Gov. Gary Herbert may be talking tough about standing up to the federal government, but he’s stopping short of calling for an all-out battle.
“I’m going to continue to reach out,” Herbert said last week during his monthly news conference broadcast on KUED Channel 7. “I’m going to continue to try to work together.”
The governor said he plans to take up his concerns about the new “wild lands” policy — widely seen in the West as a land grab — with the author, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, next month in Washington.
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Herbert said his latest trip east will be another attempt to reach out to the federal government, even though he felt “we kind of got knifed in the back a little bit with a new public lands policy that we didn’t even have a change to comment on.”
Still, the governor remains optimistic.
“We’ll get through it. I’m confident,” Herbert said. “But we’re not going to sit back and not make our concerns known. That’s what I did in the State of the State.”
In his State of the State speech Wednesday, Herbert declared to Washington, D.C., that Utah is “a state, not a colony” and would “not stand idly by” while the federal government usurps its rights.
Herbert’s surprisingly strong statement earned a standing ovation from lawmakers gathered in the House chambers to hear his annual address, which highlighted what he called Utah’s right to self-determination.
