November,12,2017

"We have no desire to privatize any of these public lands." Governor Herbert

ANNOUNCER: presents The Governor's Monthly News Conference, an exchange between Utah reporters and Governor Gary Herbert.

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Good morning. Before we take questions, let me just comment on the fact we just had elections here, a couple of days ago, and we had a rare occurrence and a special Congressional election. Had a lot of media attention, as Congressional elections generally do, and we congratulate soon-to-be Congressman John Curtis on his election win.

But it does come to my mind that we had a lot of other elections. Municipal elections throughout our state, dozens of people running for mayors, for city council, and they, too, have a significant impact on our state and our success. In fact, I would suggest to us all that those mayors and city council people, on a day-to-day operation, probably have more impact on our quality of life, our economy, our safety, than does the election of one Congressman, as important as that may be.

So, I congratulate those who've run for office at the municipal level, that local government where the rubber really does meet the road, and I congratulate them. But I also congratulate others who ran for office who didn't lose. They may have come up with fewer votes than the winner, but really contributed in a significant way to our process. We have a wonderful process, a very orderly process, where people step up and say, I've got ideas, please choose me. And it gives to the public an opportunity of choice, to weigh and consider these different ideas and then make a decision of what they think and who they think will best represent them and their needs and their concerns in their community. 

So I hope we don't forget the municipal elections. I hope we don't forget those people who step up and say, I've got an idea, and step up and run for office, even though they may come up short when it comes to the tally of the votes. They make our system work they give us choice and they make us to have a better outcome when it comes to who we select. So, for those who won, we offer congratulations. I look forward to working with those who've taken on this new responsibility of elected office as we continue to work together to make Utah really the leader and the model of America, of good government. With that, we'll take some questions.

ERIK NEILSEN, KUED: Uh, so, Governor, speaking of the elections, in Maine, they just passed a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid, effectively overruling the Governor's belief on taking Medicaid expansion. I'm wondering if you've reflected on that, and how you think that's, how do you think, are you thinking about Utah citizens in that mind frame?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, we just had our Medicaid waver approved, as you know, which is going to allow us, in fact, to bring six thousand more people onto the Medicaid rolls, for those who are most vulnerable in our society. I think that's a step in the right direction. I've had a different point of view than some of the legislature, but I do share the concern of whatever we buy today, can we afford tomorrow? The current law that we have on the books, known as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, I don't believe is sustainable. I don't think it is something that will continue on into the future without having some significant modification. And even President Obama, as he talked to me about this issue way back when, said, we need to modify and improve what we have on the books.

Republicans talked about "repeal and replace". The question's always been, replace with what? So I would like to see some leadership in Washington D.C. that brings both sides of the issue together. Repeal and replace, modify and improve, they could actually come to a very similar conclusion. But we need to come up with something that we can actually afford as taxpayers and something that is sustainable, that keeps the private health insurance in the marketplace, and we're losing providers in Utah. 15 of our 29 states now only have one provider, and our costs of health care are going up dramatically.

I'd like to also see us start, as a country, emphasizing and looking at the rising costs of health care, which is the root cause of the problem, accessibility; rising costs, less accessibility. We don't talk about that. All we're talking about now is, who's going to pay for it? We should be talking about, what can we do to control and reduce the costs of health care for everyone. So, that's going to be an ongoing, it's a complex issue, but we're going to have ongoing discussion on that, and we'll see what happens here in Utah.

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: When you talk about being able to afford it into the future, as you know, even though we've got this waiver that will provide services for up to six thousand, tens of thousands of Utahns still fall into that coverage gap. So, with that in mind, where does that play into the solution down the road?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, the Medicaid costs in our budget are growing dramatically anyway. They start out at nine percent; we're at about 29 percent, you know, costs now. So the cost of Medicaid has continued to rise. It reflects, in many ways, the rising costs of health care.

We have other states, like Minnesota, led by a Democrat governor, that's very concerned about saying, well, we cannot afford this into the future. We have to make some changes. So, that's something that needs to be dealt with in a frank and open fashion. It shouldn't be just ideology, it ought to be practical common sense. And obviously, we believe that everybody ought to have access to good health, and there's an individual responsibility that comes with that. It's not just government take care of me from cradle to grave, it's also, we have to take on the responsibility of taking care of ourselves.

So, again, I think that we can address that. I'm much more comfortable with states addressing it on a state-by-state basis. That's why I've said, two things ought to happen which will solve the problem. One: Congress needs to decide how much they're going to spend. What is X? How many billions of dollars are you going to put into Medicaid, and then block grant that money to the states and let each state spend it how they think is the best for their culture, for their demographics, for their politics, and we'll find that what we do in Utah may be different from what they do in California. We'll learn from each other, but everybody can be happy, whether you're left-of-center, right-of-center or in the middle, you can come up with a program based on your allotment of money to come up with a program. No state should be advantaged over another state, and no state should be disadvantaged over another state in a program of block granting the money to the states. 

REPORTER: Senator Orrin Hatch is actually working on a bill that would allow governors to seek a Medicaid waver without approval from their legislature. Have you talked to him about that?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: I've talked to him about the block grant approach. I've encouraged him, in fact, he eventually did have a hearing on the block grant approach, the Lindsey Graham proposal, and I appreciate that was a step in the right direction.

There are proposals out there; I've talked with, in fact, with Seema Verma, and the Department of Health about a proposal we made two or three years ago. We were turned down by the Obama administration, of saying, let's have the 90/10 split, which is what you end up with the Affordable Care Act, just do 100 percent of poverty. And then everybody else then shifts if you go over 100 percent into the Federal Exchange, where it's a Federal responsibility of balancing their budget and appropriating the money. Takes the onus off of the states. That may be a compromise that's in the offing. We'll have to see what happens. Again, that's a proposal that is now being re-instigated by the state of Arkansas.

LEE DAVIDSON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Back to elections, there's word today that your administrations worked out a deal with legislative leaders to provide them a copy of an Attorney General's opinion on the special election, whether it was legal. Can you talk to that? What can you tell us about it?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: I know there was an article that was published just today that talks about that. Unfortunately, it's incorrect. What is correct is that we are in negotiations and discussion about how can we resolve the differences. As I've said before, I don't really care what's in the opinion. We know that there's a difference of opinion between my view and what the Attorney General and our elections office have come up with versus what the legal counsel for the legislature's come up with.

But what the concern we have now is when it's a Constitutional question and is a significant legal issue. Can the legislature compel the Attorney General to be put in a position of conflict over an adversarial where the legislatures threatened to sue the executive branch on this issue of calling a special election. And again, we have differences of opinion on that. It may be the best way to resolve that is to, not in an adversarial way, but just arm-in-arm say, let's have the courts decide that. Maybe we go to the state bar. We're looking at those options as far as what can we, in fact, do to resolve the conflict. And at least find out the answer to the legal question. What is secondary is really what the opinion is.

NICOLE NIXON, KUER: If the legislature passes a bill next session that gives them the authority to set parameters for a special election in the future, would you sign it?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, if it's in violation of our state constitution, which clearly says that the Attorney General is, in fact, the counsel of record for the executive branch, then I'd be compelled to veto it if it's a violation of our constitution.

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: I'm interested in your comment about, you say you don't care about what's in the Attorney General's opinion. Have you read the opinion, and do you know what's in it 

GOVERNOR HERBERT: I do not know. I know I hear people, some in the legislature, say that they know.

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: Why don't you know? What haven't you looked into it to see what the Attorney General--

GOVERNOR HERBERT: It's not been released. This is the Attorney General, has done, I guess, at the request of some legislators, and has said he started working, he's now, he said it's a draft, so it's not prepared, it's not ready to be utilized. But we don't know what's in it.

Our concern, really, was one of a conflict. You cannot, if you're an attorney, waive conflict. Even if you want to, it's you can't do it. And, of course, that's what the Utah Bar has said to the Attorney General is, you're on some shaky ice here. So, let's see if we can't find a way to resolve it. I mean, it's a legitimate question to be asked. It's never happened before. I mean, this is kind of new territory. So, we have our own opinion, we've acted on the opinion, we've created a special election, we think under the law. It was really based on what was in law already. We truncated the timeline.

We could not get consensus with the legislature in a special election, what policy should be. They tried at the end of the last legislative session, it could not come to an agreement. I did not like the idea of this being proffered, which was a 50 percent plus one, kind of winner-takes-all. That's never been done, certainly on the Republican side of the legislature. We've always had runoffs. And so, I thought it was bad policy. There was not consensus, and so, hence, no special session to, in fact, give us direction on the special election. I had to go with the existing law that requires me to call a special election. 

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: So, to be clear, you say there is no deal to release the A.G.'s opinion, but are you working toward a deal of doing that?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: As I mentioned, what is correct is that we're in discussions to see how do we resolve this. I don't know, at least I hear that nobody seems to care any more about what's in the opinion. Although the legislature wanted to have the opinion, and that's whatever their reasons for that were, although we knew we had differences of opinion on our approach to this thing.

But my concern is not what the opinion says, but the conflict that it puts the Attorney General in under our constitution: he's required to be my attorney. And if he can't waive conflict, if that happens, he would be removed from being my attorney in a court case between us and the legislature. I'd have to hire outside counsel. Which doesn't seem to be smart.

So, let's, again, there are legitimate differences of opinion here, a legal question that ought to be answered, and we ought to make sure as we go through to resolve these differences, I think we can do it in a significant partnership, because there is a legitimate question. And that may be, let's go to court and have the courts give us the answer to the legal question. Or work with the Utah State Bar and have them help us ferret through this and what is the answer to the question. But, again, I think we both, both sides, I think, want to have the answer, so we're in discussion, we'll see what the process ends up being that we agree to.

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: One quick follow-up on that: would that have to include some sort of a "hold harmless" agreement if that were to be released?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Yet to be determined. You know, again, we don't want to give up the right of the Attorney General to represent us under the constitution. If we want to change the constitution, I guess that's another option. But I'm not sure that the people of Utah want to see that, either. So, there's probably two or three or four different options, and we're in discussion of all those, and I think we can resolve these differences in an amicable way.

So, I'm not worried about it, and I think we're in a good position, and discussions will continue ongoing, and maybe in the next week or two we'll find out what the process we'll finally agree to, to resolve issues is going to be.

MICHAEL ORTON, UTAHPOLITICALCAPITOL.COM: Governor Romney, on the elections topic, Count My Vote has recently amended their effort to make sure that the caucus system and the dual-track pathway to the ballot is going to be preserved. Does that signal to you that there's going to be a little bit more calm? You hail from an area where there's quite a bit of activity at the caucus level. I was wondering if you have any sense of what's going on there?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, I hail from Utah, and so there's a lot of activity about this throughout the state, in different locations, of concern about Senate bill 54, and should it remain as the law of the land? I remind everybody: it was designed to be a compromise that kept the caucus convention system. The polling at the time, here a few years ago, when this first came up, certainly indicated that the public was saying, we're ready to junk the caucus convention system and go to just a general primary. And if that was put on the ballot, at least the belief was by many, that that would have passed overwhelmingly.

So, the legislature said, you know, that's not necessarily the right outcome, how 'bout if we come up with a compromise, and it'll protect the caucus convention system. It was not necessarily that they were supporting the Count My Vote people, but trying to find a compromise that allowed a double pathway. You go to caucus convention, and you could also get signatures.

I think some of the frustration with the caucus convention system, and I've been a supporter of it all my political life, is that the delegates now tend to be stacked. Rather than have a delegate that goes to a caucus and says to their neighbors, what do you want me to represent? Who do you like as a candidate? What are the philosophies, the policies you want me to support? Now the go there and say, I'm here just for one purpose and one purpose only: to get my candidate elected. And we end up having candidates that spend a ton of money to try to stack the delegates. That's now how the system was designed to be. And I think that's why we find, now, this kind of disconnect between the delegates and the general population of Republicans or even Democrats.

That being said, I think that what the, and you'll have to talk to the Count My Vote people, why they're willing to do this compromise. But I think it is where we came down, and it's actually worked pretty well. I think the law still has people go to the caucus convention system as a choice. I think a lot of people will do that, but others could just get a signature and go the signature route and see what happens there. So it gives the people choice, and engages more people in the vote, and it will encourage us to have more primaries, so it'll be more opportunities for people to vote and be a part of the selection process. So, by and large, I think it's probably a good move on the Count My Vote people.

LEE DAVIDSON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: The Republican party flip-flopped a couple of times last weekend whether to end its legal challenge to SB 54. With new developments with Count My Vote, what do you think the party should do with its lawsuit?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, again, I'm one who believes we ought to unite the party. If I was a Democrat, having the same thing, I'd say the same thing about the Democrat side. So, the idea of reuniting and coming together I think is important. I'm a Reagan Republican who believed in a big tent, and he said, if you agree with me 80 percent of the time, you're my friend. We've gotten to the point, a little bit strident, where if you disagree with me on one out of 100 items, you know, let's throw the bum out and replace him with somebody who has 100 percent agreement. And that lasts for about a year, and then throw that bum out, because there's always going to be some disagreement.

So, again, I think the idea of Count My Vote, Senate bill 54, this new initiative, is designed to help unite the party and bring us together. We're spending a lot of time and money that we don't have, and it's forcing the party into a bankruptcy situation. We ought to get past that, and the parties ought to concentrate on recruiting candidates and getting them elected for the respective parties. And I think that's the major effort here. Let's unite and move forward. And I think that's the right thing to do.

MICHELLE PRICE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Governor, have you heard anything more about, specifically, how small the President will shrink Bears Ears National Monument or Grand Staircase, or when, specifically, he's going to come visit Utah?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: He called me, the President called me, when I was on my trade mission to Israel as I'm just leaving, so picture me in the airport, there, outside of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, and I get a call from the President, who wanted to indicate to me that he was prepared to make a decision, and follow, at least in the main, I think the recommendation was with Secretary Zinke. So that means some reduction. How much he's going to do, he did not give me details.

He did indicate a willingness and a desire to come to Utah. He suggests the end of November, I told him that didn't work really good with my calendar, but he said, how 'bout the first of December? I said, that works a little better. So I'm expecting that he will let us know the details as we are in discussion with his office and our office. But I'm guessing there'll be some reduction. How much or how little, I don't know, but I think he does plan to come to Utah to make that announcement. I expect it'll be some time the first part of December. 

GLEN MILLS, ABC4: How much would you like to see either, or both, reduced?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, clearly, I think the biggest challenge we face is really the size of the monument. I think that's what causes people to get a little bit nervous. It's not a matter of changing these public lands and privatizing 'em, that's not on the table. That's a misrepresentation of some out there that are opposed to a reduction of the monument. But it's false. We have no desire to privatize any of these public lands.

The one-and-a-half million acres which is Bears Ears, which includes, by the way, significant acres of private inholdings, which are also encompassed into this area, about 100 thousand acres. It's not insignificant. That's larger than Arches National Park, for example, their private inholdings. I think what we're concerned about is making sure we protect these public lands, appropriately so, whether it's under BLM or enhanced BLM management, recreational areas, a monument. And clearly, for the Bears Ears area, because we've heard the Native Americans talk about, we want to have more control over our sacred lands. Let's see if we can't give them more management control.

So I hope there's going to be some proposal to have Congress, in fact, pass some legislation to do this. That's the only way we can give the Native Americans more management control, which I think is probably an appropriate thing to do. It can't happen any other way. The other thing is that where they talk about sacred lands, it is, in fact, a dichotomy where we say, we want to have reverence for these lands, and then those who are pushing the monument saying, look at all the tourism and travel it's going to bring to our state, tromping on these sacred lands. They're at opposite ends of the spectrum. 

So, again, the Indians ought to be able to weigh in and say what should happen and where you can tromp and not tromp on their sacred lands. That needs Congressional action. I actually do believe that the proposal that the President's going to do, with the recommendation of Secretary Zinke, is going to be a grand compromise, where everybody can have something good, maybe not get everything they want, but I think we'll find good protections.

By the way, another myth is that we're doing this for oil and gas. There is no oil and gas there. That's another myth being perpetuated out there for those who don't want to have a shrinkage of the monument. By the way, let me give you one little factoid that's kind of interesting, at least to me. When you take the Bears Ears Monument, one-and-a-half million acres, when you take the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, 1.9 million acres, add those together, people don't recognize how large, how mammoth that size is. It kind of just rolls off the tongue, 1.9 million acres. What's that? Well, I'll tell you what it is: it's the same size as Utah County, it's the size of Salt Lake County, it's the size of Davis County, it's the size of Weber County, combined. The size of these two monuments is gigantic. And that's part of the frustration for the local people down there that feel like that's going to impact negatively their opportunities for tourism and travel, for farming and ranching, for multiple use. We have a charter, under the BLM, is designed to have multiple use, and that's being taken away.

MICHAEL ORTON, UTAHPOLITICALCAPITOL.COM: To this point of reducing the size of the monument, though, the original Public Lands Initiative that was brought forth in the Gold Room of the Capital here by Congressman Rob Bishop, had a larger amount of land set aside for the monument than was originally designated by the Obama administration. And then we heard from a lot of GOP people here in the state and elsewhere, Congress should have been involved. There was a discussion and a designation made by one man 2,000 miles away, when, in fact, Congress was involved, but Congressman Bishop couldn't get the PLI out of committee.

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, if you can't get out of committee, then Congress really wasn't involved much, was it? Maybe just the committee, but if you can't get it out on the floor and have a debate and discussion, again, part of the challenge, I think, was Congressman Bishop tried to do a grand proposal here, 18 and plus million acres. It probably was too big, because to make sure that the people in Daggett County and Uintah County were happy along with the people in San Juan County, was probably a little bit too much.

He offered some trade-offs. 300 miles of stream protection, expanding Arches National Park by 20 thousand additional acres. And so, in order to have a larger monument, or a recreation area, part of the Bears Ears area, we got some trade-offs over here. When that fell apart, then the idea of having a larger area there fell through, too.

That's a question you'd ask Congressman Bishop. I'm just reacting to what we have on the table today, which is, in fact, a recommendation that, we believe this will be coming, to shrink the monument. But enhanced protections for those areas. There's not going to be any loss of protection on these public lands as we've had throughout the state.

AMY JOI O’DONOGHUE, DESERET NEWS:Governor, air quality season is upon us. The wood burning's starting, legislature's just around the corner, do you have any fixes up your sleeve, or what do you think needs to happen in this arena to boost the quality of our air?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, it's an ongoing challenge that we have, the uniqueness of our topography, and the meteorology that we have here with inversions, so it's certainly something that we always think about. I created the UCAIR program, a Utah clean air partnership where we have stakeholders on all sides of the issue get together on a regular basis. It used to be chaired by Ted Wilson, our leading environmentalist in the state, and saying, what are the ideas, and what can we do?

One we just came up with a week ago was, in fact, this idea of, let's see if we can't reduce the number of wood-burning stoves and replace them with natural gas. And so we give you $1,000 rebate back if you eliminate your wood-burning stove and transition to a natural gas stove, we'll give you $1,000 towards that purchase. What that does, by the way, people don't realize how bad the smoke from wood is. And as we eliminate one wood-burning stove, that's the same as reducing 90 SUVs off of the road. The reduction is significant. So that's something we're doing that's kind of new on the horizon here.

We also know that, you know, bringing in tier 3 fuels is going to be an important aspect. That'll take three out of every four automobiles off the road if we can start burning cleaner fuel. We've already put in 21, 22 different regulations to industry, which is going to, they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on best available technology, which is also reducing. And what we've done, because of all these things combined, is we've reduced the pollution levels on the Wasatch Front 35 percent over these last eight to 10 years.

Doesn't mean we're where we need to be, but we're certainly trending in the right direction. There's more yet to come, and I think more, it's going to get better. We used to have 18 days of exceedances in the state, where we have these red days, exceeding Federal standards. Now we're down to about nine or 10.

MICHELLE PRICE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Governor, we've seen businesses and governments around the country revisiting their sexual harassment policies and training in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Is this a conversation that's going on in your office? Have you guys revisited your policy, or is that a conversation you're having with legislative leaders?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: It's a conversation, I think, that has probably been renewed. We've had the conversation in the past. We have a zero - tolerance policy for any form or kind of sexual harassment. If you're found involved in any kind of sexual harassment, it's immediate grounds for termination. And we will fire you. So, again, whether it's verbal, whether it's touching, whether it's any kind of activity that would fall under the category of sexual harassment, we do not tolerate that in state government.

ERIK NEILSEN, KUED: Well, Governor, thank you very much. We're at the end of our time for today. This is the last news conference of the year. We hope to see you again next year.

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Thank you, and the holiday season is upon us, so let's take an opportunity to be thankful for what we have and share what we have with others who are less fortunate.

ANNOUNCER: This has been The Governor's Monthly News Conference. An archive of transcripts, video and audio, is available online. Please visit KUED.org. Thanks for joining us.

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