Oil Shale News

A Vernal attorney is suing Uintah County over a closed session it held with oil shale industry officials and leaders of other counties in March to discuss a resolution opposing a proposed federal clampdown on leasing of public lands.

Sandra Hansen filed a complaint Monday in 8th District Court on her own behalf, asking a judge to nullify the resolution that the county subsequently passed and to instruct the county not to conduct more meetings in violation of the open-meetings law.

In her lawsuit, Hansen wrote that the law requires officials to vote in public to close a session, but that the commissioners had already determined and notified the public that the March 27 gathering would be closed before they ever met to vote on it.

The commissioners “mocked the Utah Open and Public Meetings Act,” according to her lawsuit, and did not limit the private discussion to strategy regarding “pending or reasonably imminent litigation,” as the law allows.

Uintah County invited commissioners from several Utah, Colorado and Wyoming counties to the meeting, along with industry officials and a lobbyist. Afterward, the counties each passed a common resolution rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to reduce acreage available for oil-shale and tar-sands leasing in the three states.

“The invitation contained no reference, whatsoever, to litigation,” Hansen wrote, “pending, reasonably imminent or otherwise, or to strategizing about litigation.”

Efforts to reach the commissioners were unsuccessful Tuesday afternoon. Commissioner Mike McKee has previously said the discussion did center on a potential lawsuit and the resolution mentions alleged improprieties in the Bureau of Land Management’s process for scaling back leasing.

“We brought in specialists from the companies,” McKee told The Salt Lake Tribune last month. “We have every right and opportunity under the Open Meetings Act to have a closed meeting and discuss potential litigation.”

Colorado Common Cause objected to the closed meeting and filed records requests with the counties involved. Last month, the public-interest group released the documents it received and said the roster of attendees — including oil-shale company representatives — showed the meeting to be illegal.