BY SCOTT GROENE
The newly unveiled Public Lands Initiative was promised to be a departure from the fractious way public lands issues in Utah have always been handled. Its creator, Rep. Rob Bishop, claimed he wanted to resolve arguments over our shared wild lands once and for all. But in this regard, the PLI is an abject failure, another descendant of dozens of prior bills from prior decades that miss the fundamental point: The land is what matters.
Generations of Utah politicians have stumbled the same way Bishop has. The unparalleled beauty of our canyons and mesas, which most Americans see as sacred, our leaders dismiss as profane. What is priceless, they regard as mere commodity. The very federal land that enhances our state is to them an obstacle to be overcome. And because they keep getting it wrong, they keep failing...