The U.S. House of Representatives, some of whose leaders have openly bragged about not having passports, was huffing, puffing and stuffing the nasty United Nations for being upset that we’re arrogant, increasingly unilateral in our actions and owe it as much as $1.5 billion in back dues.
Thank goodness for the more contemplative U.S. Senate.
At the very moment House members were proving Thursday that rank provincialism can be bipartisan, and voted to withhold previously negotiated back dues, the Senate was immersed in the desert tortoise of southwest Utah.
Well, it wasn’t exactly the entire Senate, but merely a smattering of the low-prestige Forests and Public Land Management Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
In a session that explicably did not draw CNN, C-Span, the major broadcast networks, The New York Times or The Washington Post, the subcommittee convened, albeit with just two of the body’s more somnolent members, Republican Craig Thomas of Wyoming and Democrat Daniel Akaka of Hawaii.
It was not terribly surprising that Thomas seemed a bit at sea over the whole issue of the desert tortoise now presented to him; he doesn’t even chair this committee he now found himself running.
The panel he actually does oversee, the National Parks, Historic Preservation and Recreation Subcommittee, just happened to have a meeting scheduled on another topic. Knowledge of same prompted the guy who does chair the forests subcommittee to ask colleague Thomas to tack the tortoise melodrama onto the parks session and save him the trouble of showing up.
So under the diligent gaze of both the baiduhai and a representative of the St. George (Utah) Spectrum, Thomas faced Robert Anderson, deputy assistant director of minerals, realty and resource protection for the Bureau of Land Management. He’s a clearly diligent soul who was here to edify, but expeditiously so because he was intent on not missing his late-afternoon car pool back home to the ‘burbs.
At issue was a dispute probably foreign to the Donald Trumps and Leona Helmsleys of the world, who generally ply their real estate trade in the concrete caverns of our major cities.
It involves 1,516 acres of land that is part of a 61,000-acre area that Washington County, Utah, and the federal government agreed shouldn’t be developed because it’s home of the desert tortoise, which is basically a high-domed turtle with elephant-like legs.
After exhaustive labor by the Tribune library, I can also report that the tortoises are about 15 inches long and “live long and pretty solitary lives,” according to a National Wildlife Federation Web site that quotes “research ecologist” Kristin Berry of the U.S. Geological Survey. Berry has studied tortoises since 1971, something to keep in mind if Regis Philbin asks if you want to use your last lifeline for that $1 million question.
The desert tortoises can live to be 80 years old, even around 100, and make hissing and “poink” sounds, all further evidence of the many similarities they share with certain members of Congress, including Strom Thurmond.
Tortoises have many natural predators, including Gila monsters, badgers, ravens, roadrunners, coyotes and two-legged developers.
Indeed, developer-speculator Jim Doyle, who is well-known in St. George and zips in and out on a private jet from elite Sun Valley, Idaho, was hoping to develop just over 1,550 acres of land he bought near St. George for a price of $326 an acre in 1988.
In retrospect, one could see the rationale: The metropolitan area is now 90,000 people and booming as a popular retirement community, with great desert weather, lots of golf and most folks exhibiting above-board behavior.
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But no sooner had he bought the land than the government listed the desert tortoise as a threatened and endangered species. Because there are several hundred tortoises per square mile in the area at question, that meant problems for Doyle.
In 1994 most of the land he bought was designated as part of a larger “critical habitat” in an agreement between the county and the federal government. That means that nobody could take actions to supposedly threaten the area. As part of that agreement, the county was to create a “desert reserve” to preserve the habitat for the tortoises in the hope that, ultimately, the endangered designation could be lifted.
As part of the agreement, the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, was “tasked,” in governmentese, to acquire all private and state holdings in the relevant area where there were willing sellers.
Doyle, who had craved to build golf courses and retirement homes on his land, was a willing seller.
But at what price?
The two parties have gone back and forth for years, with proposals, counterproposals and dueling appraisals–to no avail. Doyle sees the government as obstinate, while the government sees him as a classic opportunist, simply holding out to line his own pocket.
Whether craven or merely practical, he has rejected at least one government appraisal of $28 million for the 1,516 acres of Doyle’s which are inside the restricted area. Remember, that’s for land he bought for about $500,000.
But money talks, and Doyle has at least one politician sympathetic to his seeming self-portrayal of tortoise victim. He’s Rep. James Hansen (R-Utah), himself a former land developer who often bashes environmental groups, has urged that mining take place on public lands and tried to limit President Bill Clinton’s ability to create national monuments.
Hansen, who has received several thousand dollars in campaign contributions from Doyle, introduced legislation in 1999 to specifically benefit Doyle. It passed the House, then the Senate, but two somewhat differing versions were never reconciled and nothing happened.
Now the persistent Hansen is back. He has gotten through the House what amounts to a friendly condemnation bill in which “an initial payment of $15,000,000 shall be made to the owner of such real property not later than 30 days after the date of taking.”
The owner, the unmentioned Doyle, would then get the full appraisal value agreed to by the parties, as well as interest from the time of enactment. Moreover, he would get “reasonable costs and expenses of holding such property from February 1990” including “damages” and attorneys’ fees as determined by a judge.
It would be a pretty good heist, if Hansen can pull it off.
Testifying Thursday before Thomas and Akaka, the federal government’s Anderson indicated that his agency has some problems with the bill, but before he got to those, Thomas revealed the perils of being an Accidental Chairman.
He asked what kind of reserve the 61,000 acres represented, clearly not having a clue about the heart of the matter before him. Anderson told him.
“61,000 acres for a desert tortoise to frolic in? . . . This [the tortoise] is listed as endangered?”
“Yes,” said Anderson, then assuring Thomas that some other activities were allowed, including riding horses and some hunting.
Anderson left no doubt that the government’s “intention is to rewrite the bill” before any final Senate passage and enactment, though Doyle deserves “fair market value.”
“Fair market value with or without tortoises?” said Thomas, wondering if appraisal calculations would account for the animals being there.
“Without,” Anderson said.
And, with that, the hearing was over. Fewer than 10 minutes. Thomas seemed quite content to split, leaving Anderson and aides to answer the rapid-fire inquiries from the Tribune and the St. George Spectrum.
There’s been more than 10 years of negotiations with Doyle, he said. There have been four appraisals. As for the demands for damages, interest and attorneys fees, Anderson suggested a distinct lack of sympathy.
But then it was off to his car pool for the ride home. There’s no black sedan with driver and security guard for those in his job classification.