FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 19, 2016
DENVER—As Utah Governor Gary Herbert prepares to hold his second press conference in as many weeks lamenting the possibility of a national monument in Utah’s Bears Ears region, the Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Jennifer Rokala:
“If Congressman Rob Bishop spent more time legislating and less time bloviating, Governor Herbert wouldn’t need to hold so many press conferences highlighting the congressman’s ineffectiveness.
“Plans to protect Bears Ears have been in the works for literally eighty years. Far from being a ‘midnight monument,’ the Obama administration gave Utah’s congressional delegation every opportunity to protect Bears Ears legislatively. Now that Utahns can see how Chairman Bishop decided to run out the clock on his Public Lands Initiative, they know it’s past time for President Obama to step up and do Rob Bishop’s job for him.”
As the Center for Western Priorities noted in its report card earlier this year, Rep. Rob Bishop is one of the most ineffective leaders in Congress. When compared to his fellow committee chairmen and ranking members, Bishop scores in the bottom half of every single objective measure in GovTrack’s 2015 scorecard.
While Bears Ears languished without protection, Bishop started 2016 by rolling out a “discussion draft” of his Public Lands Initiative that was so stuffed with poison pills that it was immediately declared dead on arrival. By the time Bishop wrote an actual bill that could have passed the House and Senate, he left just a few dozen working days on the congressional calendar. After passing the bill out of his committee, it appears Bishop took no steps to bring the PLI up for a vote before the full House, nor did Utah Senator Mike Lee ever introduce a version of the PLI in the Senate.