Mike Noel is one of those Utah politicians who is the quickest to say that the level of government that is the closest to the people should be the one making a lot more of the decisions.
Unless that unit of government is really, really close to the people — like, say, a municipal water utility — in which case he thinks some other government agency should make the decisions.
The state representative from Kanab has already filed a couple of bills to be considered in the upcoming session of the Utah Legislature, each of which would muscle aside cities, counties and other political jurisdictions in favor of the state. Because that’s where Noel is more likely to get the results he likes.
One of those is House Bill 136. If it were to become law, that bill would prohibit any Utah city, county, school district, university or “office, agency, board, bureau, committee, department, advisory board, or commission” from doing anything to suggest that the federal government should designate any federal property as a wilderness, recreation or conservation area or — heaven forbid — national monument, unless the state Legislature has also approved the request.
Which, as long as the Legislature is dominated by anti-federal activists such as Noel, is about as likely to happen as a kegger on Temple Square.
Beyond the violation of First Amendment principles, Noel’s bill supposes that the interests of any local government or state entity do not matter and that the people elected or appointed to manage those bodies are too stupid to stand up for those interests.
Worse, Noel has also floated House Bill 135, a measure that would take from Utah cities an authority they have had since there has been such a thing as Utah, to put controls on land uses outside their boundaries in order to protect their precious water supply.
That bill caused a lot of chin-scratching and eyebrow-raising at a recent meeting of the state’s Executive Water Task Force. Nobody had asked officials of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality if they had either the desire or the ability to take on the duties cities and municipal water districts now have for protecting water supplies.
(Spoiler alert: They don’t.)
Folks who own land in such places, particularly the canyons above Salt Lake City, have been heard to complain that the city abuses its authority and puts too many restrictions on how private land can be used or developed.
That may well be true. But that is no cause to completely remove from cities — which are responsible for that water being safe and easily treatable — the power they need to properly serve millions of people because it might inconvenience a few.
Neither of these bills makes any sense. Legislative leadership would save themselves, and everyone else, a headache if they would make it clear from the beginning of the session that they are not going anywhere.
