SandBoxBlogs: Glenwood Springs Post Independent "Group says Vernal oil shale meeting was illegal"

If you have not already checked SandBox Utah out, scroll on over to the right sidebar and click on that gorgeous photo of Utah mountains and desert.

Amazing (stunning, even) how twisted oil and gas (especially oil shale) stories can get just traveling the few miles from Utah to Glenwood Springs...

Utahans, for the majority part, were thrilled that the summit of regional governors, commissioners and other various officials gathered in Utah recently to discuss everything from politics to oil shale to tourism.

Again:

Local democrats should probably not get too excited that they have made two good choices (Linman and Caloia) in their never ending search for political candidates.  Good enough that for the offices in front of them those two candidates have some fairly decent conservative scrappers out here that are voting for them.

Why?

Because  both your candidates are not women who will let anyone steamroll over balance, fairness and justice.

In other words, it's going to be a long, hot summer this political year so maybe distortion of facts isn't the best way to go.

just sayin.

If you would like to read up on the facts and a more balanced look at the recent summit in Vernal, hit google and keyword in.  Shed  some sunlight on the facts.

"Save a gas rig.  Opt for fair representation. Vote Sonja Linman (D-Garfield County)"

John Stroud:
"GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — A Colorado public watchdog group has filed an open records request with Garfield County and several other counties across three states that took part in a closed-door meeting in Utah in late March to discuss federal lands oil shale policy.

“Our local county commissioners shouldn't be traveling across state lines to meet in secret with industry lobbyists and attorneys,” Elena Nunez, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, said in a prepared statement issued Tuesday.

The meeting itself, which was hosted by the Uintah County, Utah, county commissioners in Vernal on March 27, may have been illegal per Utah's open meetings laws because it was held in executive session, Nunez said.

Any other county that had a quorum of its commissioners attending, which would include Garfield County, may also have been in violation of their state's open meetings laws, she said.

The meeting produced a draft version of a joint resolution urging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to reinstate a Bush-era oil shale policy.

The 2008 plan allocated 2 million acres of public lands for oil shale research and development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The BLM is now re-evaluating the policy, and has come up with a new preferred plan to reduce the acreage to about 462,000 acres. It would include roughly 35,000 acres in northwest Colorado, as opposed to 360,000 acres in the 2008 plan.

Garfield County commissioners, at an April 9 meeting, unanimously adopted a slightly revised version of the joint resolution. The statement served as the county's official comment to the BLM's environmental analysis.

The strongly worded resolution accused the BLM, under the Obama administration, of bowing to environmental and wilderness interests in revisiting the oil shale leasing policy.

Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky confirmed that he and commissioners John Martin and Mike Samson attended the Vernal meeting.

Their intentions to travel to the meeting were disclosed at a March 19 regular Board of County Commissioners meeting, Jankovsky said.

“For our part, we made a few comments, but we were mostly there to listen,” Jankovsky said, characterizing it as an “informational” meeting....."  (Read more? Click here.)


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