A closed-door meeting held in Utah’s Uintah County earlier this year by officials from three states and industry representatives violated the state’s open meeting law because during the meeting officials mapped out strategies to challenge a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ruling to restrict oil shale development, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

The lawsuit was filed in Utah’s Eighth District Court by Utah resident Sandy Hansen, who claims that the elected Uintah County Board of Supervisors broke the law when they met in March with officials from other counties in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, which in turn led to resolutions in those states to oppose BLM’s scaled-back plans for oil shale development (see Shale Daily, April 11).

The meeting was held after BLM in February issued a draft proposal to cut in half the public lands that could be made available for oil shale development in the three western states and to limit activities in early research and development projects for oil shale and tar sands resources (see Shale Daily, Feb. 6).

Uintah County Attorney Jonathan Stearmer said the closed meeting was based on the supervisors’ beliefs that the issues discussed would be subject to imminent litigation, one of six reasons public officials may hold closed-door meetings under Utah law.

Hansen’s allegations concerning the Open Meetings Act violations will be investigated by the Utah Attorney General’s Office, a spokesman for the office told reporters on Tuesday.

The March meeting was scheduled with commissioners from Utah’s Carbon, Duchesne and Uintah counties, as well as Colorado’s Mesa, Moffatt and Rio Blanco counties. In addition, representatives from several Wyoming counties, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s public lands policy office and several industry organizations were at the meeting, according to the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, most of the counties’ representatives attending the closed session went on to pass resolutions during public meetings that were similar in wording that criticized BLM’s oil shale draft proposal.

Matt Garrington, co-director of the Checks and Balances Project in Denver, told reporters that Hansen should be lauded for “standing up to local officials who care more about lobbyists [for oil shale companies] than they do for the people in their communities.”