| IDAHO ATTORNEY GENERAL ALAN G. LANCE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Boise) Attorney General Al Lance announced today that the State of Idaho and Governor Kempthorne have filed suit against the United States Forest Service for failing to provide sufficient time for the state to comment on the Forest Service's proposal to close all road development on the roadless areas. The Attorney General also filed suit over the Forest Service's failure to comply with a Freedom of Information Act Request. On October 14, 1999, the United States Forest Service issued a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement that would lead to the end of all multiple use of approximately 40 million acres of national forest land around the country. This would include over 8 million acres of land in the state of Idaho. The Forest Service inexplicably decide to limit the comment period on this enormous proposal to 60 days. "This announcement was an abrupt departure from the Forest Service's previous efforts to manage land in a collaborative manner with affected state and local governments," Attorney General Lance said. "Idaho was given no advance notice of the October announcement and was provided no meaningful opportunity to respond." Governor Kempthorne stated, "As President of the Land Board, I'm extremely concerned about what this proposal could mean for Idaho's children. If the Clinton Administration has its way, many of our state's public trust lands could be severely devalued which directly affects the foundation for school funding in our state. The way to prevent that is for the federal government to put all of the information on the table, so that everyone has an opportunity for thorough review and comment. So far, that clearly hasn't happened." According to Lance, the goal of this lawsuit is simple. The state and the people of Idaho need, and deserve, a reasonable amount of time to review and understand the Forest Service's proposal to end all road development in currently roadless areas. The state's and its citizens' efforts to receive current and definitive information about the proposal was further hampered by the federal government's failure to provide maps or other site information that could be used to determine the total scope of the environmental impact statement's effect here in Idaho. "Citizens attempting to visit the Forest Service's 'roadless initiative' web page have discovered that access to information, such as maps and site-specific information, was 'under development' when the comment period expired," Attorney General Al Lance stated. "What we're asking of the federal government in this lawsuit is to open up the process to provide a meaningful dialogue between the states that would have to live with the effects of this proposal. Any significant relationship between the states and the federal government demands nothing less," Kempthorne said. "The State of Idaho was forced to file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain specific information about the background of President Clinton's proposal," Lance stated. On December 10, the state wrote to the Forest Service and explained the proposal was too vast and ill defined to provide meaningful comment in 60 days. To the knowledge of the state, the federal government has not yet responded to the state's request. "The bottom line is that it is impossible for the state, or any Idahoan, to obtain information necessary to understand the Forest Service's proposal." Typically, the Forest Service and other land management agencies, according to law, extend the comment period to allow time for the public to obtain necessary information to serve as the basis for meaningful public comment. "In this case, because the Forest Service has made the completely unreasonable, and unprecedented, decision to favor its schedule over the concerns of Idahoans, the state was left with no choice but to take the Forest Service to federal court to provide the information and time to comment on this very important issue," Attorney General Lance said. |