I can't understand how it is that the leadership of that tribal government doesn't seize on that as an opportunity. While they're at it, they probably ought to account to their people on what they have done with the millions of dollars that have been paid to them by PFS for which there has been no accounting. Those are two subjects that I think the leadership of the tribe, of the Goshute tribe, require.

TOM JORDAN, METRO: NETWORKS: How can a state, then, support economic development for the Goshutes? You know no fuel storage, no casino, but what can you do?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, I think this is a substantial offer that the national government has put up, to say 25,000 acres and suggesting the state do some other things. We can provide them with the things we would provide any other community. There's a lot of opportunity that's being put on the table by the Federal Government. A lot. They can trade it for other lands that are eminently developable. Again, I - for them to say that this is not a substantial offer is, I think, overlooking the obvious opportunity, perhaps the best opportunity that's been presented to them. Because we are going to continue to protest this nuclear waste thing, and I don't believe it's going to come.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Governor, the tribal leaders who vote - vociferously oppose this, a handful of them; say they see your hand on this deal, as well, that you have been working with the Interior Department. Have you been a player behind the scene in organizing or engineering this federal offer?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I have worked with every piece of energy I have to oppose the PFS Goshute nuclear storage facility. To the extent that they are able to bring, in the Interior Department, some opportunity to the Goshutes, I'm pleased about that.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: Were you involved with the planning of this?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I was aware that the offer was made.

LISA RILEY ROCHE, DESERET NEWS: Governor, getting back to what John was talking about in terms of the state's reputation with these legal matters, and specifically the Olympic matter, is there something the state needs to do to protect the legacy left by the Winter Games? I know you are very active in trade missions overseas to try to take advantage of that. I know there are other things the state is doing. Is there something else you need to do now to make sure that you don't lose ground because the scandal has resurfaced?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Well, the first thing that we need to do is just constantly keep up our positive economic development efforts. And the truth is, the state had great success in the Olympics. Three and a half billion people across the planet saw every night for 17 days Utah at its best. The fact that there is this skirmish going on is not going to alter that long-term perception. In fact, it will be lost on almost everyone in the world except for those of us here who have to work through it. It's a hard thing and one that I wish were behind us. And, as I say, I think everyone involved has endured enough and it's time to quit.

DAN BAMMES, KUER: You have spent a lot of time travelling in Asia working to develop economic opportunities for Utah businesses. And yet it looks as though we are in danger of losing some of the momentum with the SARS issue and people being afraid to travel now. Does that concern you and how can you keep the momentum going for the work you have done in Asia?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: The SARS thing is a serious problem. Like everyone else, I'm not sure how deep or how long it will endure. We have plans to go to Asia in September and at this point those plans continue. We will obviously calculate events as they unfold. We had intended a trade mission that would take us to Toronto. We have cancelled that one for reasons that right now are obvious. But hopefully we will go back there, too. I don't think this is going to change or reshape the world, but until it is clear what the extent of it is, we will just wait.

JOHN DALEY, KSL-TV: Governor, back to the Olympic case, was there ever a time at which you made it known to the Olympic bid committee that maybe they were going too far; that, you know, "Yes, let's win, yes, let's secure these Games. But don't cross the line. And you better watch out; I'm hearing things I don't like." Was there ever a point at which there was a message made --

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: You know, I participated in numerous conversations in different levels that where, in my mind, the implicit agreement was we were not going to step across any lines. And --

JOHN DALEY, KSL-TV: Was it ever made explicit?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: Let me make clear, I was not a member of the bid committee. I didn't attend any of the bid meetings. I was, like thousands of others, working very hard to get the Games. And so I'm not in a position to pass - to make any commentary on any of those conversations because I simply wasn't part of them.

Now, I do know that there was a commitment on the part of the community to get the games. But we wanted to do it in a way that was within the construct of the rules, and I believe everyone had that intention. And the fact that we are in this situation involves discussions that will have to be sorted out in court. I don't know that they broke the law. I am just not in a position to make that judgment. But we clearly broke the rules. Whether we broke the law or not, I don't know. I'm not in a position to know. The courts will have to decide that.

KIRSTEN STEWART, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, haven't Welch and Johnson alleged and doesn't their case partly hinge upon proving that they didn't quarterback this plan alone; that, in fact, several state leaders and community leaders knew about the plan to pry the bid with gifts to IOC members, and that you and a number of others knew?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I suspect that that will be part of it. But my point here is that there were thousands of people who worked hard to get the Games, and I was among them. Others were. And we did everything that we could, to do so. The allegations are that there are those who stepped across the line, and to the extent that that happens we regret it. And we have done everything we can to make good on it by creating the best Games possible, and I think we accomplished that. I think the world understands the quality not just of our bid but of our offering because we made good on it. And the community needs to feel that sense of exuberance and pride and competence that comes from it, and I think we do. And as I have said a number of times already, I think that what the community has been put through in this process, what those who have been charged have been put through is sufficient. It is now time to turn our attention to building on the legacy of the Games, and I hope that federal prosecutors will see that. If they don't, we will just all have to go through what will undoubtedly be an unhappy and uncomfortable experience for everyone.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: At least one member of the Utah Congressional delegation says he intends to approach the Justice Department and ask them serious questions about whether this is the most appropriate way for them to advance, with the reinstated charge; is it appropriate to prosecute? That's Representative Cannon. Do you believe that's a good role for our congressional delegation to take at this stage of the game, questioning the Justice Department and asking the fundamental question, "What is to be gained by going forward?"

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: I don't think political pressure is in any way the form for this to be resolved. But I do think that it is within the construct of the prosecutory power to make judgements on when society is best advantaged by such an action taking place. They make those judgments all the time. And it's my hope that those who make those judgments will do it wisely, and it's my belief that it would be in the interest of the community for us to resolve this. Frankly, as I have said before, I think that if it had been left to the community, it would have been resolved. And here we are three years later and a lot of effort, and I hope that it resolves soon.

JOHN DALEY, KSL-TV: And if laws were broken, as you said they may have been, then shouldn't this go to a jury? Isn't this the best way to have this resolved?

GOVERNOR LEAVITT: That's what prosecutors have to decide, not people in my situation. I would -- it was pretty clear to me that some things happened that we wished hadn't. And it's pretty clear that the IOC, that they did a bunch of things that they shouldn't. And it's pretty clear that it didn't start here, but it ended here. And all of that ought to be seen as part of a positive part of our Olympic legacy. We changed the way the thing worked. But it's time, in my judgment, to finish it. And I hope prosecutors will understand the nature of that balance, and they will have to make that decision. Or at my will, I have made clear what I would do. But I don't think I'm in that position.

KEN VERDOIA, KUED: We are out of time for this edition of the Governor's monthly news conference. We do want to thank the Governor for his time today. This program was pre-recorded on Thursday morning for presentation on Thursday evening. And a reminder that a transcript of this and every edition of the Governor's monthly news conference on KUED is made available on line courtesy of the Utah Education Network. That can be found at the web site, www.uen.org. Until the next time we join you from the studio, thanks for joining us and good evening.

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