Editorial: Hearing lives up to its billing

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999 | 9:43 a.m.

Gloria Flora, the supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said last week that a congressional field hearing in Elko on Saturday was going to be an "inquisition." Flora, who resigned last week after citing "irresponsible fed-bashing" in Nevada, declined to appear before the House Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. The hearing ostensibly was about the U.S. Forest Service's decision to close a road on national forest land, which was used by Elko County residents, that washed out during a 1995 flood. Some environmentalists are concerned that if the road is rebuilt it could endanger the threatened bull trout. In response, local residents and officials vowed last month to defy the agency and rebuild the road, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the group from doing this.

So what did the chairwoman of the subcommittee, Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who requested the hearing, have to say Saturday about Flora's concerns? "This is not an inquisition," Gibbons responded. "Nor is it an 'Elko Witch Hunt,' as some might believe." Meanwhile, Chenoweth-Hage said the intent of the hearing was to "move this contentious and important dispute toward rational resolution." Yeah, right. This hearing included the following "rational" remarks from local officials: State Assemblyman John Carpenter, R-Elko, likened the controversy to the Boston Tea Party, and Elko County Commission Chairman Tony Lesperance vowed to rebuild the road "come hell or high water."

Flora had every right to expect the worst, especially considering that Chenoweth-Hage chaired the hearing. The Idaho congresswoman recently married Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, who has been in a protracted legal fight with the federal government over his lost grazing rights. Leaving aside her husband's personal interest in settling a score, Chenoweth-Hage has made no secret of how much she despises the U.S. Forest Service's plans to set aside forest lands in the West from development by the timber industry. Her animosity is so profound that she and three other influential members of Congress last year threatened to slash the Forest Service's budget unless it allowed more logging in national forests (fortunately Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck didn't back down). So it's not surprising that Chenoweth-Hage seized on Gibbons' request to hold a hearing in Elko, giving her another opportunity to pummel the Forest Service.

Gibbons told the Associated Press last month that he had sought the hearing in order to move beyond the bickering, "to get away from the intransigent resistance of the administration and the reactionary efforts that some people have in mind that aren't going to get us to a solution." Despite Gibbons' stated intentions, the hearing in Elko was a waste of time; Flora's prediction that the Forest Service wouldn't get a fair hearing was prescient. If anything, the views of Elko residents and officials seem to have hardened and grown even sharper, eliminating any hope of a reasonable outcome.

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